Michael Shannon to play Sen. Joe McCarthy in upcoming biopic with Emilia Clarke
Shannon, Clarke, and Dane DeHaan will star in Václav Marhoul's McCarthy
Aux News Michael Shannon
It would be reductive, bordering on insulting, to say that Michael Shannon only yells in movies and TV. Shannon is an actor of considerable skill and depth; his recent (and very musical) performance in Nine Perfect Strangers serves as a healthy reminder that there’s far more to the Oscar-nominated star’s skillset than just going full, bug-eyed Premium Rush on people.
That being said: There’s probably going to be some yelling in Shannon’ upcoming film McCarthy, in which he’ll be playing Joe McCarthy, the man whose politics so challenged the American ideal that they inspired that infamous phrase: “Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, television.”
Wait, no, sorry, those are the lyrics to “We Didn’t Start The Fire.” McCarthy actually inspired the term “McCarthyism,” setting the precedent that there’s no political opponent so loathed that you can’t still make things even uglier by labeling them a Communist, to boot.
Shannon is teaming up on McCarthy, a biopic on the infamous Red Scare-er, with director Václav Marhoul, whose most recent effort was the brutally depressing 2020 effort The Painted Bird. Shannon will co-star on the film with Emilia Clarke, who will play McCarthy’s wife, Jean Kerr, plus Dane DeHaan, who’ll be playing infamous lawyer Roy Cohn. (There’s a lot of “infamous” to go around when you’re doing a biopic on Josephy McCarthy and his pals.) Scoot McNairy, fresh off his recent season of Narcos, is also set to co-star.
Shannon has kept busy during the pandemic; in addition to Nine Perfect Strangers, he’s also set to release an inspirational sports rowing film, Heart Of Champions—produced, somewhat hilariously, by The Social Network’s hard-rowing Winklevii—later this month. Still, there’s something kind of inescapable about him stepping into the role of McCarthy; if we’re going to have societally-destabilizing political demagoguery out there in the ether, at least it can come from a great actor doing it at the top of his lungs.
22 Comments
Shannon is an inspired choice for McCarthy, and I’m curious to see how this goes–not least because the director last made a brutally depressing art house film, and because for some reason he cast Dane DeHaan in this.
Never thought I would say this, but I’m especially looking forward to seeing Michael Shannon in a dress.…however given that that was J Edgar Hoover, I think this is just a sign that I have some issues to address.
We all knew you were going to say it eventually.
He’s so good at playing conservative crackpots. As much as I like him and as many things as I’ve seen him in, his time as the hapless FBI agent in Boardwalk Empire will always be what I remember him for.
Why must it always be pandemonium? Van Alden was the first Shannon character I encountered, and though I became a big fan of Shannon’s work in general, Van Alden remains my favorite.
Loved him in Premium Rush – he manages to come across as both threatening and scared at the same time.
I liked a description of that film in which it said that Shannon basically plays his own incompetent enforcer.I’d seen him in stuff before that, going back as far as Groundhog Day, but Premier Rush was the one that really marked him out as one for me to keep an eye on, backed up by all the Jeff Nichols films.
It’s something you rarely see, and I can’t think of a film or character who’s done or an actor who’s pulled off something like it. He manages to be terrified and terrifying at the same time – two polar opposite emotions – and it makes such perfect sense for his character.
Wow, he was in Groundhog Day! at 19!
The best description I read is that he’s well cast as a zealot…Van Alden, Zod, now McCarthy.
Shannon sticks out like a sore thumb in productions like Revolutionary Road. But he is seamlessly perfect in things like The Shape of Water and, my favorite, Boardwalk Empire, where he plays, as you put it, “conservative crackpots.” He’s gonna crush McCarthy.
for some reason he cast Dane DeHaan in this.
I could see him as David Schine.
Came to say the same thing, this is excellent casting.
“… and because for some reason he cast Dane DeHaan in this.”I love and hate Dane simply because he was in Valerian. It was the perfect COVID movie to hate watch at least six times. He’s a great actor. But GD if he wasn’t speaking his lines with a mouth full of marbles. I love that film. Literally so bad it’s good.
The only reason I kept watching Nine Perfect Strangers was b/c of his performance. Truly masterful.
Michael Shannon deserves as much praise as Daniel Day Lewis. He is that good.
When Good Night and Good Luck was first shown to test audiences, they thought the guy playing Senator McCarthy was “ridiculous” and “over the top”, and that he and the director should have dialed it down a notchIt was actual black-and-white archival footage of the actual Senator himself inserted directly into the movie
That’s going to be REALLY hard to improve upon, even for Michael Shannon
Yep. I’m in.
I had the privilege of seeing Shannon in the stage production of Bug, so I’m a fan for life…I just hope they do alright with the prosthetics and makeup that will be required for him and for Dane DeHaan because neither of them really look like their counterparts (particularly Dane DeHaan who looks like…well…a dane…even if this is an instance of jewface nobody is going to have qualms about, gentiles you can have cohn!). I’d prefer to see DeHaan as RFK.
I hope there will be makeup, he’s not frumpy enough