Back in December, The New Yorker wrote a profile about how Succession actor Jeremy Strong was kind of a d**k about acting. The profile made some waves, especially in the acting community, with many fellow thespians coming to his defense.
The crux of the article was that Strong was maybe too serious about acting and employed a version of it called – method acting – where he stayed in character forever and basically just annoyed his castmates. The virality of the article was unusual but not completely unexpected, as Strong’s portray of Kendall Roy earned him an Emmy for best actor, so maybe method acting works?
Now Strong has finally responded to the article in an interview with Vanity Fair. When asked about the “loud reaction” to the article, Strong said “It was something that, for me, felt like a pretty profound betrayal of trust.”
The article “said more about the person writing it and their perspective” than about “who I feel I am and what I’m about,” he said. As for the response, he said “what I care about ultimately is trying to feel as free as possible as an actor.”
He wants to distance himself from the “noise,” he said, because he has to “insulate” himself from the way people might perceive him. He still used the feelings in his work, he said.
“It was painful. I felt foolish. As an actor, one of the most vital secret weapons that you can have is the ability to tolerate feeling foolish.”
He also shared that as an actor he knows he “might be making a big, giant f***ing fool of myself” but that’s “the price of admission to doing good work, which involves risk and which involves getting yourself out there.”
Basically, he understands he sounds ridiculous sometimes but he’s dedicated himself to the craft and that’s that.
“At the end of the day, it’s quite simple. You do all this stuff so that you can work as unconsciously as possible. When you’re working on the frontier of your unconscious, I think good work is possible. There’s really not much you can say about that because it’s your unconscious. All that stuff, I have to treat it as vapor and mist. It’s not really relevant to the work.”
So what have we learned? Strong knows he’s kind of a d**k about acting but it’s his life’s work and he takes it very seriously. Also he has the Emmy, so suck it haters.
Succession is expected to return sometime next year on HBO Max.
