Read this: Succession’s Jeremy Strong is very committed to Acting with a capital “A”
Succession’s Jeremy Strong apparently doesn’t know he’s on a comedy and other gems from his New Yorker profile
TV Features Jeremy Strong
Sometime between Daniel Day-Lewis’ Oscar-winning turn as Daniel Plainview and Jared Leto sending his Suicide Squad co-stars condoms and dead rats, the general public lost their stomach for so-called method acting, a term so divorced from its original meaning that it basically became shorthand for “asshole on set.”
No one told Succession’s Jeremy Strong, though. No one is interested in stopping him either. According to a fascinating New Yorker profile on the 42-year-old actor, his inability to discern himself from his character is part of the show’s secret sauce.
For those who aren’t watching HBO’s hottest and most acclaimed show, Jeremy Strong plays Kendall Roy, the once-supposed-golden child of media tycoon and fascistic corporate chess master Logan Roy (Brian Cox). Succession is a comedy despite the pervasive cruelty and complete disregard for humanity. In some ways, it plays like other cringe comedies on the premium network, like Curb Your Enthusiasm or Vice Principals, using the free rein of HBO to explore the depths of depravity cringe will allow. But Succession hits the humiliation button so hard that it’s sometimes hard to tell where to laugh (particularly last night’s episode, in which one text message makes Larry David’s infractions appear almost saintly).
Unlike his coworkers, Strong doesn’t see Succession as a comedy, and it’s helped bring his performance and the show to new heights. “That’s exactly why we cast Jeremy in that role,” Succession executive producer Adam McKay said. “Because he’s not playing it like a comedy. He’s playing it like he’s Hamlet.” Others aren’t so sure, though. Some cast members wonder if Strong even knows he’s on a comedy. Kiernan Culkin told New Yorker writer Michael Schulman, “After the first season, he said something to me like, ‘I’m worried that people might think that the show is a comedy.’ And I said, ‘I think the show is a comedy.’ He thought I was kidding.”
Schulman paints a stark portrait of an actor born in the wrong time, one who grew up idolizing the thespians of 1970s New Hollywood and tried following in their footsteps long after that “always on, Method acting” fell out of vogue. People prefer colleagues that are easier to work with these days—not that Strong cares. “I don’t particularly think ease or even accord are virtues in creative work, and sometimes there must even be room for necessary roughness, within the boundaries dictated by the work,” Strong said.
Strong’s process has led him down some exciting and unexpected paths to be closer to the actors he respects. He was Daniel Day-Lewis’ assistant and lived in Michelle Williams’ guest house before Succession. He also “nearly bankrupted a hundred-year-old college-theatre company” to have “one wonderful night of getting to hang out with Al Pacino.”
Schulman even spoke to some Avengers who knew him. “I was probably nine, ten, going to my sister’s shows, and even then thinking, Damn, this kid is great!” said Chris Evans, who later helped Strong in his quest for representation. Unfortunately, a production designer on Robert Downey, Jr.’s The Judge, in which Strong plays the actor’s mentally disabled brother, wasn’t so impressed. They described Strong as “an annoying gnat.”
The profile is packed with candid interviews with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars and best actors, praising and dissecting Strong in various ways. But the show’s patriarch, Brian Cox, has the sternest message. “The result that Jeremy gets is always pretty tremendous,” Cox told The New Yorker. “I just worry about what he does to himself. I worry about the crises he puts himself through in order to prepare.”
“Actors are funny creatures. I’ve worked with intense actors before. It’s a particularly American disease, I think, this inability to separate yourself off while you’re doing the job.”
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and now in the new James Gray movie…a perfect combo of actor and director if there ever was one.
“But the show’s patriarch, Brian Cox, has the sternest message. “The result that Jeremy gets is always pretty tremendous,” Cox told The New Yorker. “I just worry about what he does to himself. I worry about the crises he puts himself through in order to prepare.”Meanwhile, Brian Cox makes himself that good, apparently, with ease. Even when he has to keep a straight face acting alongside a tubby Steven Seagal eating his dinner.
I love how the article describes Cox’s process as “turn it on. Turn it off”. Or as I like the call it, the Ian McKellen Extras approach:
If you’ve never seen Brian Cox teach how to act tragedy, seriously put aside an hour and treat yourself:
Interestingly enough Cox says something towards the start that helps make sense of why Strong views Succession as a drama despite all of the comedy in it:“One of the myths I’d like to dispel is the idea that tragedy cannot be funny, that tragedy hasn’t got its humorous side.”
Not gonna lie, dude makes me want a Big Mac. He is good.
It’s tendah!
Describing each successfully completed scene as a “stay of execution” . . . That just feels like an exhausting way to approach your work.
I can relate and I have a boring job.
Is it bad that I agree with Strong, and don’t really see “Succession” as a comedy? To me, it has always been a drama with comedic moments, but the entire story is an absurd tragedy. All of these characters have money and resources people could only dream of and none of them are happy. All of them lack something that all of the money in the world is incapably of buying them, and they desperately want. They fight for the “prize” of the company that in the bigger picture will do nothing to better their lives from what they have now. I mean how many extra yachts and summer villas does being CEO of Waystar/Royco get, and who gives a fuck because what difference will it make. The only thing happening is that the struggle for control only debases them more and more as they push for it.And bigger bigger picture, the tragedy of it all is compounded by the fact that people like this are actually fucking up American society every day. The absurdity of how fucked the situation is does have very funny scenes in the show, but the series doesn’t usually end episodes on laugh lines the way something like “Veep” would. The stories are usually completed with scenes of characters bitterly resentful and broken, and in ways not meant to make the audience laugh.So I don’t think Strong is an out-of-touch method actor for interpreting the series that way.
Being as Succession has won Emmys for Drama, I don’t see where they get that it’s a comedy either.
It’s not a comedy. IDK why the media keeps pushing that angle. If you took out the funny bits, you’d still have a hugely successful show. If you took out all the drama, you’d have a five-minute web series.
It’s black comedy, in the same vein that Breaking Bad is black comedy.Which is to say, yeah, I also disagree with the line of thinking that Strong is wrong here.
Disagree it’s in the same vein as Breaking Bad. On whatever comedy-drama spectrum you want to create, it’s much closer to Arrested Development than Breaking Bad. (Both shows with memorable prison stabbings and deaths!) But the whole thing is written full of jokes. Brutal, mean, horrible jokes attacking other horrible characters, yes, but clear jokes, at a frenetic pace. It reminds me of Death of Stalin, for obvious thematic reasons but also in tone. There are obviously moments of genuine sadness and emotional weight; Tom’s beach speech (which followed him demanding to be taken to another cove due to a sea urchin) or the death of the caterer (which was followed by the camera lingering on Kendall as he staggered in a literal wet suit and had to break back into the venue, which was played close to slapstick.)But the real heart of darkness for this show comes from the central idea: one of the richest and most powerful families in the world can’t get anything done (seriously what have they done besides barely maintain control) because they all actually hate each other and many are grossly incompetent if not outright idiots. It’s such a fascinating series and it only works because they manage to highlight throughout that being highly educated does not make you smart or qualified to make decisions that affect the entire world. And that IS funny but it’s also horrifying because it’s blatantly true.But it only really works as a comedy, too, the same way Seinfeld only worked as a comedy: they’re all just terrible, horrible people. It’s hard to get a lot of mileage out of a drama when there’s no one to root for at all; there’s not even really an antihero candidate. (Greg and Tom probably come closest and they’re both doing shady or shitty things almost constantly, they’re just at the bottom of the pile so by default they become more sympathetic.) It’s a masterful tonal achievement. Breaking Bad was that too, but it’s not the same vein aside from being an hour-long show that had the capacity to make you laugh. It was a gray moral area drama, with heroes, antiheroes, and outright villains. Succession is very much not interested in gray areas, and it’s all the better for it. (Sorry this was so long. I can’t sleep.)
I’ve always felt Veep is the closest show to Succession, in spirit. They’re both dark comedies about vain, powerful people being awful to each other and screwing around with the world to suit their whims.Succession has more serious dramatic moments, to be sure. But fundamentally it’s the same kind of comedy.
This is it- if any of the characters in the show were redeemable in any way, it would be a tragedy. But because they’re insanely rich, powerful and awful, it’s a comedy. It’s the inverse of Shameless.
Well I can. Now.
You’re never getting that time back and it makes me quite happy to know that.
Mostly disagree, but gave you a star for a well-written, thought-out response.
I never saw “Seinfeld” or “Arrested Development,” but I did see “Death of Stalin.” I hadn’t thought of that comparison before, but your point is well taken.
I never saw “Seinfeld” or “Arrested Development,” but I did see “Death of Stalin.” I hadn’t thought of that comparison before, but your point is well taken.
I tend to think of it as satire more than comedy, though it can be quite funny. (I have described it to people as an exceedingly dark comedy though).There are entire episodes without laughs though.
This is where I tend to fall on the spectrum, too. Succession as an entity is hard to categorize. It defies a lot of genre conventions for both comedy and drama. In the end, I’ve taken to calling it a black comedy of manners. Which I totally made up. But it’s the closest thing I can come up with. It is clearly satirizing the customs and machinations of the uber-rich, and it delves into farce at times. But those farcical moments tend to also be very, very dark (Boar on the floor, anybody?).
Satire is probably more apt than “black comedy”, now that I think about it. But they’re not mutually exclusive, either.
I think the comparison to “Breaking Bad” is a good one.I personally don’t see “Succession” as a comedy. I see it as a drama with hilarious dialogue. The characters on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Vice Principals” are more cartoonish.
I think the comparison to “Breaking Bad” is a good one.I personally don’t see “Succession” as a comedy. I see it as a drama with hilarious dialogue. The characters on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Vice Principals” are more cartoonish.
So I don’t think Strong is an out-of-touch method actor for interpreting the series that way.Yeah, he’s not automatically wrong about the show just because he’s a method actor and/or can sound pretentious when he talks about his job. It’s not just that Succession is a black comedy—it’s a black comedy that has entire scenes and subplots that are not written to be funny and are not performed as comedy by any of the actors. And Strong/Kendall probably has more of the pure drama and less of the pure comedy than anyone else on the show. So it makes sense to me that he’d see the whole thing as a drama. That’s not what I’d call it, but it doesn’t seem like the “wrong” way for the actor playing Kendall to approach his performance.
Yep.
See, I agree with every word you wrote, except for the conclusion: you’ve just outlined why Succession is such a great comedy. After all, “absurd tragedy” is just another way of describing the nature of comedy – even a man getting hit in the groin with an unexpected football, or a man standing on a rake and getting hit in the head by a handle, is an absurd little tragedy.I think almost every scene of Succession is written as deeply, bitterly ironic, and it’s this revelling in irony that makes it a comedy. It’s true that it doesn’t encourage much outright laughter, other than the occasional snort at the latest audacity, but the best comedies often don’t provoke laughter – comedy and fun are two different things, even if they sometimes occur together.
I think you’re conflating comedy and satire. Comedy should provoke laughter, but satire doesn’t necessarily have to. If you’re laughing at something, it’s because it’s funny. If you don’t laugh at something, but still find it humourous, then it’s clever. Irony doesn’t have to be funny. It can just be clever, and still be irony.
At the same time, I disagree with you that the show doesn’t encourage much outright laughter. Dramas can still be funny though. However, a full-on comedy would present everything as humourous. Kendall’s story is played completely straight. A black comedy would play Kendall’s emotions as a joke. I don’t think Succession ever does. I think if you contrast Succession with Arrested Development, you’ll see how it never goes to the same comedic lengths.
Sure, but Arrested Development is a very broad comedy; lots of comedy doesn’t gurn for a punchline the way it does. It’s true that they don’t make outright gags about Kendall’s mental health problems, but I absolutely think they play them as a joke throughout the show. Certainly his mania, at least: the increasing gap between his self-image and the reality is absolutely a source of humour throughout.
Similarly, I don’t agree that ‘full-on’ comedies present everything as humorous. Think, for instance, of Blackadder: once they go over the top and we see all the characters mown down by machine-gun fire, there’s not a whiff of a joke. Similarly, something like Mitchell and Webb’s Holmes sketch: what starts out as a normal jokey sketch about Alzheimer’s suddenly becomes deathly serious. More generally, the darkness at the heart of characters is often respected: Lister’s loneliness and longing to return home are never really mocked, even if some details of the plan (Fiji) are; likewise, although specific anecdotes about Rimmer’s abusive childhood are played for laughs, the core of his self-loathing is generally played very seriously, when it’s explored. And so on.Comedy shouldn’t necessarily provoke laughter; it should be humorous, but much of the best humour is not funny-haha humour; satire is comedy directed at the end of social critique.
For me, there is a continuum of humour, and it’s between funny and clever. Comedy is on the funny end, and satire is on the clever end. You’re using the word comedy the way I use the word humour. I would say that satire is HUMOUR directed at the end of social critique. However, I think we’re just quibbling over definitions in the end, and we mostly agree that some humour doesn’t have to make you laugh out loud.
But to get down to brass tacks, is Succession a comedy or drama?When you say that Kendall’s mental health problems are played as a joke, I have to disagree. His ACTIONS are funny, but in the world of the show his FEELINGS are shown to have serious consequences. His drug addiction ends with him accidentally killing someone, and that’s never played for laughs. His father blackmailing him isn’t played for laughs. His stumbling through the press conference isn’t played for laughs. Characters may make jokes (Roman and Shiv’s cruel reactions to the press conference), but the joke is THE CHARACTER’S cruelty, not the thing they’re making fun of. Kendall’s actions have consequences that THE SHOW doesn’t joke about, and are played for pathos.You mentioned that the darkness of Red Dwarf’s characters is respected, and that’s true, but I would distinguish darkness from seriousness. Hence, we have dark comedies, but not serious comedies. Rimmer’s self-loathing is never explored as anything but the reason he is a dick. While the feelings are respected as real, that’s just something required to have a realistic character. Rimmer being hated by his parents isn’t shown to have any more consequences than making him more of a buffoon.I will amend my statement that full-on comedies present everything as humorous. What I mean is the they don’t examine serious issues through a non-humorous lens. That’s what I see as the distinction between drama and comedy. I think Succession, while very funny, spends enough time on the dramatic elements to make it a drama.Re: Blackadder. There was one serious scene right at the end of the show four series of nothing but jokes. It’s the exception that proves the rule.
I think the show is a drama to the characters but not to the audience if that makes sense. The show is basically schadenfreude for the audience. We like to see rich people suffer but the heart of the matter is that rich people deal with the trauma of terrible fathers, distant mothers, addiction, work failure, etc. like the rest of us.
It’s based on King Lear, or at the least the inspiration for the show was “modern corporate King Lear” or something to that effect. So that’s kind of the definition of a tragedy.
You didn’t think it was funny when Shiv told her husband she didn’t live him during pillow talk? Yeah me neither. This won’t end with us laughing.
What I want to know is why he refused to speak about The Gentlemen on the record.
His co-star there, McConaughey, did put in a comment on Strong for that profile. Says he’s “legit”. Missed chance to say he’s alright, but sure, Matt.
That struck me as really bizarre. Given that he apparently treated his minor role in The Judge as a way to demand special props and weep in the background of scenes he wasn’t in, I can easily imagine he tried to request special things in the gentlemen and Guy Ritchie would have told him to fuck off.
I think method acting gets a bad rap sometimes: if it’s usually used to play abrasive characters, well, the assumption is that you’re not usually that abrasive, which means you’d have to do something radical to stay in that mindset.That said, sometimes a chill pill is warranted.
I’ve always gotten the sense that many, if not most, method actors have very limited imaginations and intellectual fluidity, hence why they have to “live” the experience (if for a short time), in order to convey that on screen or on the stage.
While there are certain things you do have to experience for the sake of versimilitude (such as using certain objects correctly if you’re playing a role where the character is an expert in using that object, or performing that activity), it becomes overwrought rather quickly.
I think we also have to bear in mind that Method was a product of its time, and one reason fewer people are explicitly fully Method these days is that a sort of low-level semi-Method has become universal. You don’t get the old Shakespearian Declamation style on TV or film anymore (well, not very much) – it’s not enough to turn up and bellow out the lines with some accompanying exaggerated symbolic facial expressions and hand gestures or the like. [except the occasional fun ‘ham’ villain…]. Everyone is striving for naturalism, and most actors do it by to some extent getting into the mindset of the character they’re portraying; and most of them don’t like having this mindset disrupted unnecessarily. A moderate form of Method has become so universal that we now only associate the concept with its most extremist practitioners…
The method is a range of techniques and doesn’t have to involve the extreme behavior that is often associated with it.
You’re right, and I suppose my issue (if that’s the right term) is that
so much of Method (to the extreme you mention) is discordant with the essence of Sprezzatura, the art of making the difficult look effortless. At points it’s so obvious on screen (and not helped by the fact that the performers are constantly reported on because they’re celebrities) that they’re actually working hard, and some of the magic in any physical performance is diminished by the obviousness of the effort.
I felt defensive for him after I read the profile. As I remember, nobody claimed he mistreated them or was an asshole. If we blame him for his process, we must also blame his mentor, Daniel Day-Lewis for his well-known similiar process, the one that’s earned him three Oscars and a reputation as one of the greatest living actors. Michelle Williams let him stay at her place for a few years, so he must not have been a bad guest. And Succession is a comedy but it’s also a searing emotional drama and tragedy (otherwise we wouldn’t be talking about it this much), and Strong’s Kendall Roy is the main reason for that. He’s in a Chekhov piece effectively.
To be fair, a lot of people do hate Daniel Day-Lewis for his process.
Do they? Had no idea. PS—my book club will be reading your handle’s source material next year. It’s been ages since I read it, but a bold choice for our group given the material.
I mean, I think it mostly boils down to, people find method acting a little over the top and DDL is (in)famously the most method of method actors. (See, for instance, https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/daniel-day-lewis-10-craziest-method-acting-stories/.)It’s funny—I also reread the novel recently because I felt like I should know it better given that I was basing my screen name off of it. I’m not always a Gabriel Garcia Marquez fan, but I do like that one quite a bit.
Yep. Liam Neeson among them, famously.I have no doubt that DDL is a bit…much.
Those people are assholes.
It feels like there’s been a flattening from “some actors have used method acting as an excuse to abuse people” into “method actors abuse people”.
This is not the case, and the dividends of Strong’s approach seem pretty obvious, because his performance as Kendall has been phenomenal.
I don’t know if you could call it “abuse”, but I definitely think he uses method acting as a power move:“Between takes of the trial scenes, in which the Yippies mock Judge Julius Hoffman, played by Frank Langella, Strong would read aloud from Langella’s memoir in silly voices, and he put a remote-controlled fart machine below the judge’s chair. “Every once in a while, I’d say, ‘Great. Let’s do it again, and this time, Jeremy, maybe don’t play the kazoo in the middle of Frank Langella’s monologue,’ ” Sorkin said.”Frank Langella’s a dedicated, professional actor himself; I’m sure he didn’t need that level of “help” getting into the Judge’s mindset. Therefore, it was most likely a way for Strong to impose his will on his co-workers. I can see where that would irritate people.
Same. I felt respect because this is a guy who has wholeheartedly pursued his passion his entire adult life. How many of us can say that?
I think the tolerance for this type of behavior from an actor is different now than it was for Daniel Day-Lewis when he was starting out. These articles have explained to me why Strong isn’t in more movies in spite of being a very good actor- it’s just not worth the trouble. Cox is right in that Strong is hurting himself, too, by doing all of this. It’s the creative equivalent of toxic hustle culture- a total loss of work/life balance. And it’s something that there are so many amazing actors in Succession all turning in performances just as good as Strong’s, but they’re not putting themselves or anyone else through hell to do it. I don’t even think Strong’s an asshole. I just feel bad for him that he’s so committed to this process which seems overall detrimental.
The tolerance back in the day still only extended as far as how much DDL could bring to a production. DDL was supposed to be a day player on a TV show my Dad worked on and I don’t think they ended up using his scenes, he just wasn’t the sort of actor who could come in on a day, play a character and get it done. If you have to immerse yourself in a role you do to an extent limit the breadth of what you can do as an actor. They’re making that choice though, it kinda becomes make or break. For every DDL or Jeremy Strong there’s likely 10 times as many unnecessful oddballs with their obsessively crafted one man shows.
However yeah despite the quality of acting on Succession Strong’sperformance has been often lauded above others on the show. Whether or not it’s worth it is another matter, it’s up to him and he seems to be happy to have gone down this path – his reputation is out there – people will hire him if they want what he brings to the table.
it’s interesting to contrast it with Matthew Macfayden who has said he actively misses playing Tom during breaks and that he really enjoys himself. And, really, if you watch Pride & Prejudice and then watch Succession, it’s almost hard to believe it’s the same actor. But I could be biased because Tom is my favorite character on the show.
He seems like a LOT. Like, a LOT. But I am with you. Based on what I read on the profile, it seems like his coworkers have to worry more about straining their eyes (thanks to all the rolling) than being abused or mistreated by him.
He did ask a stunt coordinator to tear gas him (and by extension a bunch of extras) so he could cry better. Other than that, whatever. Though I’d get fired from my jobs if I did shit like jump off high places when I didn’t need to there, they don’t want that insurance risk.
It’s this twitter era of people needing famous people to be friendly and lovely.
Sure some are genuinely that, some are good at acting and thus give the impression they might be that in public appearances, some have an excellent media team who create said impression on twitter. Some, just get on with what they’re doing and don’t care..
Weird people who take themselves too seriously and see the world differently often make excellent art. Acting specifically that requires this desire to do your weird creative thing in front of people, often live. You’re gonna get some oddballs. So far we’ve no record of Jeremy Strong assaulting people, sexually harassing them or whatnot. Jeremy Strong creates something I enjoy, i’m happy to leave it at that.
I’ve met a fair few acting people. Experiences were mixed. No-one was a bad person or anything but yeah, mostly not people i’d choose to spend time with. Whether I enjoyed hanging out with them had absolutely 0 relation to whether or not they had acted well in things. It’s like criticising a television show for not smelling good.
I mentioned this in the episode review, but the New Yorker profile is a shining example of a specific passive aggressive profiling tactic you use when you really don’t like the person you’re writing about but want to preserve a veneer of objectivity: you just let them talk and then find a way to include every ridiculous soundbite that comes out of their mouth instead of being more selective. (Or you specifically pick the worst quotes.) The NYT Vows column used to do this quite a bit, and it was always hilarious.there was a similar Guardian profile earlier in the year with similar quotes/info that made Strong seem a bit more sympathetic. Partly because it didn’t include a lot of passive aggressive quotes from coworkers. But it also included far fewer Strong quotes. You can get a clear sense of the way he speaks—his intensity and self-seriousness—from just a few quotes, you really don’t need them all.
I’d certainly say there’s selective editing, but that’s also why I’d not really rely on other articles to debunk. I’ve also seen interviews in which other actors are commenting on method acting styles and those could all very easily be interpreted as shade, but I really have no idea at all.
I do know that I dislike method actors intensely and I think less of him for it, though I also think his performance isn’t poor by any stretch of the imagination. I just think he’s perfectly on par with others. I actually think MacFadyen acted circles around him in the “I’ve seen you get fucked” scene, though.
I kind of liked the Strong article, but the New Yorker does make some questionable choices. They had the WASPiest guy in the world profile Donald Glover and the result was weird and queasy. Things are shifting culturally to the extent that I think if it was coming out now, only a handful of years later, they would assign a different writer and it would be a more flattering and interesting portrait.
I don’t get the glib “apparently doesn’t know he’s in a comedy” take here, because it’s totally in the Fleabag school of funny dramas as opposed to really being a comedy. Curb and Vice Principals (VP especially, what???) are just not the right comparisons.
Like, you can read a book with a ton of laugh-out-loud funny bits (I’m thinking of the priest falling in love with the rat in Thomas Pynchon’s V.) but people won’t call it a comedy book, which is a label that seems to be reserved for Douglas Adams. I’m not sure why we can’t do the same thing for TV shows.
I definitely wouldn’t call it a big own if he doesn’t think of it that way. I think it’s absolutely a very dark comedy and that’s literally what hooked me/why I keep watching (I really could not care less about another show about rich people problems otherwise, honestly) but it’s SO dark and what requires it to be dark is pure sincerity from the actors themselves. Strong playing this dead-on is what makes it funny, same with all the others.
It’s SO goddamn funny. I just can’t call it a comedy given how tense and sad any given episode is, especially when the credit start to roll. Like, what’s the difference in how you feel at the end of a Succession episode vs a Veep episode? Veep had pathos, but the characters didn’t get under your skin.
And there’s an easy way to figure this out: Awards season. Which categories are Succession nominated in? They aren’t the comedies.
The Academy defines “comedy” as a TV show the episodes of which are more than 15 minutes but less than 31 minutes. There is a loophole, whereby dramas (shows more than 30 minutes but less than 76 minutes) can ask for special dispensation to compete as comedies, but if they do so and don’t get awards in that category then they’re forbidden from then switching back to drama (whereas if they compete as dramas and realise they’re not doing well, they can always petition to switch to comedy). So it’s risky, and there’s no guarantee the Academy would allow the exception anyway. So if a show that runs over 30 minutes feels that it has any chance to be competitive in the drama category, it’s understandable that it chooses to stay and compete there, rather than roll all the dice on trying to compete as a comedy (which is less prestigious anyway)… whether or not the makers or the audience consider it comedic in style.
Yes. It was good awards shows are around or I never would have known The Martian was a comedy.
…Fleabag is unambiguously an outright comedy. I can understand how people might not get that about Succession, but Fleabag!?
I would listen to arguments for Fleabag being a comedy. I just disagree that there’s no conversation to be had there. I think TV uses “comedy” as a genre to silo works that have a sense of humor in a way that other media doesn’t.Fleabag is my go-to example because I would put it up there with Sopranos / Wire / etc on the all-time lists, but I tend to hear it discussed as “this hilarious British show” which is simultaneously an accurate and woefully inadequate description.
So all I really mean to say is that “Hurr hurr hurr Strong thinks it’s not a comedy” strikes me as dunking on someone for a pretty defensible take. In the same spirit, if someone (especially Kieran Culken) wants to call it a comedy, I’m not going to yuck anyone’s yum.
I don’t think I understand. Why is it wrong to describe a comedy show as hilarious? As you say, it’s accurate. Obviously, it’s “inadequate” in the same way that any four-word description is inadequate, but no more so than any other such description. Likewise if someone described The Wire as “this thrilling American show”, that would be woefully inadequate too – for one thing, it wouldn’t mention that The Wire is hilarious (I wouldn’t call it a comedy, but it’s funnier than a lot of comedies are; it’s probably funnier than Succession, which is a comedy). Why single out hilarity as the thing that shouldn’t be mentioned about a show? “Comedy” only “siloes” a work if you think there’s something wrong, or limited, about being a comedy – otherwise it’s just a description!I also don’t agree in the comparison to other media – funny novels are described as comedies all the time, including great and serious novels. If I seach for “comic novel” on google, its suggestions include Catch-22, Lucky Jim, The Third Policeman, Cold Comfort Farm, A Confederacy of Dunces, Tristram Shandy and Tom Jones. The Guardian’s must-read comedy novels include works by both Amises, Beckett, Bellow, Bennett, Cervantes, Dickens, Diderot, Roddy Doyle, Goncharov, Christopher Isherwood and James Joyce (I didn’t read beyond ‘J’…). Waterstone’s list of the best comic novels includes some of the most acclaimed novels of recent times, like ‘A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian’ and ‘White Teeth’ – as well as Anthony Burgess, Philip Roth, Michael Chabon, Hunter S Thompson, and Evelyn Waugh. I don’t see what’s so objectionable about including ‘Succession’ or ‘Fleabag’ among that company!
Hey, like I said, if it’s a comedy to someone else, if that’s how they experience it, who am I to say their categorization is wrong? All subjective.
It sounds like you do get my point, in a way, because your Wire example is a good one. Another analogous “inadequate label” would be calling it a cop show in Baltimore. It is that, but it’s so much more. It’s a window into the human condition. It’s “true” or “honest” in a way that Law and Order is not.That’s where I’m coming from with Fleabag. I’m not dismissing comedy as a form of storytelling. It’s just that most funny British shows aren’t Fleabag. Fleabag is “true” in a way that, say, Toast of London is not. Toast of London is good! It’s funny. Fleabag is sublime because while it’s funny, at its heart it’s about learning not to hate oneself for past sins, or how to love someone else when you struggle to love yourself. Its core is a dramatic story of someone coming back to life.tl;dr genre is a construct and Netflix should have no categories 😉
Again, all subjective. Embedding links sucks on Kinja, but I’m thinking of the SNL “Funny New Comedy” sketch.
But the Wire IS a cop show set in Baltimore. If someone puts it on a list of cop shows, or a list of shows set in Baltimore, we shouldn’t exasperatedly say “no, it’s not a cop show, it’s a window into the human condition!” – because fine, put it on the ‘windows into the human condition shows’ list, sure, but don’t take it off the cop show list.Likewise, just because a show is good shouldn’t be a reason to stop calling it a comedy![on Strong, incidentally: I don’t think people think he’s an idiot for not realising that Succession is a comedy; I think it’s just that the fact he doesn’t realise it’s a comedy is so 100% deadpan Kendall Roy that the erasure of the ironic gap between actor and character is itself humorous.][as someone who grew up reading SF&F, this conversation gives me flashbacks to all the “I don’t write genre novels, I write serious novels about the human condition!” authors…]
If you haven’t already read Michael Chabon’s “Maps and Legends,” check it out! Great book, essentially a treatise arguing to put aside the genre vs “real literature” nonsense.I suppose I don’t see comedy as a genre like SF or westerns or mystery novels. I see it as classification of what the aim of the work is.
And again, just subjective! End of the day, I just don’t think a show that makes me feel the depth of sadness that I do for each of these broken people is a comedy. But god knows I’m laughing my ass off.
This. People seem to confuse “funny movie/TV show” with “comedy.” Is the MCU all comedies?People are claiming Breaking Bad was a comedy! Almost every kind of successful media will have moments that are funny, but that doesn’t make them comedies.And comedies have serious and dramatic parts too, but that doesn’t make them dramas. Was Fresh Prince a drama because of the “How come he don’t want me?” scene?
I’d like to think I’d react to him like Brian Cox does, but I absolutely would react to him like Kieran Culkin does.
I want him to do a movie with Harrison Ford just so I can imagine Ford’s reaction. Strong sits cross-legged on the floor of a pitch dark trailer listening to Sigur Ros. He silently pulls a page out of the script, scrawls the word “MOTHER” on it a dozen times in marker, and then tears it into a dozen pieces. As he repeats the process with the next page, the trailer door opens flooding the room with sunlight and weed smoke. Strong doesn’t flinch. Harrison Ford enters the trailer and says, “Hey, kid. You wanna run some lines to warm up?”
Strong doesn’t look up. “No thank you. I’m busy.”
Ford waits a beat, shrugs, and says. “Alright see ya out there.” and turns to leave. He pauses and turns back and asks, “You, uhh, you know this is make believe, right?”
I get the sense Cox respects Strong’s actual acting work and just thinks all the rest of the bullshit is unnecessary. Cox is the kind of guy who’s earned the right to get both great acting to act opposite, as well as never being into the bullshit.
I am vaguely entertained at the idea that I just read an article about an article, but the piece in question was such an interesting read as a technique in profiling that I think this turducken gets away with it (is my comment the turkey here?).
He sounds absolutely insufferable.
“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.”
“When I told Strong that I, too, thought of the show as a dark comedy, he looked at me with incomprehension and asked, ‘In the sense that, like, Chekhov is comedy?”“When Downey, Jr., shot a funeral scene, Strong paced around the set weeping loudly, even though he wasn’t called that day.”
“I want every scene to feel like I’m encountering a bear in the woods”
Ooh boy this guy is a lot
This simultaneously makes me respect him a lot more and also think he’s kind of delusionally narcissistic.
He’s giving a hell of a performance in this role so at least his ridiculous methodology isn’t a complete waste of time.
But also get over yourself, dude. You get paid to play pretend.
Did you read the full New Yorker piece? The writer references a great Laurence Olivier anecdote that is very apropos to your point. Apparently, when he starred alongside Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man, Hoffman partied for three days straight so that he would look sleep deprived in a scene that called for it. Olivier asked him, “My dear boy, why don’t you try acting?”
Yes I did. That’s one of my favorite jerk-off method actor stories. It’s like wannabe guitarists who think they have to do a pants-shitting amount of coke to correctly play Beast of Burden. Just learn the song, friend.
Dear God, it seems as though they stumbled upon the exact right actor to play Kendall, because he’s essentially Kendall with a few less commas and zeroes in his bank account, but with more awards on the mantelpiece
Also maybe without the addictions and untreated bipolar disorder? Too soon to tell.
The New Yorker piece mentions that he has at times been actually inebriated when he’s done some of the “Kendall falls off the wagon” scenes.
thank you for putting up with what i will not.if these are real quotes, your boy is an A-grade bell-end.insert ‘it’s called acting’ meme and get a real fucking job
It’s a well written article that makes good use of the bonkers quotes and he is great in that role probably in part because he doesn’t realize that he’s a very silly man.
god fucking dammit.
“I don’t particularly think ease or even accord are virtues in creative
work, and sometimes there must even be room for necessary roughness,
within the boundaries dictated by the work,” Strong said.
i’ll be over here throwing up because a knob tried to justify their paycheque.
The whole article is kind of remarkably uncomfortable in that his co-stars on succession seem to not particularly like his level of unnecessary intensity.
Read this whole interview thinking the same thing. I would hate this man and his misguided self-seriousness.
It at least makes me wonder if he thought he was really rapping in that cringey birthday party episode.
Some cast members wonder if Strong even knows he’s on a comedy. Kiernan Culkin told New Yorker writer Michael Schulman, “After the first season, he said something to me like, ‘I’m worried that people might think that the show is a comedy.’ And I said, ‘I think the show is a comedy.’ He thought I was kidding.”Based on their characters and storylines in the first season, and the way the show’s tone alternates between ridiculousness and seriousness, I don’t think this reflects badly on either actor.
Yes! Of course the person playing Roman should approach it as a comedy. Of course the person playing Ken should approach it as a drama. (Incidentally, would love to have seen Strong’s tryout for Roman!)
“My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”- Laurence Olivier
To his credit, I forget sometimes that it’s a comedy
It’s always felt to me like actors who use the method process, are somehow trying to make the acting feel like, “real work.” For some reason it always came iff like they’re ashamed of their job in comparison to the rest of the world, so this is a way to kind of do real labor. Brian Cox more-or-less makes that point in the article. I’ve always wondered thiugh, if method actors simply lack a base level of empathy, to turn it on, and then back off, when playing characters. Like maybe they just lack an understanding of how people in the real world, interact with each other, so they need a lot of time and prep to practice the things you simply learn by living a normal life.
There’s probably an attraction to living in heightened state, also to temporary self-erasure. The point about empathy is interesting–like that’s the only way some people could experience it, maybe.
Yeah, I can imagine it is fulfilling to get lost in the work. I think we all can somewhat relate to that. But the comment that bothers me, is the one where he talked about accord not being a virtue in creative work. Television is an inherently collaborative medium. It’s not just his performance that makes Kendall work. The way the other actors respond and approach him, is important, as well as the work of editors, camera people, and the directorI just wonder if someone with that kind of approach, is missing opportunities to make the work the best it can be, by closing off, and focusing entirely on themselves. I’m not an actor tho, so Maybe I am wrong, but i did end up in design work, which is also collaborative, and there is some overlap.
I’ve greatly enjoyed his work over many projects (thought he was particularly sharp in THE BIG SHORT). Having said that, this sounded as insufferable as what I assume a Kendall Roy interview might.
Maybe that’s the point and the joke’s on us.
Yes, I have a feeling that the whole thing is a meta-method acting thing, like a Joaquin Phoenix rapping documentary type deal.
That’s “G”ood, I guess.
Brian Cox’s vibe towards Strong has a whiff of the alleged exchange between Olivier and Dustin Hoffman on Marathon Man when Hoffman was depriving himself of sleep like his character (“Babe” LOL) and Olivier told him “why don’t you try acting?” even the old guys realize after a while it’s all a goof.
Lol, the profile literally brings up that exact anecdote!
The article makes this exact reference.
“Succession” can be really funny but it isn’t played or structured for delivering laughs and calling it a comedy seems a bit glib. On television “comedy” conjures up sitcom pacing and relentless jokes at the expense of story. I was two episodes in before I even realized it was OK to laugh at some of the awfulness going on. David Chase compared “The Sopranos” to “The Simpsons” and even “Downton Abbey” could be hilarious.
I’ve always thought someone should dub laugh tracks over succession, that’s how funny I think it is and can be (often even when it’s awful). But it’s a simple rule of thumb: What is the nature of the payoff week in and week out? Are they attempting a comedic payoff, where all the elements of the story come together in a comedic way (which will often mean attempting a tidy conclusion). Or is it a dramatic payoff, i.e. leaving you not laughing, but sad/shocked/worried, and importantly, wondering what’s next? As funny as every episode of succession is throughout, it has never ended with anything approaching a comedic payoff. That’s not the structure of the show, and that’s what makes it a drama, if we have to categorize (or a dark comedy, I guess).
“The Sopranos” is hilarious.
My issue is that overwhelmingly method acting is something only men can get away with. I think Meryl Streep talked about how when you have children and are a woman you can’t really bring home your characters like that. So when a man tells us he is a method actor he is basically saying he doesn’t help with the kids at home. I have no idea if Strong has children but lets hope not.
He has 3 young ones. The New Yorker article actually says he manages to turn off the method acting when he’s with them, so that’s something.
Not sure I totally believe him but at least he is aware that is something he needs to do.
I think he just stays in character on set even if he’s not in a scene. Maybe that’s what he needs so that he can do his best work. I haven’t heard one word about him being rude or abusive. I wonder if anyone who worked with him on that Chicago 7 movie had a problem with him staying in character to play Jerry Rubin.
I’m gonna go on record here and say that it’s absolutely fine for actors to be self-important but un-self-aware kooks who annoy their costars and don’t quite understand the intent behind the material
So this article is that someone who is really good at their job, is getting shit because some snarky people in the media don’t like difficult people anymore.
They’re also getting shit for being a pain in the ass coworker.
So what? If it gets the job done.
I agree with him about how, for Ken, this show’s not a comedy, and I think if he changed anything about how he approached the role it would make it worse.
Succession is probably better described as a satire, which is loosely under the overall comedy genre. But notice how it hasn’t fallen into the comedy category in the Golden Globe nominations.
It’s a particularly American disease, I think, this inability to separate yourself off while you’re doing the job. HAH! GOLD!On a personal note, “method” actors are almost unilaterally assholes.
That’s why I watch their shows instead of hanging out with them. Strong is fantastic on the show.
I’m a fan of the show, so yeah.
The funny thing is I can totally see Strong reading this comment section just like Kendall would.
Strong is fantastic as Kendall. Taking Art deeply seriously is good and better than either being too scared or too self conscious or too cynical to commit and pretension is simply a failure to achieve pure excellence. He rocks.
I broke down and read the article…holy fucking shit, he actually says “doing the work” (about acting), uses the terms “patois” and “complete vessel” and “troupe”, the “high stakes” of acting, and his “monk-life solemnity” when it comes to acting…but then the ill-advised pranks on Frank Langella while shooting…could he be on the spectrum? whatever, this guy is a pill.
That article read like a dark comedy that would run on HBO. I’ve already fancast Ed Norton in the role of Jeremy Strong.
Strong’s performance is one of my favorite things about Succession, but after reading this article, I’m afraid they might actually kill off Kendall at the end of this season in order not to have to deal with his “process” anymore.
If the show concludes (no idea when that is, but I’d BET it’s already plotted out) with grim ends for its main characters—heart attacks or strokes, overdoses, jail terms, assassins, etc—you know, the kinds of things we’ve learned to expect in prestige acting series—I’m coming back to this article to gloat.
“Free rein” not “free reign”
It’s a berry easy mistake to make.
The cast of this show is fantastic. I don’t care how he gets his performance across…unless he does the Jared Leto thing. That guy is fucking wacko.
When Brian Cox discusses the “American disease” of actors who can’t exit their roles when the camera is off, you just know the face in his mind is Jared Leto.