Jeremy Strong and his director James Gray took risks and made a mess to findArmageddon Time.
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Strongs epochal, ongoing turn as Kendall Roy onSuccessionisnt a Gray protagonist, but he could easily be one.
More appropriately, Strong is known for his painstaking preparation for and serious commitment to his roles.
We talk aboutArmageddon Timeand what it says about Grays life and the country then and now.
But, well, we talk about other stuff, too.
Armageddon Timefeels more understated and small-scale than your other films set in New York.
Those films felt more outwardly ambitious, whereas this one feels like a miniature.
Im too close to it still.
Maybe I made a mistake, I dont know.
Hitchcock used to say that movies were life with the boring parts cut out.
I always tried to approach it that way in the other films.
But here, I felt that to get more specific was the coin of the realm.
:Whats that from?
J.S.:T.S.
I think its inFour Quartets.
For me, its a sort of decoder ring for the movie.
Its not just,Now, Im going to excavate my personal history.
Its a lens through which to tell a very big story, a very universal story.
The story was told, warts and all.
It wasnt about how special I am or my parents were.
I wasnt a beautiful person.
But the system itself deserves a kind of reckoning.
Race and class are intermingled.
The family in the film has a vivid memory of their own horrific persecution for being Jewish.
:you’re able to be the oppressor and the oppressed at the same time.
It becomes a kind of Gordian knot.
Look, its very hard to talk about this because it sounds self-aggrandizing.
And I myself had not thought enough about it.
I mean, obviously, I was aware of this idea.
But I had not realized the extent of it.
Maybe this means Im stupid.
I still live, in some ways, cognitively, in 1993 or something.
But we all do.
People who are with it in 2022 will be out to lunch in 2052.
Ive tried to do that.
But you will fail.
Thats part of what the movies about: The kid is a failure.
The kid fails and learns only to keep trying.
:You said something about miniature.
It made me think of one of the first things James and I did together.
:Its so weird that you would mention that.
Originally, our opening shot was very elaborate.
But it wasnt good because it felt pompous and off-kilter it was too Leni Riefenstahl.
In the end, I used a piece of footage from Flushing Meadows Park.
I loved how cosmic it felt with the wind blowing those trees and the clouds.
Jeremy, you came onto the film fairly late, after Oscar Isaac had to drop out.
Jamess father was still alive at the time.
What kind of research were you able to do?J.S.
:Well, I wanted to know what he sounded like.
He was going to see his father for brunch the next morning.
So I had him record him.
I didnt want to just guess.
I wanted to get it right.
What felt like the most perilous moment for me was the night before they started shooting.
I had learned a Yiddish camp song that Jamess dad used to do for his kids.
Georgia, Jamess daughter, taught it to me, and I recorded it.
I learned it thinking maybe thered be a place for it.
There wasnt, but it was important for me to just have in me.
So I recorded that camp song on a voice note and texted it to James the night before.
I thought,Oh, Im going to get fired.
But I think if you dont feel like you might get fired sometimes, maybe youre not risking enough.
:I thought it was incredibly funny when I heard it.
Would you like to hear it?
:I cant believe you remember that.
My dad went to this Jewish summer camp in the Catskills in the late 1940s.
He used to recite that to us.
Some of its Yiddish, some of its nonsense, like Charlie Chaplin used to sing it.
When he did that for my kids, they loved it so much, they committed it to memory.
Its actually one of the only real tangible things they remember about him now.
James, Jeremy was familiar with your work.
Were you familiar with his when you cast him?J.G.:No.
My wife was like, This guys great.
You have to see the show.
The show is great.
Shes much more current than I am.
So I did my homework.
I watched the first season ofSuccession.
I know theres an ocean of fantastic TV.
My kids, theyre always like, How come you havent seen this or that?
Its not out of snobbery.
I want to be an expert in old movies.
I watch an old movie every night.
A lot of studio system stuff.
It doesnt even matter if its good.
Did you know that Jeremy was this thorough an actor?J.G.
Once I watchedSuccession, I did a little bit of homework.
So I had been primed.
Heres the thing: I love that.
I dont consider that difficult.
Difficult for me is you dont show up on time.
Or you dont remember your lines.
Or youre super-argumentative and get in the way of the process.
Difficult is not you asking me a lot of questions about the character.
Why is Joaquin Phoenix difficult?
Hes difficult in the best way.
You want that difficult.
What is that makes Joaquin difficult?J.G.
Theyre on the screen, and their emotional honesty is paramount.
So I say to myself and to others, In the end, they have to win the arguments.
Its unbelievably difficult to act brilliantly in something.
He didnt want to reveal himself there.
You know, some people just roll their eyes at that.
But actors need to be protected and loved.
Jeremy, youve already been through the wringer on this.
ThatNew Yorkerprofilehelped create this image of you as a difficult actor.
So, you use yourself.
You use everything you’re free to in your arsenal.
Some of it is imagination.
Some of it is yourself.
:What I will say is there is a diminution.
Youre fighting the tide of a ferocious anti-craft movement.
The idea of having studied with Stella Adler or Sanford Meisner or Lee Strasberg is a joke now.
People think that writing scripts and acting is much easier than other professions.
Ive never seen anything like it.
Its like your dentist is sitting there working on your teeth: I wrote a script.
Its like, What are you talking about?
Focus on the filling.
Theres something about the movies and acting in the movies, in particular.
We can identify with it so clearly, and it seems so accessible to us.
Im gonna try my hand at acting!
Ease of access has brought on a disrespect for craft.
This does make me wonder: Why are we so fascinated by actors and their processes?J.S.
I think what you see with great actors is something actually happening in that instant.
No one really knows how or where that comes from.
We have a desire to maybe understand it and deconstruct it or take it down.
When you see Tony Hopkins inThe Fatherand he says, Im losing all my leaves.
- Its what Robert Duvall calls an all-universe moment.
Its why Dustin Hoffman inMidnight Cowboyhas Ratso right on the edge.
- It could be a terrible performance.
Oh, but its brilliant.
Of course, its amazing.
You know that old anecdote, which I think was mentioned in thatNew Yorkerpiece.
My dear boy, why dont you try acting?
Laurence Olivier saying that to Hoffman while shootingMarathon Man.
Its funny because they actually were apparently pretty close.
Also, whats funny is that I would take Ratso Rizzo over any Olivier film performance.
- Hoffman understood film acting maybe better than Olivier did.
I dont think thats heresy.
Ratso is almost a terrible performance.
Thats the risk you have to take.
Whats the most surprising thing youve seen an actor do?J.G.
And Joaquin accuses her and says, You stole.
I saw you take the money.
And he called an off-camera actor, Dagmara Dominczyk.
In the middle of the take, he just screamed, Belva!
She just walked into the middle of the take, and she actually did something great.
When he said, What do you say to her?
Dagmara went up to Marion and kissed her, which was an incredible choice.
I didnt know it was coming, and she didnt.
We could barely accommodate for it, but I used it.
And he must have lit a dozen matches and spent maybe a minute of time until it lit.
Because thats what youre doing, pursuing a need.
That crystallized something for me.
Its a little thing, but I found it so revelatory.
He just took the time that he needed to take because he wanted to light a cigarette.
Its not like youre playacting lighting a cigarette, youre lighting a cigarette.
And the difference in those two things is everything.
We were a low-budget movie, so we only had two breakaway doors.
The first door broke down right away, almost when I touched it.
You need that for the scene to build.
So the first take was useless, and then they put a new door in.
But the new door was secured so well that it wouldnt break down.
It just wouldnt break down.
But James didnt call, Cut.
I wasnt thinking consciously about Phil Hoffman and the cigarette, but I think it had stayed with me.
That is the scene thats in the movie.
- Like something out ofThe Shining.J.G.
You got exactly the direction I gave cinematographer Darius Khondji.
I said to this moment, its like a horror movie.
We were thinking of bothThe ShiningandMarathon Man.
Hes a boiler repairman.
That kind of metaphor was really powerful for me.
I mean, talk aboutThe Shining.
Up there at the Overlook: The boiler, its dysregulated, its going to blow.
I think most of us feel that sometimes, that pressurization.
Thats the thing about the film.
:I think its an understated movie, but I also think the stakes are extremely high.
He wants them to survive.
He has to choose their survival over the survival of this other boy.
I think that is a cataclysmic choice for him but a necessary choice for him.
Hes acknowledging and naming these failures without prescribing an easy answer to these things.
The film has to do all that in a delicate way.
The scene is so brief that its as if the film is acknowledging its own limitations.J.G.
Thats the point of it.
Every work of art is limited.
Look, for example, atRaging Bulland Cathy Moriarty as Vickie.
Its not told from her point of view.
It couldnt be told from her point of view.
The movie says, This is the patriarchy and what it does to her.
The limitation becomes part of the acknowledged profundity of the work.
I remember the first time I sawRaging Bullin a theater.
It was at the Sutton on 57th Street.
I was very young.
I remember the reaction of some of the women in the audience.
It was a very unpleasant experience for them.
I cannot show you more.
If I made his story, itd be fake, faker than fake.
Because I dont know what his life was like.
I would be imagining it completely.
The flash cuts to Johnnys grandmother its not a Syd Field maneuver because it breaks point of view.
But that doesnt meaneverywork of art needs to haveallvoices in it.
That is not possible.
If you venture to do that, you have what I would call a mess.
James, youve been more open recently about the difficulties you had onAd Astra.
- Why did they force these changes on you?J.G.
It was a kind of a perfect storm.
The birthing of it was so screwed up for reasons that had nothing to do with the movie.
That was a proud studio at Twentieth Century Fox, and its gone.
And then you have the Disney group, and thats a very different M.O.
So it was completely screwed up on a corporate level.
I did not have final cut, so I could not say, I dont like it.
Thats the way it is.
And when people start coming up to you and saying, Whyd you do all that stupid voice-over?
and you didnt do it, thats a very frustrating experience.
But its not like I want people to hate the movie.
Theres a lot Im very proud of in the movie.
But hadnt people tried to mess with your movies before?
Youd gone to war against Harvey Weinstein onThe Immigrant.
And you won that war.
- Maybe it was a Pyrrhic victory because Weinstein didnt promoteThe Immigrant.J.G.
But I had final cut.
And I remember saying, Okay.
you’re free to do that.
Im not doing what you want me to do to it.
This was an act of complete insanity on my part.
Ive had directors call me in tears, How did you get your film released?
Because my own movie is still on the shelf.
I mean, Ive been public about what Harvey wanted to do.
Kind of a combination ofTitanicandSound of Music.
He hated the last shot.
Ill never forget this.
He was in the editing room.
He called me up, and he said, My daughter was born this morning.
So I said, Oh, congratulations!
Dont you congratulate me!
Im in the editing room working onyourmovie!
I said, Well, I didnt ask you to do that.
He goes, Fuck you!
Im doing this for you.
No, youre not; youre doing this for you.
Youre trying to make a film.
Youre trying to be a frustrated director right now.
I remember him saying this.
Thats what he said!
So he then showed me what he did.
He sent it to me.
It was 88 minutes.
It was completely incoherent.
It had this voice-over all over it.
It was, like,insane.
- Is there any chance we might see a directors cut ofAd Astra?J.G.
Im going to need help.
Its a lot of money to do it, probably about 300,000 bucks.
The question really is this: Is there a way to monetize it?
I would love to do it different.
The directors cut is 12 minutes shorter, by the way.
When is the directors cut shorter than the released version?
But there is somehow more Ruth Negga and more Donald Sutherland in it.
There are other things that are much shorter.
But Id love to do it.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
