- There was a moment where
I sort of just gave up where I was like, "oh, I
give up, I can't do this." - And you're on such an
amazing team on that show. - Yeah, yeah, I am, yeah. - Because...
- Yeah, which is.. That's right, that's all possible
because the other actors. - 'Cause they were there and the camera... - Because the camera
operators are so fluid. I mean, it's sort of like, I think you worked on
"Rachel Getting Married." - Yeah.
- And, you guys shot like 90 minute
takes or something, right? - Radical listening. - Yeah, that's kind of the way
we work on this show always, but it's a dream. (upbeat music) - Hi, Jeremy.
- Hey. - Sorry, in case you're
watching this at home or on your phone, on
the subway or any place, we're meant to call each other
and all actors by full names. So hello, Jeremy Strong. - Hey, Anne Hathaway. - Nice to see you. - Good to see you. I was thinking, we know each other and we've worked together twice, but we've never sat down and talked about work
or talked about acting. - I know, and every time we have, the room's had a lot of
other furniture in it. - Right, preparing for this I went back and watched a
lot of your body of work. - Oh, I'm just trying to imagine you watching "The Princess Diaries." - I didn't re-watch
"The Princess Diaries." - Re-watch, you are good. - But I'm so honored to
be doing this with you. I think we both feel the
virtues of commitment and courage are ones to be aspired to. And I feel like I see your
work and am just blown away by the versatility of it, but also the courageousness
and the investment. - Thank you, I'm a little speechless, but the thing that I've noticed as our
friendship has deepened, and one of the reasons why
I'm so grateful to know you, and also I'm so grateful
that that we're pals, it's so wonderful without
having to talk about the creative process, because
it can feel very intimate, to just know that you do
it with your whole soul, that you do it with
everything that you have. And having gotten to spend
a lot of time with you, I know how extraordinary your brain is and the way that you are
able to like our co star, Anthony Hopkins, recall quotes and verse seemingly effortlessly. And I just think it's
so exciting this moment, because I mean, it's
really happening for you. Like you're really being revealed as one of our great, great actors. And I guess my first
question is because I think there's gonna be a lot
of actors watching this and they're gonna wanna know,
what did you tell yourself during those years when
you were building it? And it felt like you
were taking smaller steps before you've had this
beautiful cosmic explosion? - It's such a great question, it's sort of the central question, right? What keeps us going sort of,
despite any lack of evidence that we'll have the chances to do the work that we want to do? I don't know the answer really, I think it was just the need, the need to do this and the feeling that it's something worth devoting
one's life to, you know? I don't know about you,
but I'm constantly in awe of what actors do, of other actors. I mean, I was in awe of what you did in "We Crashed" as Rebecca. - There's nothing to revamp, Damien, we have 600 followers, okay? No, we need to think bigger, we need to reach a wider audience. - The great desire to make a contribution to the work that has moved me. And I don't know if it was
apocryphal if you really were the ninth choice, for "Devil Wears Prada," but like going and interning
in an auction house and that ninth choice feeling, whether or not it is the case, it's a great engine, that feeling. I read you say something
once about Vivian Lee and how she would crawl over broken glass. - Yes. - 'Cause Anne said this about her, if she thought it would serve
a moment or serve the scene. So I feel like each of us have that trait as people, as actors, this character, this show is such a gift, it's like the mountain I've
always wanted to climb. - We were shooting together, when you found out that you'd gotten cast or had you gotten cast just before? - Oh, right on "Serenity?" - Yeah.
- I think I had done the pilot and I think I found out that
we were gonna make the show. - You are known for
your immersive process. And I remember going
like kind of seeing you while we were in the
beautiful island of Mauritius, like kind of just walking
around so deep in character and kind of wave. And I remember one time
kind of sidling up to you and saying, "listen, I completely
respect what you're doing, but I also wanna like be a human. So I'm gonna let you do you, I'm gonna nod and just know wide open if
you ever just wanna talk or do anything," and
you just kind of nodded because you were deep in your character. And then a few weeks later, I just remember you just
kind of appearing next to me and you said, "I think I
need to come up for air." (both chuckling) And I said,
"wanna come over for dinner?" and you said, "yes, please." - That was great. - And you came over for dinner,
and we had, it's so fun. You, me, Adam, our son was asleep and we talked about life
and we spent time together, and you remembered what
we drank that night. - Oh yeah, we drank Penny Blue rum. - That's it, a lot of it. - A lot of it.
- A lot of Penny Blue rum, and you told me about "Succession." - I tried, but I, I thought
that I could change things, but I'm not as, there's things you're
able to do that I can't. - I'm a huge fan of the show and you know I'm a huge fan of your work and I'm still a little
annoyed that you did not wrap your Emmy's acceptance speech
as I encouraged you to. But I think the world could
have used that moment, but, you know, maybe there
will be more opportunities. But it's a show that is
seemingly about one thing, but it's actually a show
about the legacy of abuse. - Yeah.
- First of all, how do you chart a character
over multiple seasons when you don't exactly know what's coming? Do you just kind of throw
yourself against the wall? Do you crawl across broken glass? Like how does it? Now that you've done it three times. - Yeah.
- How does it work? - Honestly, I don't
wanna ascribe too much, sort of ownership over that, I think a performance is
not a monolith, you know? - Thank you, thank you, yes. - It's a thousand imperfect
attempts at a scene or a moment and I find personally that I feel sort of always on the frontier of uncertainty and confusion. And from that place making attempts at, based on your intuition
in terms of charting it, I feel very fortunate to
be working with material, these right Jesse
Armstrong and the writers are so brilliant and have such a sort of incisive forensic
understanding of psychiatry, of sort of interiority. So a lot of that needle
is threaded for you and like very powerful magnets
just sort of pulls out of you what it needs to. And you, and this is the
hardest part as you know, have to make yourself available to that and be a vessel for it. So I feel like I've been
sort of coursed through these classified whitewater
rapids for a few seasons (sniffs) and I love it. And it is heavy, the
weight of it is heavy, trying to meet the demands of it and trying to embody what
the character's struggle is, for me in this last season, there was a lot of
imagining a golden light. And there's this sense of
needing to, for Kendall, there's this sort of airborne
quality to this last season of this almost manic need
to stay above the pain. - Yes. - And incredibly the
writing incredible line, I'm blown into a million pieces. Which the whole work for
me, I think as I see it is to earn the right to say those words. - Come on, let's...
- It's fucking lonely. - Hey. (crickets chirping)
(Jeremy sobbing) - I'm all apart. It is about the legacy of abuse. I remember Jesse and Adam McKay the first thing they talked to me about was "Festen," the Vinterberg movie, which is in the substrate of
the show, trauma and abuse. Also what we work on, both of these things are about sort of late stage capitalism. You know, we live in this time, where I think I read somewhere that the richest three
Americans have more money than 160 million of the
poorest fellow countrymen. And so these people that we are inhabiting exist in that rarefied world, and so the terrain is
really similar actually. I feel, you know, watching your work, to me this is sort of the
perfect representation of what you can do, which is with great precision do like
a triple reverse somersault from the high dive and then moments after, like a complete deep sea
dive and touch the bottom. So for me, when you have
that scene, which is amazing, you know, around the Oka
golden chain, a golden chain, and you go into that Russian accent. But then the moment in
the stairway afterwards, it's an incredible moment. - I think that one of the
main ways I'm different as an actor than the way I started was I have learned how
to shake off a bad take. My whole existence as
an actor is not defined by a good take or a bad take anymore. And I have gotten comfortable with, okay, that was terrible, let's see, let's learn something from it and try to find something else. - You know, personally
the permission to suck, like the permission to... - To make a loud, wrong choice (chuckles). - To sort of fail boldly and find that thin ice to be on is sort of the best thing you
can give yourself as an actor. - I think so much of that precision that you're talking about has to do with the team that I was on and the way that I was able
to make hyper-specific choices because of the excellence of everyone. - Right.
- Really, and then that specific moment
that you're talking about, it's got a history to it. And it begins in a sad
place, so everybody... But my very first job was on
a TV show called "Get Real." And it was my senior year of high school, and I was away from home, I
was shooting in Los Angeles and I was just dealing
with a lot of feelings that I didn't... - How old were you? - I was 16 when it started and I turned 17 while we were doing it. There were just a lot
of feelings that I had that I didn't really understand. And every morning I
would get my makeup done, which felt very, very strange
'cause I was very young and it would kind of change
the way my face looked, which felt very weird. And I would go into my little three banger with Eric Christian Olsen on one side and Jesse Eisenberg on the other side. And I would have to like go to set and I feel really nervous
and I would start to cry, but I would know that I
couldn't cry my makeup off. So I would take a tissue
and I would fold it in half and I would cry into the tissue. I just remember thinking to myself, this would be great to see on camera. And I have tried to get
that moment into a film on several occasions and it never... And everybody always
just kinda looked at me like I had three heads
when I would suggest it. And this is what I mean about the way I was invited into the process and I described it to Drew
and Lee, and I don't know if they totally got what
I was talking about, but they trusted me. And so I said, "I would like to us to shoot it in such a way, please, where there's an outward facing part." Because these are of course
glass walled offices, and it's an open floor
plan, an open cubicle and all of those things where
she has to have a public face and she turns around and she has to cry without crying off her makeup, which is something that I think
a lot of women understand. And I just had a feeling that
it would look really strong on camera to watch the tears
just kind of like saturate the tissue, but not fall. - Yeah, I mean, it is,
it's an amazing moment. - Good, I'm glad.
- It's amazing that you're able to just summon
that as well, I mean that. - What do you mean? - That you can access that,
I think that's a gift. - That I'm a cry baby?
- That's a gift. (Anne chuckling) - It's amazing that I'm a crybaby. - You know what? When we were in Mauritius
on the Steve Knight movie, I had just started working on the show and I had read something really struck me and has sort of become something that I think about all the time. And I've tried to put into
the work on "Succession," and I think I try and
put into everything now, which is something that Young said that only that which is really ourselves has the power to heal, and so
maybe there's something about the fact that that moment
came from, you know, the ground of your being,
is why it is so deeply... - Oh, yeah. It's a funny thing because I
remember when I was younger, an actor saying, "you can only
ever really play yourself." And I thought, I don't know
that I fully agree with that, I mean, whatever works for
you, but I'm trying to play as many different characters as I can. - Yeah, same.
- I'd like to apply as much as imagination to it
but it is interesting. And I don't necessarily
work this way anymore, but in the beginning part of my career I did connect to my
characters through trauma. Like I would kind of
search out parts in myself where I was broken and
parts where they were broken and I would try to like,
kind of find my way into them through that way. So I think I was like, in the beginning, I think I was using it as
kind of like an acting out of certain things that I
wanted to understand better. You said it was all for me. - And it is. - I don't need it. (brooding music) Do you find that you have
a shaped the performance that you try to adhere to? - No.
- Or is it something where like the wind hits and I'm
often a different place? - I think my only goal at
this point is to be as free as possible. Here I go, I'm gonna not censor
myself and quote something. - But this is one of your gifts, this is why I brought it
up because it's amazing, I can't remember what day it is. - There's an amazing book about painting that I read last year about Edward Munch. And they say, in this book painting, it must not merely reconstruct a moment, it must itself be a moment. - Oh, good one. - It must not exist beforehand but come into being in the
moment it is expressed. - That's the aim.
- And I think that's the aim. - [Anne] Yes. - So in a sense, every
time somebody calls action and I don't like it when they call action. - Oh, I love it.
- I like it sort of, when it's just on, and you
kind of just take your own cue. But you sort of blindly follow as you say, a sense of truth and really I think rigorously do that and then you discover what it is and it reveals itself to you. But I don't ever prescribe a
shape or know where I'm going. I think if you prepare enough and have internalized enough,
then you kinda just... - Yes.
- You know, know. - I'm so happy you brought up preparation because when we worked
together on "Armageddon Time," your character was a? - Plumber.
- Plumber, and you went to learn how to fix a refrigerator and
plum, and you went there and it was a humbling
moment for me as an actor, to realize that you have
more children than I do. - I was at a reading the
other day and I was like, is that guy the voice of
Daddy Pig in "Peppa pig?" Wow, sorry.
- Was he? - Maybe. - Maybe?
- Yeah. - So with Kendall, was there something that
you really went deep on and nerded out that kind
of put the character in perspective for you or
made him come alive for you? Because I was blown away
that you had such an arsenal of knowledge about Irving in our movie. And I was curious about
your level of preparation in all your other projects,
specifically, "Succession." - I think with each time
you're sort of starting from nothing, right? I think it tells you how to work on it and you sort of follow the
line of your intuition. I felt like there was a lot of skills and some stuff that I wanted
to understand viscerally for our movie, also voice, you know? I always imagined that I would be.. My heroes are all sort
of chameleonic actors, I always imagined I would
be a character actor and sort of travel great
distances to create a character. There's a Stevie Smith poem called "Not Waving But Drowning." (Hathaway laughs) The idea is that it's
sort of imperceptible which one it is. And I think that that's true of both of our characters, actually. - Yes, I agree. - It's one of the things I
find so poignant about her. You can't help but care about this person. - I do.
- And you give such care and respect to who she is, very clearly your empathy for her, the way that she is a student of life. But also, I mean, part of our
job is to create a character who can say, "does it have a key?" In the way that you said,
"does it have a key?" - But that's part of a world. - [Jeremy] Right. - And I feel very, very lucky in many ways to have been born in a world
that's different than the one that I've earned my way into. - Sure.
- Because I feel that it kind of lets me have a perspective on it and see where I stop and where it begins. And I found that helpful in this story, because your character in "Succession" my character in "We Crashed," they line up in a very specific way, but yours is inspired by someone. And I was playing someone very, very real. And so there was a component to it where I had to sit there
every single day and check in and just be like, you are
playing a real person. - Right, she's gonna watch this. - Be fair.
- Yeah. - Be honest. But there was a book that I
read because I read a lot. - You read books that
Rebecca had read, right? - I read books that Rebecca had read and I also read a lot of books around. - That sort of around positivity. - Around what it's like
to grow up wealthy. You know, just the sort of things that you would take for granted that you wouldn't be
able to see because it's, you know, I don't know,
it's just, it's everywhere, it's the water that you swim
in. And I did a lot of research and I spoke to a lot of people
that had spent a lot of time with the woman that I was playing and I heard the same
thing again and again, which was, "she's so sweet." And that was for me, such an important aspect to playing her. 'Cause I was thinking about it, you know? You mentioned in terms of Munch of color, but I was also, I think
about negative space a lot. And I think that it's so important when you find the balance of someone because, you know, we've all grown up on fairy
tales, we have young children, we're spending a lot of time in them, but we all know that reality
is so much more complicated and that villains are never convenient. There's usually something
we love about them. And we're also living
through an interesting time where we're going back
and we're reconsidering what we think about villain's, period. - Yeah.
- And, it seems like the best
way forward is empathy. And so one of the books that I read, I came across this phrase, which said, "judge all persons favorably." And what that means is, don't not see the thing
that they're doing, there's no BS to that approach. You see someone, maybe they come in and they're like screaming their head off and they're acting in a ridiculous way. And in that moment, you can either say, "how could that person act like that?" Or you could say, "what would make someone act like that?" And you can either
supply a generous reason or you can go up to the person and ask them if they're all right. And I found that was the only approach I could take to playing this part. It was a new level of
compassionate curiosity. - That's great. - About what would make someone who is defined as sweet by one person, but who's also defined very
differently by other people what's going on behind there? And you mentioned trauma and
I do think that, you know? If there's one thing that
we're learning in this world is that everybody's
carrying around something. - Yeah. - And take a look at The Roys, I mean, money doesn't
protect one from trauma. - No, that's right, I mean,
it is both sort of heavy as the head that wears the crown, but it's also this idea
that having the external, having the trappings of power, being raised with that kind of power doesn't mean that that sense of power was installed in you
internally in a real way and that's a kind of burden. So it's very easy to sort
of put labels on people or to make judgment. And one of the things I
love about being an actor is you get to sort of slide around that, you have to slide around that because your only job is to
have compassionate curiosity and try and empathically understand what this person's struggle is and what it's like to walk
a mile in their shoes. - One of the things that I was thinking about Kendall and Rebecca
is they're both idealists. - Yeah. - And I've been thinking about... I mean, I don't wanna,
step outside my lane and label an entire generation, but it seemed to be this moment when idealism and capitalism
were so woven together, and there really was this very real belief that you could save the world with money, and we're seeing evidence
that that might not be true. And so I just wondering if
you wanted to speak at all about the idealism of Kendall and why he keeps tripping over it? - Well, I mean, I think
certainly in this last season, there's this sort of
messianic quality that I have. That kid, I was drunk, I
was fucked up, but I drove. And he saw something and
he snatched at the wheel and we went into the water. And then I left him in there and ran. We're in this dirty dirt parking
lot in the final episode. And to me that was sort of, a, it was one of the
greatest pieces of writing I've ever been given
and so that, you know, sort of how heavily that
weighs on you as an actor, that's when it all sort of imploded. And I'm 43 and the inferno
is sort of about someone in the middle of their
life lost in a wood, having lost the right way in life. And so I think that reckoning
of I've lost my way, was a very powerful thing
to kind of work with and try and puzzle through. - I couldn't breathe during that scene. I could not, I was just,
I was completely held and I know a little bit about what went into the making of it. - I had sort of totally blown it, really. I had asked the production
designer to build this plinth, I had an idea that I would sit there and ideas are never a good thing. And we did like... Sometimes, we did like nine or 10 takes. - No, but I agree,
sometimes when I have ideas, I should just... They're instantly revealed
as an unnecessary detour. - And I was trying to make it work and something about the
chemistry between us just wasn't happening and
often with a scene like that, it's sort of, whatever's
gonna come is going to come, sort of immediately or not at all and I don't really believe
you can go looking for it. There was a moment where
I sort of just gave up, where I was like, "oh, I
give up, I can't do this." - And you're such an
amazing team on that show. - Yeah, yeah, I am, yeah. That's right, that's all possible because the other actors... - 'Cause they were there and the camera... - Because the camera
operators are so fluid. I mean, it's sort of like, I think you worked on
"Rachel Getting Married." And you guys shot like 90 minute
takes or something, right? - Radical listening. - Yeah, yeah, that's kind of the way we work on this show
always, but it's a dream. - Jeremy, we've run out of
time to speak in this room in which we have the only chairs, would you like to go to another room where there's more furniture? - That sounds great.
- This was so lovely. - Yeah, I'm glad we did
this. (upbeat music)
This was a good interview. Jeremy has a deep appreciation for everyone on Succession and it really shows in this interview when he talks about how his performance is impossible without the writers and the rest of the cast.
my favorite nugget of the interview from Jeremy: "I don't prescribe a shape or know where I am going" when it comes to his performance in Succession. He relies on preparation but meets the moment. His performance is not super controlled. Just "like a painting doesn't exist beforehand".
also their acknowledgment Succession is at a foundational level about "legacy of abuse". very interesting sit-down.
I feel like such a Greg every time I hear Jeremy Strong speak lmao
“I didn’t re-watch The Princess Diaries” put me in my grave
anne is gorgeous, kind and thoughtful & jeremy is so damn smart and well-spoken and cares deeply and passionately about what he does, i really can’t understand why people always make him out to be an asshole when he’s just not
Ok I watched it and as I predicted I am absolutely insufferable HE IS SUCH A GENIUS WE DO NOT DESERVE HIM
What did we do to deserve this
My favourite part of the interview was when Jeremy said to Anne, “I think I need to come up for air” on the set of Serenity
Us Jeremy Strong fans are eating a fat fucking meal with this interview... it's so refreshing to finally listen to 2 people talk about Succession as a piece showing the "legacy of abuse" because there is already so much to unpack in that alone, instead of the usual family v business dynamic etc. Among everything Jeremy has shared I loved it the most when he talked about how precision with the character doesn't automatically come, that you would have to fail and embrace failure and experimentation as part of the process. That you will have to make a mess before you perfect something.. he's been trashed in the media for a bit because people think he takes acting way too seriously but after watching this video I get his side of things now. At the core of method acting is trusting that your little experiments will get you somewhere and ultimately help you bring the character to life... hope he doesn't drown in it though!