Will Harrison has a few people to thank for the whirlwind first two years of his career — the ones who inspired his onscreen characters. Since breaking out in 2023’s Daisy Jones & The Six (which in itself was modeled after the real-life drama of the members of Fleetwood Mac), he’s played the John Wilkes Booth accomplice David Herold in Manhunt, folk singer Bobby Neuwirth in A Complete Unknown, and the eldest son of the now-infamous family central to Hulu‘s Murdaugh: Death in the Family. Now, he’s also finishing up a lauded run on Broadway in Punch where Harrison stars as the (real life, of course) Jacob Dunne, a young man who accidentally killed a fellow patron in a bar fight after delivering a single blow.
“When you play real people, the question of whether they want the thing to be made or not, and whether you talk to them beforehand or not, can become a weird part of the process,” says Harrison over Zoom from New York. “But Punch was created with the characters’ blessing and input, and that lifts a lot of the pressure off.”
The play takes place in Nottingham, England, where the fatal event took place in 2011. Dunne still lives nearby, as do the parents of the late James Hodgkinson (Punch follows their restorative justice work with Dunne), and Harrison was able to travel to the UK ahead of the Broadway run. “I got to spend the day with Jacob, which was amazing, and getting that time with him gave me the freedom to really go for it onstage,” he says.
Sam Robards, Vicki Clark, Camilla Cano-Flavia and Will Harrison in Manhattan Theatre Clubs production of Punch, written by James Graham directed by Adam Penford.
Matthew Murphy
Has Jacob Dunne seen this staging of the show? I know it’s playing on the West End as well.
He was at the West End opening and got to spend time with the cast, but he can’t travel to the U.S. because of his status as a convicted felon. It’s really unfortunate and I so wish he could be there, but it’s a tough thing to get around.
I assume you are not in communication with Buster Murdaugh.
No. (Laughs.) I did shy away from direct contact there.
How do you build a character when you’re playing a real person you don’t want to meet?
There’s lots of references online. Obviously, it was a huge story and there’s no shortage of things to look at. But you can do all the research you want, talk to as many people as you can, and at the of the day, you have to trust the fact that the people who are directing and producing the project like your version of the person. I didn’t do a lot of research on Buster before my audition, I just did the role and they said, “Oh, that’s our version of this guy.” The same thing happened with A Complete Unknown [playing Bob Neuwirth].
Do you have to like, or find empathy for, someone like Buster Murdaugh in order to play him?
I certainly don’t have to like the person, and I don’t have to agree with them. But I do have to understand why they did things. Through that, you develop empathy. Regardless of an action being bad or not, there’s usually an explanation. There’s always a why. You sort of start to feel a little protective of them, even, and you have to shake that off.
The bulk of the story in Punch is dedicated to offering that “why,” and helping the audience find empathy with a kid who killed another kid. But what was your “why” for Murdaugh?
I was really focused on the storyline, which is that he’s been really outside of what happened to his family. He was away at school when the murders happened. I’m excited for the back half of the show to come out [in November] because Buster becomes a lens for just how tragic this event was. He’s the only person who was close to this event that we can view things through, and he’s conflicted and devastated. This story was really salacious and crazy, but to actually consider what it would be like to experience something like it is insane.
Did you grow up around any families like them, with that particular sort of privilege and influence?
Well, I grew up in liberal east coast towns, so any version of that was more tame and sugarcoated than it is in the south. But I was in the country, so there was hunting and ATVs and dirt bikes that all the boys were doing. We took a trip to Hampton, South Carolina while we were filming, just so we could get a sense of it, and it’s literally an intersection. That’s it. And the jurisdiction of this family, the region that their power covered, was much larger.
Mina Sundwall, Will Harrison, Jason Clarke, Patricia Arquette and Johnny Berchtold in Murdaugh: Death in the Family.
Disney/Daniel Delgado Jr.
Can you tell me how you came into the role for Punch? Was a Broadway play on your to-do list?
This just came into my inbox as an audition. I wasn’t actively searching for a Broadway play, but the theater is how I got into acting, it’s how most young people do, and it really centers me and gives me an ownership of the work more than film or TV. I’m really grateful to James and Adam [the writer and director] for insisting on reading people for these roles. The first tape I sent in was for the opening monologue when Jacob is jacked up on coke and he’s running around town — I put my entire couch in the frame and was jumping on it. I got a note along with the callback sides, though, that said “maybe a little less flouncing.”
You’re doing the Broadway eight-shows-a-week routine, and you’re also in almost every second of the play. How did you prepare?
I came in in less than ideal shape to do such a physical show, so I had to spring into action for that realm. My whole day, and my whole life, has been about conserving energy for the show — how much can I do and still have enough to get through the show? Then it takes me at least two full hours to wind down from it afterwards.
How did the Nottingham, England accent treat you?
I was obsessed with British media growing up — In Bruges and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Trainspotting. So I was really excited to get into that dialect. A lot of the team is from Nottingham: our playwright, our movement director. So they’re speaking in that accent while giving you notes. I’m not an actor who has to stay in character, I find that a bit tiring. But this was fun to stay in the accent. Although there were times when Adam would give me a note and I’d turn and say “wha?” and he’d be like, “You need to stop.” (Laughs.)
Who have you been most starstruck by on set so far in your career?
It was really trippy hearing that Patricia Arquette was going to play my mom and Jason Clarke my dad. They ran that set so well. They were so prepared, and they were running improvs between scenes. I never really knew if I was talking to Jason or Dad. And it was never just Jason. I remember on the last night of shooting, he took off his makeup and everything and I really saw him for the first time. He smiled at me like a guy who just kind of knew me, because for that whole time I’d been his son and not Will.
