\n<\/p>\n
\n\tWill Harrison has a few people to thank for the whirlwind first two years of his career \u2014 the ones who inspired his onscreen characters. Since breaking out in 2023\u2019s Daisy Jones & The Six <\/em>(which in itself was modeled after the real-life drama of the members of Fleetwood Mac), he\u2019s played the John Wilkes Booth accomplice David Herold in Manhunt<\/em>, folk singer Bobby Neuwirth in A Complete Unknown<\/em>, and the eldest son of the now-infamous family central to Hulu\u2018s Murdaugh: Death in the Family<\/em>. Now, he\u2019s also finishing up a lauded run on Broadway in Punch<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhen 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,\u201d says Harrison over Zoom from New York. \u201cBut Punch<\/em> was created with the characters\u2019 blessing and input, and that lifts a lot of the pressure off.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe 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 <\/em>follows their restorative justice work with Dunne), and Harrison was able to travel to the UK ahead of the Broadway run. \u201cI 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,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tSam Robards, Vicki Clark, Camilla Cano-Flavia and Will Harrison in Manhattan Theatre Clubs production of Punch<\/em>, written by James Graham directed by Adam Penford.<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMatthew Murphy<\/p>\n \n\tHas Jacob Dunne seen this staging of the show? I know it\u2019s playing on the West End as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tHe was at the West End opening and got to spend time with the cast, but he can\u2019t travel to the U.S. because of his status as a convicted felon. It\u2019s really unfortunate and I so wish he could be there, but it\u2019s a tough thing to get around.<\/p>\n \n\tI assume you are not in communication with Buster Murdaugh.<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tNo. (Laughs.<\/em>) I did shy away from direct contact there.<\/p>\n \n\tHow do you build a character when you\u2019re playing a real person you don\u2019t want to meet?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThere\u2019s lots of references online. Obviously, it was a huge story and there\u2019s 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\u2019t do a lot of research on Buster before my audition, I just did the role and they said, \u201cOh, that\u2019s our version of this guy.\u201d The same thing happened with A Complete Unknown<\/em> [playing Bob Neuwirth].<\/p>\n \n\tDo you have to like, or find empathy for, someone like Buster Murdaugh in order to play him?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI certainly don\u2019t have to like the person, and I don\u2019t 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\u2019s usually an explanation. There\u2019s always a why. You sort of start to feel a little protective of them, even, and you have to shake that off.<\/p>\n \n\tThe bulk of the story in Punch <\/em>is dedicated to offering that \u201cwhy,\u201d and helping the audience find empathy with a kid who killed another kid. But what was your \u201cwhy\u201d for Murdaugh<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI was really focused on the storyline, which is that he\u2019s been really outside of what happened to his family. He was away at school when the murders happened. I\u2019m 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\u2019s the only person who was close to this event that we can view things through, and he\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n \n\tDid you grow up around any families like them, with that particular sort of privilege and influence?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tWell, 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\u2019s literally an intersection. That\u2019s it. And the jurisdiction of this family, the region that their power covered, was much larger. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tMina Sundwall, Will Harrison, Jason Clarke, Patricia Arquette and Johnny Berchtold in Murdaugh: Death in the Family. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tDisney\/Daniel Delgado Jr.<\/p>\n \n\tCan you tell me how you came into the role for Punch<\/em>? Was a Broadway play on your to-do list?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThis just came into my inbox as an audition. I wasn\u2019t actively searching for a Broadway play, but the theater is how I got into acting, it\u2019s how most young people do, and it really centers me and gives me an ownership of the work more than film or TV. I\u2019m 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\u2019s running around town \u2014\u00a0I put my entire couch in the frame and was jumping on it. I got a note along with the callback sides, though, that said \u201cmaybe a little less flouncing.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tYou\u2019re doing the Broadway eight-shows-a-week routine, and you\u2019re also in almost every second of the play. How did you prepare?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n \n\tHow did the Nottingham, England accent treat you?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI was obsessed with British media growing up \u2014\u00a0In Bruges<\/em> and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels<\/em> and Trainspotting<\/em>. 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\u2019re speaking in that accent while giving you notes. I\u2019m 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\u2019d turn and say \u201cwha?\u201d and he\u2019d be like, \u201cYou need to stop.\u201d (Laughs<\/em>.)<\/p>\n \n\tWho have you been most starstruck by on set so far in your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIt 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\u2019d been his son and not Will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Will Harrison has a few people to thank for the whirlwind first two years of his career \u2014 the ones who inspired his onscreen characters. Since breaking out in 2023\u2019s Daisy Jones & The Six (which in itself was modeled after the real-life drama of the members of Fleetwood Mac), he\u2019s played the John Wilkes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31699,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[18419,376,2906,10421,17522,18420,7232],"class_list":{"0":"post-31698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-broadways","9":"tag-death","10":"tag-family","11":"tag-harrison","12":"tag-hulus","13":"tag-murdaugh","14":"tag-punch"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31698","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=31698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}