UPDATE: New Yorker responds to celebrity backlash against not-actually-very-mean Jeremy Strong profile
Chastain and Sorkin have both taken to social media to defend their Molly's Game co-worker (and current Succession star)
Aux News Jeremy Strong
The recent New Yorker profile of Succession star Jeremy Strong has proven to be something of a Rorschach test for folks online. That is, pretty much everyone who reads Michael Schulman’s (undeniably fascinating) presentation of Strong’s whole vibe seems to come away with a different read on what spending a prolonged amount of time with him on a movie or TV set might be like.
(Current co-workers Kieran Culkin and Brian Cox, both quoted in the piece, come off as a mixture of impressed, worried, and just slightly annoyed by Strong’s dedication to portraying profound shithead failson Kendall Roy in body, mind, and soul.)
But while most people seem to have gotten at least some sense of the writer’s own affection for his admittedly intense subject from Schulman’s piece, at least one former co-star has become clearly incensed at what she views as a hit piece on her friend. To wit: Jessica Chastain is not happy about that New Yorker profile, to the point where she’s shared an editorial from The Telegraph in defense of her Molly’s Game co-star on social media, and has now offered up a letter from director Aaron Sorkin (who’s quoted in the New Yorker piece) defending Strong.
Sorkin’s letter is mostly concerned with giving the full answers to five questions Schulman asked him for the piece, which do, admittedly, seem to be focused on some of Strong’s more extreme on-set behaviors. (Especially the confirmed detail that he floated the idea of being tear gassed to get in character for Sorkin’s The Trial Of The Chicago 7.) Sorkin’s basic point (which also pops up in the New Yorker profile, which, we can’t help but note, is extremely complimentary about Strong’s talents) is that while Strong is certainly intense, he’s not the kind of intense that’s irresponsible or disrespectful to others. Sorkin notes, among other things, that when Strong and Sacha Baron Cohen deliberately went off-script to antagonize Frank Langella’s judge character in Chicago 7, it was in a way Langella felt okay with. The Being The Ricardos director also asserted that he’d work with Strong again in a heartbeat.
All of which, again, seems to spawn from the assumption that you think, as Chastain and Sorkin clearly do, that Strong comes off as especially awful in the profile. (This writer’s own take is that he reads as someone who it’d be interesting but extremely draining to have a lunch with, not necessarily in a terrible way.) It’s kind of sweet, in a sticking up for your friends sort of way—even if we’re not wholly convinced that wealthy, well-connected Emmy winners necessarily need such a full-throated defense at the moment, especially given how obsessed everyone currently is with Strong’s performance in this season of Succession already.
Update, 3:53 p.m. at 12/11/21: And now even more of Strong’s famous friends have come out of the woodwork to defend him from what is, we repeat for the nth time, not actually a particularly mean portrayal of the actor. Adam McKay (who executive produces Succession) has echoed Sorkin on Twitter, while Anne Hathaway posted a black and white photo of Strong on her Instagram, along with a very touching eulogy for her fallen friend.
Meanwhile, The New Yorker has issued its own statement on the whole situation: “This is a nuanced, multi-sided portrait of an extremely dedicated actor. It has inspired a range of reactions from people, including many who say that they are even more impressed by Jeremy Strong’s artistry after having read the article.”
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This article is really fucking stupid.
– The AV Club!
He does come off poorly in that article. It reminded me of the Miles Teller feature.
wow that one was brutal…what was it? “my penis is like a martini”? what a putz
How much Teller?
Miles O’Keefe!
Oh, wait…
Ha! Wrong show. 😉
Not as much as we had O’Keeffe.
It was the kind of profile where the writer doesn’t have to do much to illustrate who the subject is. He or she just has to turn the tape recorder on and let the subject talk. So many of the quotes come off in print as either not very self aware or as affectations. To wit: “I think my life has been animated by wanting,” On his habit of refusing to rehearse with his fellow actors: “I want every scene to feel like I’m encountering a bear in the woods”“To me, the stakes are life and death,” he told me, about playing Kendall. “I take him as seriously as I take my own life.”“If I have any method at all, it is simply this: to clear away anything—anything—that is not the character and the circumstances of the scene,” he explained. “And usually that means clearing away almost everything around and inside you, so that you can be a more complete vessel for the work at hand.”Strong certainly comes across in the article as intense and a lot to take. I didn’t get the sense that was manufactured by the writer, rather that this impression of him accumulated throughout the course of the reporting—and then the profile allows the reader to see this accumulation for themselves. I mean, his costars all basically confirm that working with Strong isn’t the most enjoyable part of their day because of how extreme and isolated his practices are. Even the people that Strong voluntarily connected with the author, like McConaughey, summed up their experiences working with him not by saying that’s he’s a great guy and a dream collaborator, but that he’s “intense.” To my mind, “intense” is a nice way of saying “bat-shit crazy” without having to say it. I mean, when RDJ—himself known to be an exacting actor to work with—says you cross the Rubicon, that says something. It didn’t strike me as a hit piece. Instead, it read like a pretty thoroughly-documented look into how this particular person both exists and sees himself within the world, and how others react to it.
The impression the article strongly gives is that his co-stars and directors tolerate him more than they like working with him. Which is likely the reason Chastain and Sorkin spoke up. I’d assume there’s also tons of non-crazy sounding things Strong said which didn’t make the cut for the article.It didn’t come off as a balanced narrative to me.
I’m legitimately torn. While Sorkin is someone I find to be insufferable (so I take his defense of Strong with a grain of salt), I am a BIG fan of both Chastain and Hathaway both personally and professionally. So for them to defend Strong makes me reconsider the article. Because I *did* exit that article thinking Strong was a lot of work.And contrast this situation to someone like Jared Leto, who is often accused of the same (often worse) shenanigans. And yet one never hears of anyone (from co-stars nor friends/acquaintances) come forward to defend Leto’s behavior in “House of Gucci”, “Suicide Squad”, or even “Dallas Buyers Club”. And Leto even won an Oscar for the last one.And yet…despite both Hathaway and Chastain defending Strong, it’s also telling that no one from “Succession” has spoken up to defend Strong post article.In other words, the version of Strong the Succession cast sees could be VERY different from what his friends experience. Strong *could* very well be the PITA actor alluded to in the article. The behavior a person displays at work can be drastically different from how one acts amongst close friends and others you care about.
I mean Chastain, Hathaway, McKay, and Sorkin all have worked with Strong. Succession isn’t the only thing he’s done.
It may also be that his intensity is easier to take for the length of a film shoot, not so much for a multi-season series production schedule.
I have to laugh at all the dudes who come out of the woodwork to defend Yet Another Entitled “Intense” Asshole Dude like Jeremy Strong.As for Ms. Chastain and Ms. Hathaway? I guess they figures Abusive Behavior in Men is Genius, somehow….
not tolerate accept that this is way of working, as long as it does not become abusive (leto…..) its ok, i don’t think its an hit piece, there are parts of it that might read like that (and if i were him i might also think ok so i am that)
I agree that it’s not balanced.I also don’t understand why it needs to be. This isn’t war reporting or a scientific paper on medical technology. It’s a celebrity profile of an actor for a culture magazine.I can’t imagine the hullabaloo these drips would start over a friend showing up in Hush Hush or Confidential.
It doesn’t have to be – my point was it shouldn’t be a surprise that friends of Strong spoke up against it because it wasn’t balanced.
Like how would you react if someone painted a one-sided portrait of a good friend of yours that didn’t jell with the person you knew? Or if they shortened / removed context / cherry-picked your responses to questions to give a different impression than you intended to give?
This assumes that I agree with that view of the piece in question. I don’t.
I don’t really see it as a matter of opinion or not – when people interviewed for an article speak up and say they are misrepresented and provide proof of it, it’s clear the article writer provided a slanted view. And again, people who actually know Strong have every right to speak up in that case – especially when it was their words turned against them.Like if you add in that Cohen was involved in the courtroom hijinks, it really does change the kazoo story that was quoted.
To be honest, I don’t really care about Jeremy Strong or whether he’s a lot to take or not, I don’t know him and I almost certainly never will, so I’m not going to expend a lot of energy into defending him. Maybe he’s a bit of a pretentious twerp, maybe he isn’t, it doesn’t really make much difference to me. I’m behind on Succession so I don’t even have a fan stake in this or anything. That said, the AV Club’s “look at all these stupid celebrities jumping in to defend Strong’s fee-fees!” take just comes off as a bit smug and sneering IMO. Like, whether or not you or I think the article is unfair and unbalanced to him is irrelevant because we (I assume) don’t know him — but his friends and colleagues do know him, these ones presumably have reasons to find it unfairly slanted and distorted, and okay, it might not be the Iraq dossier or anything in terms of importance but it’s still poking and mocking the guy in public, it’s perfectly fair and reasonable for his friends to speak out if they feel that strongly about it, which they clearly do.I dunno. This whole take from the AV Club just kind of feels a bit like the shrimpy kid in the playground who jeers from the sidelines when the bullies pick on another kid.
Except no, it isn’t. The New Yorker aren’t being bullies. Schulman uses a bit of a *tone* but nothing he says is untrue. Strong isn’t some defenseless kid.Hughes is mostly guilty of copping a classist antagonism towards Chastain et al. Which…. (shrug)
Well, yes, obviously I know that this isn’t actually a case of kids bullying other kids in the playground, thanks for pointing that out anyway. It’s just the closest analogy I could think of for the general vibe this article gives me, which “classist antagonism” or not just seems to take a needlessly hectoring and sneering tone about what is essentially someone coming to the defence of a friend she thinks has been unfairly treated in public and pointing out that someone else’s views have been unfairly misrepresented by a fairly influential and well-read publication. Which, whether you like them or not, is a perfectly fair thing to do. As for classist antagonism, Strong’s just an actor playing a rich guy, he’s not actually Cornelius Vanderbilt. Sure, he’s almost certainly richer than you and me put together and mocking him may be justifiable, but it isn’t exactly the greatest victory in the class war either.
This requires that I agree that the New Yorker piece is mockery. I don’t. It has a *tone*, unmistakably. There is an undercurrent of an eye roll. But there’s also plenty of admission that he’s successful and a certain reluctant admiration. Chastain, IMO, has overreacted. And Sorkin is a jag who just doesn’t like that he was misquoted. Everyone needs to just take a breath.
It doesn’t require anything of you. Because, leaving aside that I’ve openly just been offering my opinions on the situation and have no made no demands that you agree with me, whether or not you think the article is fair to Strong and that Chastain is overreacting is, frankly, kind of irrelevant. Since you haven’t said so otherwise, I feel safe in presuming you don’t actually know the man outside of seeing his work and reading this profile. You’re as much part of the peanut gallery looking in and shooting the breeze about it as I am. You’ve got a right to feel that it’s a fair treatment of him, certainly, but you don’t actually know any more than I do for certain whether it actually is or not. It’s as much from your subjective perspective as my views are from mine. But Chastain does know Strong. And if she thinks it’s unfair and misleading, well, she presumably knows better than you and me, and she’s got a right to say so publicly, is all I’m saying. Maybe she is wrong and the article is fair, I don’t actually know — but, unlike you, I’m not pretending to know either.Also, no arguments that Sorkin is a twerp — but just because he’s a twerp doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a right to get annoyed at being misquoted in a way which he feels misrepresents him, and to clarify the record publicly. I feel like if you felt like you’d been misrepresented and your views distorted in public by a fairly widely-read publication like the New Yorker you’d probably want to set the record straight as well. Plus, well, as said above if people are outright coming out and saying that they’ve been misrepresented, that’s not really a matter of opinion — presumably they know what they did or didn’t say and whether or not the article is accurately representing them more than you, who like me is an anonymous rando on the internet who almost certainly doesn’t know them and wasn’t there.
Counterpoint: the quotes are self-explanatory enough that you don’t need to leave them all in to give the reader a sense of Strong’s personality. It’s twisting the knife in a way that’s fair and accurate but doesn’t reflect well on the author’s charity or self-restraint.Honestly, endless quotes are just kind of a copout in general. It’s a lazy way of doing journalism.
I keep cracking up thinking about that “I want every scene to feel like I’m encountering a bear in the woods” line, but I get the impression he wasn’t trying to be funny.
It made me think of this:
Haha Now I’m reading all of his interview responses in Tobias’s fire sale voice!
Even if the tone is interpreted as snarkily critical (fair), there’s a really goofy LEAVE BRITTNEY ALONE!!!!! vibe to some of these responses. It’s fine. He’s a grown man.
I mean, when RDJ—himself known to be an exacting actor to work with—says you cross the Rubicon, that says something.
I haven’t followed the responses closely, but I can’t believe I’m the only one who read that RDJ comment as a “never go full re***d” reference.
Another piece where it felt like the writer oriented the piece to make him seem as insufferable as possible. The difference is that I didn’t expect any better from Esquire.
Wow, I would have though Penn was the crazy one.
guess it depends on the person reading it
Jeremy Strong might be just odd or a genuinely bad person but that article and the Twitter piling on it led to by snarky media types really reminded me of high school pettiness.Strong is probably the best character in succession and it didn’t really surprise me the actor had to approach that very different character in a very different way from the rest of the cast.Shrug.
Best character?!?
He’s been the weak link since the beginning of the show.
Tdbm- total dog brained moment
Good for them
I thought that Jeremy Strong came across as interesting but kind of insufferable in that profile. It was by no means the meanest profile of an actor that I’ve ever read, but I can certainly understand why people who know Strong personally would feel aggrieved on his behalf upon reading it.
Towards the end (or maybe soon after it?) of the Obama presidency there was a long magazine profile of Ben Rhodes, who’d worked for Obama as a speechwriter and become a significant advisor (a lot of the substance of the article was about Rhodes’ and Obama’s shared attitudes towards the foreign policy establishment in D.C.). The reaction of everyone I follow on social media who read it was that it was meant as a disguised hit piece: superficially straightforward and empathetic, but all the “telling details” profile writers use to enrich the portrait they’re painting were slanted negatively. That was VERY MUCH the vibe I got from the Jeremy Strong profile.And I’d say about half the reactions I saw to it agreed. The other half were of the “working with Jeremy Strong sounds awful” attitude (including in the comments of this long running website, what’s it called, oh, the AVClub) … so I don’t know why it’s a surprise that Strong’s friends felt the piece slipped the knife in, or why we’re assuming this pose of “oh, did people think it was unflattering? Well, I suppose I can imagine that one might have, but it wouldn’t have occurred to me had you not mentioned it.”
Some of this is.. I don’t want to say generational but things have changed. Being “difficult to work with” is seen in the current era as a supremely negative thing and there’s not much tolerance for an eccentric individual who doesn’t collaborate well. I’m not claiming the “eccentric artist” is some great ideal and a lot of them were/are insufferable egotists but that also used to be expected or even prized in someone creative and I don’t think that’s the case any more… We want artists to be well adjusted. Maybe we have so many creative types around now we don’t need to put up with any bullshit any more, I don’t know, but I do think that exact same text about a method actor in the 60s-90s would be received much more positively, like it’s admirable the guy suffers for his art instead of thinking first how insufferable he is to friends and co-workers.
I think everyone has finally and rightfully gotten sick of the self serious angry male actor/director/writer with the involved process that makes the jobs of everyone around them more difficult (and it has been almost exclusively men. Women who can’t play nice mostly don’t find work). People who work exclusively in collaborative mediums should be judged at least in part on their ability to collaborate. Eccentric artists who can’t or refuse to work well with others have many artistic endeavors that can be done in solitude. Most visual art, fiction writing, and music composition is very easily accomplished alone. Acting, and especially film and television acting, requires coworkers.
Exactly! It’s like hearing Stanley Kubrick still hailed as a “genius” after finding out how horribly he treated Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers and Danny Lloyd on the set of The Shining, or listening to Darren Aronofsky rank out of his former girlfriend Jennifer Lawrence after putting her through Hell so he could make…Mother.
Indeed, one could argue that the entire point of public school for anyone under 40 was to instill group work and collaboration skills, not academic excellence. Unsurprisingly, getting along and being easy to work with are highly prized in the workplace, moreso than raw talent. I showed that New Yorker piece to a family member who is a professional actor, and their response was surprisingly neutral about a lot of the stuff getting picked apart, but the refusing to rehearse with the rest of the cast got a huge disgusted reaction as it is just so inconsiderate and rude. Sort of you do you, but don’t make the lives of your co-workers harder.
This is like reading about a chef who doesn’t use yeast but makes a delicious beer bread and being like ” what a fucking prick “
IMO “being difficult to work with” has always been more code for “won’t sleep with me” or “is a sexual predator.” Strong sounds difficult to work with but in the most benign “intense personality” sense. Different personalities gel differently. Like I probably wouldn’t want to work with him, but maybe I could be he friend. IDK. I didn’t think he came off as badly in the piece as others though.
Mary Pickford, it’s a little like how we reacted to Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair in the Nineties versus how it seems now. Then it was so obviously Republicans looking for an excuse to kill Bill Clinton and Humiliate Hillary Just to Watch Them Die that none of us thought to ask, “How does Monica Lewinsky feel about being tarred, feathered, and ridden out of Washington, D.C. on a rail by the guy she was hopelessly in love with…?”
Now? It looks a lot like Bill and Hillary, along with the Democratic Party and Mainstream Media, used Monica Lewinsky as a scapegoat to save their own asses.
Yeah, there’s a very passive-aggressive kind of profile that’s become prevalent in recent years, where they assemble a bunch of quotes into an unflattering narrative and then play dumb.
This is not new. By a looooong shot. Everyone clutching their pearls over this profile needs to hit the back catalog of just about every entertainment magazine since the 1930s.
In total fairness, “they were doing it in Hollywood in the ‘30s!” isn’t exactly an airtight defence. Just cause it’s not new doesn’t mean it’s not still kind of dickish.
Cosmia said “in recent years”. My point is that it’s not a recent phenomenon.
Ah, fair enough, I obviously missed that point.
Benny roads and Obama are far more evil and worthy of critique than Strong. Obama actually used drones to kill an American child
Personally I wouldn’t take Sorkin at his word on who he thinks is a good person considering he’s a scab who broke the picket line during the 2008 Writer’s Strike and is a neoliberal who doesn’t see the hypocrisy in him using his wealth to get out of multiple possession charges while the countless people who don’t have the same means spend decades in jail for similar charges under the very system he proselytizes for.
I thought you reserved your Captain Insufferable persona for South Park articles.
Also he wrote The Newsroom.
More importantly.
The writer’s strike is one thing, but anyone in legal trouble should fight for the best outcome they can given their means. Otherwise you’re just submitting to the system and bringing in more revenue for the pigs.
Snark sells but maybe its time we move beyond it.
If what’s beyond it sells more, then you got yer self a deal, Jess.
I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with snark.That’s right, folks, Lark Voorhies is back and better than ever!
Beyond snark? Here? On the AV Club? Someone tell Sam.
i mean the profile was… fine. but there were media people on twitter that immediately equated it to somehow him being fired from succession cause the cast couldn’t stand him to him being possibly abusive to co-stars and stalking famous people. so i get why people who actually know him in real life might have seen those speculations and felt put off by it. at most he’s annoying and pretentious and self-serious. people on all sides should just let it go and stop making it into a bigger deal than it is. i did find some of the tone about him being a careerist and a striver off-putting. like, okay so he networked and clearly spent a lot of time trying to build connections with more famous actors. good for him.
That was my impression as well. I have no problem with Chastain & co defending their friend but she’s picking the wrong target. The profile didn’t paint the most flattering picture but it was really Twitter that exaggerated it into reputation destruction, not the writer.
This is it. There were blue checks, AKA the people Twitter wants you to take seriously, speculating that the entire cast of Succession loathes Strong. Once Twitter gets a negative impression of a celebrity then it tends to define them. The whole thing became a feeding frenzy because everyone always needs that outlet of the person to hate and feel righteous anger toward for that day or week. You could say Chastain should have focused on those reactions, and not the article itself, but then people would have probably just said she was being snobbish (even if they already are). And of course you can also say there are more important problems in the world, because there are. It’s just this vulture mentality becomes very numbing after a while.
I’m interested to see if any of the other people in the piece, especially his co-stars, express feelings similar to Sorkin’s—that they gave a lot of quotes and the most negative ones (Kieran Culkin’s in particular) were cherry-picked in a way that doesn’t represent how they really feel. Same with the crew and the people from the Yale theater, who as presented seem to have a level of vitriol towards him that you generally don’t see in profiles like this. Maybe that’s how they honestly feel, or maybe the writer had a narrative he wanted to fit them into (apparently they sort of knew each other, for whatever that’s worth?).Admittedly, this will be a thing for a week, and I’m guessing someone will ask Strong about it at one point and that will generate a second wave, but if this is it, then…what will this ultimately change? Clearly he’s extremely intense and takes his work very seriously. Nothing that was described appears especially abusive or even miserable for his co-stars beyond a few eye rolls at what they view as actorly pretensions. Yeah, actors taking acting seriously is an easy target, but if you like Succession…probably not the worst thing to have the star care about his job, as long as he isn’t hurting anyone.
I’m interested to see if any of the other people in the piece, especially his co-stars, express feelings similar to Sorkin’s—that they gave a lot of quotes and the most negative ones (Kieran Culkin’s in particular) were cherry-picked in a way that doesn’t represent how they really feel. Same with the crew and the people from the Yale theater, who as presented seem to have a level of vitriol towards him that you generally don’t see in profiles like this. Culkin was at least on the record, and it seemed like he wasn’t telling the reporter anything he hadn’t already told Strong to his face. What seemed ridiculous to me was granting Strong’s college classmates anonymity, so they’d feel free to piss and moan about him, and could trash him without risking getting trashed in return. Presumably they didn’t want to be publicly associated with their own comments, because that would’ve outed them as petty, envious and vindictive people.
Culkin’s quotes don’t even seem that bad from what I recall, but the article definitely couches them in such a manner to imply negativity.I didn’t come away from article with a negative feeling towards Strong, but I did get the feeling that the article was trying to get me to.
Yeah, my thoughts as well. If the stories were about him bullying other cast members, that would be one thing. But some actors are strange.
Culkin’s didn’t seem that awful to me either. I mean, I hate method acting like poison and I don’t think I like Jeremy Strong but that portion didn’t seem super egregious.
A lot of the article seems like it was trying to dig in and blow stuff up and yeah, absolutely that has to sting a bit for Strong and friends but I imagine it will blow over fast. He still put in a fantastic performance this season that he can be proud of.
Brian Cox was on Seth Meyers’ show a few days ago and had to go into more detail about his thoughts, including a mention of what a wonderful father Strong was, etc. He didn’t seem to blame the article though.
But Cox did mention on Seth’s show, in a serious tone and numerous times previously, his worry surrounding the toll Strong’s method exacts and how it could possibly cut his acting career short. I imagine after decades of seeing the various and sundry methods used to concoct a sincere performance, he recognizes a possible red flag after three years of working with Strong on set. Cox strikes me as a straightforward, honest sort who didn’t seem to have an axe to grind but was simply stating his genuine concern.
I agree with you there. Unfortunately, the nuance went out the window and you had blue checks on Twitter claiming the cast loathes Strong.
MoMA MoMA MoMA MoMA
If you laugh about her friend, Chastain is going to rendition you to a black site where heroic American torturers and murderers will make you listen to her reading Sorkin prose 23 hours a day.
Why do we marvel & revere exceptional people who do extraordinary things really well, and then freak out when we find out that their attitude to their job is not just show-up-knock-off-early like most of the rest of the western world?
Who cares if Tom Brady rubs celery oil on his nipples (or whatever the fuck he does) as long as he is exceptional at his gig?
This actor – which is already a magic trick of a job anyways- has a method to how he works. Big deal. It’s making your favourite show better, you doinks.
(doinks is just anyone freaking out – I’m cool with the rest of y’all)
Tom’s nipple practices don’t affect his teammates unless he makes them watch him apply the oil.
How do you know what affect his oils have on his teammates?
Why the god damn fuck do stupid fucking ignorant twats always think they know what successful people are thinking?
Sorkin’s opinions were definitely (at best) misrepresented. My impression on finishing the profile was that Sorkin sort of tolerated Strong, probably with a great deal of eye rolling, and that doesn’t seem to be the case at all.
Someone defend the rich white guy!Seriously, I don’t know why they’re getting riled up about. Sure the article emphasized his oddities, because they’re interesting. More ‘eccentric’ than creepshow Jared Leto, for example.
“It’s kind of sweet, in a sticking up for your friends sort of way—even if we’re not wholly convinced that wealthy, well-connected Emmy winners necessarily need such a full-throated defense at the moment”This is a tiresome take, lacking in self-awareness. It may startle you to learn that people often don’t love it, and may even react emotionally and psychologically, when attacked by the media and the internet. This is even true of “wealthy, well-connected Emmy winners” and their friends. Stop playing innocent; stop acting like your shit don’t stink. You’re not “punching up,” you’re just punching.Looking forward to five more articles here seizing on any random bit of news to remind us that Strong is unbearable and to poke fun at his friends and colleagues for defending him. Gotta prop up that narrative.
You have crystallized my thoughts. This is perfect. I just tire of this nonsense so much. Thank you.
“It’s kind of sweet, in a sticking up for your friends sort of way—even if we’re not wholly convinced that wealthy, well-connected Emmy winners necessarily need such a full-throated defense at the moment”This is a tiresome take, lacking in self-awareness.Yeah, “successful people who have won Emmys don’t need loyal friends” is a new one. But it’s not a genuinely-held opinion, it’s just a lazy and passive-aggressive way of giving Strong more shit (on the assumption that he must deserve it, or just because it’s fun). If the unflattering profile had been about, say, Dan Levy (who also won an Emmy the year that Strong did), this site wouldn’t be reacting to supportive statements from (Emmy-winners) Annie Murphy and Catherine O’Hara with “isn’t it cute that these people think well-connected Emmy-winner Dan Levy needs friends lol.” But, because the profile went to such great lengths to portray Strong as a pretentious pain in the ass, he’s now in this site’s “people it’s fun to kick around” category. So anyone who pipes up to say that the profile isn’t accurate is spoiling the entertainment, and must be ridiculed accordingly.Also—Sorkin and Chastain are both in the article, and Sorkin is quoted in it. So them coming out and saying, “hey, I was in that article but it doesn’t accurately portray my friend, or my opinion of him” isn’t exactly the Hollywood A-list closing ranks. It’s what anyone would hope his or her friends would do in the same situation. There’s no sliding scale that says you owe your friends less care and consideration if they’ve won certain prizes or made X amount of money.
“…it’s just a lazy and passive-aggressive way of giving Strong more shit…”Isn’t this William Hughes’ m.o. on just about everything he writes on this site?
100%
I completely agree. When they talk about politics, celebrities are often told to stay in their lane. Now, we have actors, a writer, and a producer reacting to an article written about their friend and colleague, published in a show business magazine, and they’re told to care about more important stuff? Come on!
I’ve worked with enough “intense” assholes who consider it part of their “Process” to be abusive and generally impossible to be around to not feel much sympathy for the likes of Yet Another Intense Asshole like Jeremy Strong.It’s no surprise Sorkin loves him, because Sorkin comes off like Another Intense Asshole who can’t stand to be disagreed with….
IS always interesting to me how is liberal types think it’s horrible to insult or defame anyone who is “different” than the stereotypical powerful white man… unless they’ve done well in their chosen profession. Then they become rich parasites not even worth being defended by a friend as a decent human being. “They’re wealthier than me. They deserve nothing, except perhaps a cruel murder. “Like, ok.
Don’t worry. I didn’t need the A.V. Club to read the New Yorker and come away thinking that Strong sounds a little pretentious. OTOH, if that’s the worst thing someone says about you, relax knowing that it could be so much worse.
Kurt Cobain won a Grammy, do we really need to worry about him getting a little sad every now and again? White privilege!
Lol the rich celebrities will be fine
“Attacked”? Where?
He really doesn’t come off badly in the article though. Just kind of intense and maybe taking it all too seriously. It’s not like the article says he kicks puppies and sexually assaults people.
Yeah, he comes off as kind of a lot, but not a bad guy. I’m sure a lot of actors are extra in their way.
Yeah, I’ve read and subsequently listened to that entire New Yorker profile twice now – and if anything, I think the reporter had somewhat of a difficult relationship with Strong over the years, which he wanted to bring to the foreground. His choice of words and framing can be considered less than journalistically sound to say the least, and everyone’s jumping at it – both in a positive and negative manner – so I guess Michael Schulman got the attention that he craved.
Shut the fuck up, you uptight scold
Thank you for saying this. I personally thought the New Yorker piece was multi-faceted, but sites like this that just pulled out inflammatory quotes to point and laugh at are what these creatives are reacting too. And here comes the AVClub with articles like this to point the finger at everyone but themselves. It’s such a bummer what this site has turned into the past few years.
Man, y’all are taking this really seriously.Strong came off as a bit pretentious and extremely committed. Contrast with Culkin who came off as thinking he’s a little too cool for school, but not nearly as effective as Strong. The fact that New Yorker piece highlighted that Strong has a bit of Kendall in him (shades of Kendall’s lack of self-awareness) may have been a bit unfair, or maybe was perfectly fair, but in any case is just too great for any entertainment writer to pass up.
“Attacked”? I read the NY piece and I don’t see any attack. Did you? He comes across as intense and idiosyncratic, but it seems like that’s exactly how he’d describe himself.The AV Club’s whole point is “it’s weird that people are defending him when the article was actually very nice” not “sticking up for your friends is lame in general” It seems to me like you briefly skimmed two articles and then came in with a hot take about both of them.
These folks take playing make-believe way, way to seriously.
How dare someone take their job seriously it’s better do do as little as possible and complain about it like myself
Seeing as how the AV Club comments section re: the New Yorker piece was pretty much unanimously trashing Strong for being an insufferable douche, I can understand why Chastain would assume that people would take the wrong impression.
To combine the two viral stories of the week, I want Jeremy Strong to play the ridiculous chef of a ridiculous Michelin-starred resturant in Italy. Chastain plays the American food blogger.
I was confused as hell for a minute as I thought it was about National Treasure Mark Strong.
Jessica Chastain hikes up her pantsuit to respond to celebrity backlash
Considering the AV Club article linked opens with calling him a method actor or “an asshole on set” before talking about how he is talented, as well as people on social media hinting to him getting fired because his costars are tired of him… I can see how his friends might feel like they want to defend him. To not understand their reasoning, you must have not looked at any responses on social media or even the linked AV club article.
All of this is overshadowing the real problem with this New Yorker article: it was originally a Ziggy.
who cares
Nearly everything in the article comes from on-the-record quotes from named co-workers, or are direct quotes from Strong, himself. Also it’s hard to say the writer cherry-picked the worst ones, when there are clips of Strong interviews that are pretty much exactly the same as how he comes off, in the profile. That’s just who he is, it seems. He basically said he isn’t concerned with how others feel about his process, too. Why do these celebs care, if he doesn’t?
But Sorkin is specifically including all of his remarks to show that the ones that seemed most critical were cherry-picked.
Sorkin himself is pretentious, and is more worried about how HE comes off in the profile. Doesn’t like that, in his mind, the piece makes it look like he doesn’t like working with Strong. He could just call Strong directly and clarify that. The public does not care about how Aaron Sorkin looks.
“Sorkin himself is pretentious, and is more worried about how HE comes off in the profile.”
Well, at least you aren’t putting your own bullshit biases on display.
Also, this is not new information. All of this nonsense about him and his behavior has been out and about the media-sphere for years now. Why go ape about it now?
Probably because more people have seen Succession than The Judge, haha. Idk if ppl would know him, unless they were heavy into watching movies
“Also it’s hard to say the writer cherry-picked the worst ones”
Oh. So, you know whether the Aaron Sorkin quotes were cherry-picked better than Aaron Sorkin does?
Any profile of any white dude on a show super duper popular with white dudes (and the people dependent on them) is automatically going to get the “Put on your chinos and grab your tiki torches!” treatment these days. Look at the books people have posted in defense of a stranger who is doing quite nicely, thank you.As someone who has had to be in scenes with needy male actors, and did not have the option of storming off set, these guys SUCK. And the only reason they do so is because they can get away with it. Any woman, especially one who ain’t white, try to pull that shit? Replaced.
Eh, I think dorkin is actually annoyed that his quotes were misrepresented in the article by the author more than defending soft boy strong. Which is actually weirdly understandable? Maybe this journo wants to be the new lynn hirschberg and it’s coming back to bite them in the tush.
I was really intrigued by Strong here. Not often you hear about old school method actors (being in character all the time even off time from the set) coupled with what Kelsey Grammer termed “requisite disrespect”— the acing technique in which you come into a scene with little rehearsal with fellow actors to let it be as spontaneous and in the moment as possible. Sounds exhausting. But the results are certainly undeniable. Strong is stellar.A journalist, however, wanting an interview with Strong and not an actorly avatar— equally valid. (See. J PHOENIX)
I think this is the point —- in his clarification, Sorkin explicitly says Strong’s not in character all the time, doesn’t make people call him by his character’s name, etc. But that’s the impression most of us walked away with (and that was supported by the cherry-picked portions of Sorkin’s quotes the author decided to include.)
Interesting— because the ways he’s being portrayed and talked about is like a Brando, Dean and Debra Winger level of “call me by my character name” lol. And I must say — if an actor doesn’t want to do an interview as himself and just wants to fuck with the interviewer— well– fuck off, it’s pretentious, cloying and annoying. We like your acting but not being jerked around like a politician putting strings in front of cats.
Also points out that he said Jeremy wasn’t serious about the tear gas stuff in Chicago 7 filming, but that was left out. Jane Mayer tweeted that Jessica Chastain has no right to defend Jeremy or any credibility because she was in Zero Dark Thirty with Jeremy.And if I hear one more media type say it glamourized torture. No, it didn’t. It showed torture, and then pointed out that they were all going to get in trouble for it, that when they showed Maya bringing the prisoner food and talking to him, he gave up some intel, and that spycraft and hard work found Bin laden. And whether you agree with that or not, what the fuck does it have to do with Jeremy Strong’s performance in Succession, Jane?
Can we focus less on Strong’s technique and more on his bad acting?
Strong being cast was the worst thing that happened to Succession. What could have been a fascinating character is a throwaway that drags the whole show down.
I’m not saying your opinion is invalid, but you might be the only person alive who holds it.
I’m not sure I could disagree with you more. He was SUPREMELY cast to play a living embodiment of Dunning-Kruger.
This is just an absurd take. What is “bad” about his performance as Kendall?
Speaking personally, I conflate the actor as described in the article with the character I see on the show. I expect I’m not alone in this. I guess I hope this character doesn’t follow him around his whole life.
Eh, it was kind of a shady profile. Like, yeah, it wasn’t negative, but it did sorta want you to think “Strong’s in the same lane as Leto, just a big ol’ pretentious weirdo.”
Ron Howard’s daughter should be less defensive about celebrity profiles.
Reason enough to link the reference:
I read the piece – I thought it read a little bit snarkier than required. Like in a way Strong’s behaviour speaks for itself, but I think the author’s dismissiveness/distaste for the behaviour came through in the tone, and I feel like that’s what the likes of Chastain and Sorkin are responding to. It’s the sort of thing that could have been reported more neutrally without the author’s view really becoming part of it. I can understand why they were defensive of someone who they value as a friend and colleague – if someone did that about one of my colleagues who I valued, I’d probably reply similarly (not that anyone would care). I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a hit piece, but I think the author’s contempt for Strong’s method is pretty clear.
What is fascinating to me about all this is the massive shift in how this sort of method stuff is perceived. I remember the sort of behaviour and attitude in actors that Strong displays used to be talked about by film critics and writers in hushed tones, as if it was a glimpse into the way true art was made – so many pieces about the likes of Daniel Day Lewis and Nicholas Cage. I always felt towards it the way Brian Cox describes – kinda “Sure, results are good, but why do you feel the need to go so far”, but I felt like I was in the minority in not admiring the lengths these people were willing to go to. It feels like there’s been a shift away from this tortured genius narrative to something much more balanced.
i thought it was a pretty neutral article that allowed the reader to form their own opinions so naturally a bunch of internet zombies think its opinionated. yelling at a mirror and thinking its something else because the fog of ego is clouding the room.
HE RATES YOU!
Unless there’s a quote they left out of the article where Strong says “I often say insane untrue things about myself for fun” then I don’t think anyone can say this is not an honest portrayal of him. The man said a lot of weird stuff.