\n<\/p>\n
Jeremy Strong has, of late, been prone to transformation on-screen. In last year\u2019s The Apprentice, he became a late-in-life Roy Cohn, the venomous mentor to Donald Trump\u2014all bluster with a thick Bronx accent and short temper. He earned plaudits for his dedication to sinking into the role, and his first Oscar nomination. Next year, he\u2019ll play Mark Zuckerberg\u2014older and cannier\u2014in Aaron Sorkin\u2019s sequel to The Social Network. In each case, Strong told me over a recent coffee, he pored over public footage, home videos, and whatever else he could get his hands on to gear up for his performance. But while making his latest movie, the biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, the actor had access to something of a cheat: The real guy was sitting right there on set.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like having an oracle that you can go directly to,\u201d Strong said, recalling the uncommon phenomenon of seeing the man he was portraying\u2014Bruce Springsteen\u2019s longtime manager, Jon Landau\u2014seated behind the monitors. Springsteen, too, was there to watch as Strong\u2019s co-star Jeremy Allen White conjured the artist at a specific moment in his life: the recording of the album Nebraska, back in 1981. \u201cI spent time with Jon,\u201d Strong explained. \u201cI drilled him with questions.\u201d The Adolescence Emmy winner Stephen Graham, who plays Springsteen\u2019s father in flashbacks, described Strong as \u201clike a magpie.\u201d \u201cAnd he\u2019s right,\u201d Strong said; both the bird and the actor are \u201cjust collecting, scavenging for anything. And you don\u2019t even know, really, what you\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strong\u2019s discovery efforts as a performer are involved\u2014heavy on research and preparation\u2014and he essentially stays in character on set. \u201cI find, though, that a lot of the work is about creating almost, like, an anechoic chamber, where everything else can disappear,\u201d Strong told me. \u201cIt\u2019s very witchy.\u201d The goal, he noted, is that the role \u201cjust takes over and takes possession of you, and you don\u2019t think about it anymore.\u201d His approach is a cousin to Method acting that he\u2019s previously referred to as \u201cidentify diffusion\u201d; unlike the Method, it relies on intense character work, not on tapping into one\u2019s own life experiences. Strong\u2019s process has been much discussed in the press as he\u2019s taken on meatier roles; his on-set manner, too, has been painted as stiff and a little wacky, particularly by some of his cast mates on the show Succession. The actor starred as the melancholic, striving media failson Kendall Roy, a role that the show\u2019s executive producer Adam McKay said Strong performed \u201clike he\u2019s Hamlet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn in The Apprentice. (Briarcliff Entertainment \/ Everett Collection<\/p>\n
In person, I found Strong to be not alienating, as certain co-stars of his have suggested, but deeply, devotionally sincere: He ordered yogurt with the same hushed politeness he had while discussing Laurence Olivier. He was resolute about his technique\u2019s efficacy while maintaining an awareness that it can come across as, well, mystical. \u201cI have infinite respect for anyone who has the kind of courage to be willing to make a fool of themselves on a set,\u201d he said, chuckling\u2014as in, someone such as himself. Yet Strong\u2019s recent habit of tunneling into tragic characters has clearly piled up. As Cohn, the actor had to go somewhere more unnerving: into the mind of an antagonistic creature renowned for his public misdeeds, as he struggled with aging, illness, and his eventual abandonment by Trump in the 1980s. \u201cI was affected working on The Apprentice because of how dark it was. And it was a hard shoot; it was hard doing press for it, just the whole aura of it,\u201d Strong said of the weight that the film placed on him. \u201cTrump wrote about us, called us human scum, threatened anyone involved with the movie.\u201d He was up for a creative risk, he said\u2014less so a public one. Deliver Me From Nowhere arrived at the right time: \u201cAfter Roy Cohn\u2019s gospel of vitriol and lies and nihilism, my job for a better part of a year was to listen to Bruce Springsteen records.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Apprentice and Deliver Me From Nowhere aren\u2019t complete opposites\u2014the latter is hardly a laugh riot, and for Strong, it\u2019s another plum supporting part as a mentor of sorts. Unlike the strong-willed Cohn for Trump, however, Landau serves as a pure sounding board for Springsteen. The film depicts the singer-songwriter as he wrangles some of his worst depressive episodes. Not long after the release of his chart-topping album The River, Springsteen enters an introspective stretch: He moves to a ranch in Colts Neck, New Jersey, and subsumes himself in books and movies, drawing creative inspiration from, among others, Flannery O\u2019Connor, Woody Guthrie, and Terrence Malick (particularly the latter\u2019s film Badlands).<\/p>\n
Out of this jumble of Americana comes Nebraska, an album Springsteen creates from solo demos on a simple tape recorder. He assumes that he will expand on the songs in the studio later on with the E Street Band, but as time progresses, he can\u2019t shake the raw quality of the early recordings, and he eventually prevails on Landau and his record label to put out the original takes as an album. The period is a fascinating sliver of Springsteen\u2019s biography, but the stakes of Deliver Me From Nowhere don\u2019t hinge on whether Nebraska will resonate once it\u2019s released; after all, moviegoers likely know its reputation as a rock masterpiece. Instead, the director Scott Cooper\u2019s film turns on Landau recognizing that the tracks reflect Springsteen confronting inner darkness\u2014including his conflicted feelings about his father and his fear of his growing fame\u2014and nudging the musician to realize his need for further help.<\/p>\n
In many a music biopic, the manager character poses a problem or an obstacle to the artist. Here, Landau functions more as an emotional keystone. A pivotal scene sees him sharing with Springsteen his worries about the singer\u2019s despondent moods. As written, the exchange involves Landau speaking with his client directly. But Strong, after talking with the real Landau, decided that playing music was the pair\u2019s true emotional shorthand; his character thus tries to get through to Springsteen by playing a Sam Cooke song. The actor had asked Springsteen what record might have worked, and the singer had offered some initial suggestions. None, Strong said, felt like the best fit. \u201cI said to Bruce, \u2018What I\u2019m looking for is: What song would you play if you wanted to save your friend\u2019s life?\u2019 He said, \u2018Let me think,\u2019\u201d the actor recalled. \u201cHalf an hour later\u2014it\u2019s almost midnight\u2014he said, \u2018You\u2019ve stumped the band.\u2019\u201d Eventually, Springsteen sent over the Cooke song, called \u201cThe Last Mile of the Way.\u201d The exchange represents what Strong dubbed \u201corganic discovery,\u201d a way to blend his immersion and his access to real-life figures to add greater texture, even if the \u201ctruth\u201d that\u2019s being revealed is more poetic than literal.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Strong as Jon Landau in Deliver Me From Nowhere. (Macall Polay \/ 20th Century Studios)<\/p>\n
Springsteen proved important to the actor\u2019s research too. \u201cWhen you get to the center of the map, where Jon Landau is, you\u2019re redirected to Bruce Springsteen,\u201d Strong told me. Landau has his own history, of course\u2014he was a music critic for Rolling Stone and elsewhere in the late 1960s, and had impassioned ideas about the development of rock and roll in the United States. Strong devoured all of that material while accompanying Landau to Springsteen shows, where he\u2019d watch the manager watch his client. \u201cThe expression of sheer love and awe in his eyes, it makes me want to cry,\u201d Strong said; he was struck by \u201cthe amount to which they care in this very cynical time that we live in, where people get all kinds of shit for caring about something too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strong faces that charge himself. Playing someone such as Cohn, a public and much-imitated figure, is hard enough. Strong\u2019s approach (listening to hours and hours of Cohn\u2019s speeches, staying in character the whole time) adds another taxing layer to that effort. He seems not to know another way to achieve what he wants\u2014he needs \u201ca feeling of an inner authority so that I can believe in what I\u2019m doing,\u201d he said. The focus required remains the same whether he\u2019s playing a famous figure or a version of someone\u2019s parent, as he did in the director James Gray\u2019s semi-autobiographical film Armageddon Time. Strong offered an analogy: \u201cYou\u2019re like a deep-sea diver, and you put the weight on your vest, you get down to depth, and you stay down there.\u201d To return to the surface too early would leave him, as he put it, \u201cdiluted.\u201d<\/p>\n
His co-star White, Strong said, was similarly locked in; the two barely talked on set, each submerged in their character bubble. But few moviegoers know what Landau looks or sounds like. White, by contrast, is pretending to be one of America\u2019s greatest musical icons, even doing his own singing. He was also, perhaps appropriately for a man who is best known for his hangdog charm on The Bear, meant to capture a low moment in Springsteen\u2019s life. \u201cI knew that what he was doing was really fucking hard, next to impossible. And so I was just trying to be there for him. And it was very easy,\u201d Strong said. Landau is the same way\u2014a \u201csteady hand,\u201d as Springsteen\u2019s frequent collaborator Jimmy Lovine explained, according to Strong. \u201cSo that\u2019s what I\u2019m there to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Zuckerberg in Sorkin\u2019s The Social Reckoning, Strong will be assuming a role that was played with nervy, youthful pique by Jesse Eisenberg back in 2010. Strong told me that he was in the middle of his latest transformation attempt, and that chatting with me was an active distraction: \u201cThere\u2019s something called \u2018switching costs.\u2019 And when you\u2019re trying to do press, and you\u2019re being a parent\u2014every time your attention switches, you slide back down the hill.\u201d He did seem content to slide down the hill a little, though, and sit at a diner drinking coffee with me. Whatever spooky, self-involved capital-A Actor I\u2019d imagined I would be having lunch with was not present. Maybe it\u2019s because Landau was a comparatively calm, sweet role to inhabit. Or maybe it\u2019s just because, for all the intensity, Strong clearly adores the challenge he creates for himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jeremy Strong has, of late, been prone to transformation on-screen. In last year\u2019s The Apprentice, he became a late-in-life Roy Cohn, the venomous mentor to Donald Trump\u2014all bluster with a thick Bronx accent and short temper. He earned plaudits for his dedication to sinking into the role, and his first Oscar nomination. Next year, he\u2019ll<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[3897,2643,4737,4463],"class_list":{"0":"post-30142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-bit","9":"tag-jeremy","10":"tag-ready","11":"tag-strong"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}