Off Camera with Sam Jones

As a high school sophomore, Jason Sudeikis switched schools in pursuit of serious basketball dreams and, of course, a girl. Instead, he discovered classes in radio and TV and debate – and a new career option. Soon after swapping Final Four tickets for a video camera, he gave up on college hoops and eventually college itself to go pro in the improv leagues. He honed his chops at ComedySportz, the Annoyance and ImprovOlympic before getting drafted by Second City and eventually Saturday Night Live, where some of his most memorable work occurred behind the scenes writing skits for Justin Timberlake, Amy Poehler and buddy Will Forte. Along the way he happily stole (a term he prefers to “borrow”) from lifelong mentors to develop his own comedic DNA (watch him in the We’re The Millers and guess who he’s channeling). In this issue, Sudeikis discusses his improv roots, his development as an actor and writer, his early love-hate relationship with SNL, the art of guest host management, and of course, hoops. To this day he’s a flashy, joke-cracking point guard who never lets you see how hard he’s working.

When a 16-year old Ron Howard was hanging out on set with Henry Fonda (as one does), Fonda gave the young actor a bit of advice: If he loved acting, he should focus on theater, but, "If you love movies, become a director.” Ron Howard loved movies. The Oklahoma-born son of two actors, his earliest memories are of memorizing dialog from his dad’s summer stock plays as a 3-year old. Walking unaware into an MGM kids’ casting call in 1959, Howard senior mentioned he had a son who was a fine actor. They called young Ronny in, had him do a scene, and asked his dad if he could do anything else. "I really don’t know if he can." Ron Howard entered our living rooms a year later as Opie in The Andy Griffith Show, and didn’t leave for the next 25 years when Happy Days ended in 1984. That’s when we really saw what else he could do. He started directing in 1977 by convincing producer Roger Corman to let him helm Grand Theft Auto (Howard agreed to act in Corman’s Eat My Dust! in exchange). Next came Night Shift, and then, at a point where most directors are still paying off film school debt, he delivered Splash, Cocoon and Parenthood. They were all charming, funny, well reviewed and commercially successful; and yet we still hadn’t seen the extent of what he could do as a director. What Howard excels at is telling stories that tell us something about ourselves; real tales of real people – albeit writ large – whose lives and worlds double as themes he wants to explore: family, teamwork, hubris and adversity, to name a few. Another particular genius is his ability to translate those worlds visually, forging a direct connection from our eyeballs to our gut or heart, as the story demands. Consider a tale that takes place largely inside the head of a brilliant but unstable mathematician. In its review of A Beautiful Mind, The New York Times called his technique “as simple as it is inspired,” adding, “Mr. Howard has found an accessible cinematic way to present this insight: Schizophrenia does not announce itself as such to those it afflicts. Mr. Howard leads us into its infernal reality without posting a sign on the door.” The film, an unexpected success, earned him an Academy Award for Best Director. When he took us into Formula One racing with Rush, a lot of people went along reluctantly, only to be surprised at how one tight shot of a violently vibrating tire could make their heart race as fast as the motor shaking it. That shot signaled danger more effectively than any deadly crash. Variety thought so, too. “To witness this level of storytelling skill (applied to a subject only a fraction of the public inherently finds interesting) is to marvel at not only what cinema can do when image, sound and score are so artfully combined to suggest vicarious experience, but also to realize how far Howard has come since his directorial debut.” He was able to make equally dramatic cinema from two men sitting across from each other, talking. “You expect something dry, historical and probably contrived. But you get a delicious contest of wits, brilliant acting and a surprisingly gripping narrative,” said the Washington Post about Frost/Nixon. “Howard's cinematic treatment deftly exploits very conventional narrative techniques without one ever being quite aware of them.” But of course the film that feels closest to his core as a filmmaker is Apollo 13. It has it all: exploration, heroism, history and the compelling factor of being true. Noting that the subject matter demanded Howard’s reverential treatment, the Los Angeles Times called it his most impressive film to date in a 1995 review. “Howard's willingness to be straight ahead with his directing, the film's derring-do aspects have the advantage of showing the men simply being heroic as opposed to acting like heroes.” If some critics have made cynical dismissals of a perceived gee-whiz, all-American, hero-worshipping aesthetic, Howard makes no apologies. “I’m drawn toward celebratory stories. I feel that they are every bit as valid and useful as the darker, cautionary tales. And my favorite thing is when the celebration is not up front and in your face, but something that evolves. It’s something you can understand, that flawed characters can be a part of moments that are worthy of celebration and respect.” That’s sounding pretty good to us these days. Howard’s work continues to follow his fascinations, from the depths (In the Heart of the Sea) to music (Made in America, The Beatles: Eight Days a week) to boxing (Cinderella Man). We explore along with him again in National Geographic’s first-ever scripted series Genius. His new anthology drama chronicles the world’s most brilliant innovators, kicking off with the famous physicist Albert Einstein. In it, and all of his work, Howard approaches his subjects with eye of a historian, a fan, a geek, and a loving adherent to detail. So, how to summarize the life's work of someone whose 63-year career spans two Golden Ages of Television and some of the most acclaimed and successful movies of every genre? Fortunately we don’t have to; it’s still very much in progress.

Acclaimed Spanish actor Javier Bardem comes from a long line of artists and filmmakers, but his love of cinema officially took shape when his mother, a working actress herself, snuck him into a movie theater to see Bob Fosse’s All that Jazz when he was 6 years old. It wasn’t exactly a Disney movie, but that didn’t matter—Javier was in awe. He wondered, “What is this mechanism of people, feelings, dance, music, colors, drama, and comedy? I want to be a part of that.” His passion and dedication to the craft are evident in his work—take his award-winning performances in the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men and Iñárritu’s Biutiful, to name a few. In his newest film Loving Pablo, Javier takes on the legend and mythology of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar and takes on an intensity and physicality that was even intimidating to his costar and wife Penélope Cruz. But Javier and Penélope know the difference between fiction and reality. As Javier says, “At the end of the day, I give her flowers and chocolates and say, ‘That was a lie.’ Even though it’s a part of my truth as a human being.’” Honesty is everything for Javier, even though it’s hard to attain on a daily basis. “We tell so many lies during the day because we need to protect who we are for others. When you play a character, you have to give up on that and be naked. And that’s why actors love acting—it may be the only time in the day where we are honest.” Javier joins Off Camera to talk about how being the target of senseless violence led him to discover his worth as an artist, why his marriage to Penélope Cruz works, and why therapy is the perfect tool for an actor.

You keep up on things. You know what’s going on in arts and culture. Then inevitably, it happens. Someone who wasn’t even on your radar is suddenly everywhere, making you question not where they’ve been, but where you’ve been. Meet Riz Ahmed. By now, you probably recognize him from HBO’s The Night Of, but for years, Ahmed’s been busy making wide-ranging, significant, and accomplished work. In person, he’s not some frenetic perpetual motion machine, but he does seem to function at a brisk and constant clip, creating, provoking and questioning. He approached Naz Khan, the role that’s brought him to recent wide attention, with a simple theory: “If you see the world in a certain way, the behavior follows.” Applied to Ahmed himself, it seems an apt description of how he creates art, and with it, change. Born in London to Pakistani immigrant parents, he won a scholarship to north London’s Merchant Taylors’ school, where he found himself and most Asian kids a subclass in a sea of diplomats’ kids in full prep regalia. He decided to do something about it, specifically, rigging a vote to force the school into electing its first Asian head boy. When other frustrations were expressed more overtly – he threw a chair intended for another student through a window – one teacher had a suggestion: “If you can muck about on stage, you get applause for it, not a suspension.” Good idea. At Oxford University, he studied philosophy, politics and economics, and also put on the only play with two non-white leads staged during his time there. When he decided to put on a drum and bass night but didn’t have immediate takers, he printed up flyers minus the venue and kept at it until he found a club willing to fill in the blank. College confirmed something he’d sensed all along: You can make yourself an insider, but the world will send you occasional reminders that status is temporary. It’s a perspective that’s informed his work across genres, including film, TV, stage and music. He did manage to work in some drama studies, and made his film debut at 23 playing a member of the real-life Tipton Three in Michael Winterbottom’s The Road to Guantánamo. He also made a three-hour debut at the Luton Airport, where he and another actor from the film were detained under the Terrorism Act by Special Branch upon returning from the Berlin Film Festival. We’re sure the Branch boys were just exercising caution; we’re also pretty sure that wouldn’t have happened to Matt and Ben. Ahmed was nominated for his first British Independent Film Award for Shifty, and highly praised for his effortless, persuasive chemistry with other actors. His second came for Four Lions, Chris Morris’ hilarious satire on terrorism. Mira Nair, who directed him in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, recognized his unique ability to play characters that shift between worlds. "It's the most demanding, complicated role for a young person to carry a film on his shoulders, and to be somebody at once absolutely authentic to the Lahori universe, yet absolutely comfortable, elegant and savvy in the Wall Street universe; to spout the poetry of Faiz at one moment and ruthlessly cut out a factory in Manila the next." Eventually American filmmakers saw his work (or at least got hold of reviews routinely peppered with words like “charismatic” “brilliant” and “natural”) and wanted in. His performance opposite Jake Gyllenhal in Nightcrawler was outstanding, and in its review of Jason Bourne, RogerEbert.com wrote, “Only Riz Ahmed makes any impact on a performance level, doing a lot with very little – watch the way he subtly plays a successful businessman who knows the skeletons are about to fall out of his closet. There's a much better version of Jason Bourne that focuses on him…” This year’s been a big one for him. He’s in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and puts a new spin on the gumshoe genre in City of Tiny Lights. He’s also working on a multi-generational Pakistani-British family story he aims to make for U.K. television. If the industry (ironically) helped Ahmed’s early career with its tendency to see in stereotypes, it’s also allowed us glimpses of a depth we’d otherwise miss by occasionally looking past them. Needless to say, that goes for society as a whole, and Ahmed is not shy about voicing that opinion. But he knows that if you’re going to be an unapologetic button-pusher, you best avoid righteous self-aggrandizement and do it with some humor. And some serious rap. Under the handle Riz MC, he’s put out three albums of songs that have been critically acclaimed (and in one instance, banned) for their biting – and bitingly funny – take on immigration, race and other issues. Ahmed specializes in playing, and being, an insider-outsider. If you’ve never felt like an outsider, don’t count yourself lucky; it’s a perspective that benefits us. Which is why we need this guy to keep acting, rapping, writing, and if necessary, throwing the occasional chair.

From the outside, it would appear that Sarah Paulson, after her Emmy award-winning performance as prosecutor Marcia Clark in The People v. O.J. Simpson, has "made it." She's got a role in Ocean's 8, her first "big sh**-kicker, popcorn movie,” and has the luxury of sifting through multiple film and television offers to choose a part that “sparks something inside of her.” What more could an actor want? But that's exactly the problem for Sarah. She wants the want. Without it, she finds herself in a bit of an identity crisis. She wants to fight for roles and be challenged by an acting part that requires total commitment. As she explains, “Before Marcia Clark, I was full of all that want. I don’t have that anymore.” The road to this point was not an easy one for Sarah. She never had her Cannes or Sundance moment like peers Carey Mulligan or Maggie Gyllenhaal. She fought hard for many pilots that never saw the light of day. When she did get her big break, on Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, it was cancelled after one season. Luckily, Ryan Murphy eventually came into her life. The prolific producer, writer, and director saw Sarah’s unique talent of being able to completely disappear into characters, and immediately started casting her in projects like The People v. O.J. Simpson and American Horror Story. She's finally being seen, and she gives full credit to Murphy for continuing to throw her "the juiciest, meatiest bones on the planet." And lucky for us, she’s still hungry. Sarah joins Off Camera to discuss why being an actor (or a person, for that matter) is not for the faint of heart, what's behind her decision not to watch her own performances, and why you’d better not fall asleep on a plane!

If your impression of Thomas Middleditch is that of a somewhat befuddled, bumbling, awkward-bordering-on-geeky misfit, we won’t blame you... yet. He has personified that type in films such as Splinterheads, The Bronze, The Final Girls, and even The Wolf of Wall Street. So neither can we blame Silicon Valley co-creator/director Mike Judge for writing the role of socially discombobulated Richard Hendricks specifically with Middleditch in mind. And now, Hendricks’ wide-eyed, stammering bewilderment seems to stem from Middleditch’s genuine disbelief at his own good fortune; after all, he’s landed the lead on a series that’s become more popular than the latest tech fads the show sends up. If it’s possible to be both a show’s star and its secret weapon, that’s what he seems to have achieved. In calling Middleditch the most underrated actor on TV, The Decider said, “One of the reasons that Silicon Valley quickly went from good to great to one of the best is because of Middleditch, who’s made Richard into an incredibly sympathetic, watchable character despite his by-design lack of dynamism.” High praise for an actor whose character has dwelt mainly in the shade of the charismatic type-As who surround him. So Mike Judge did not misjudge. We’re guessing he knew what a lot of the show’s fans may not. Middleditch is a sharply funny and frenetic writer and comic who found his way out of bully crosshairs and subsequently out of Nelson, BC through theater. Impatient to get on with doing what he loved, he dropped out of school in Canada to start writing and acting in sketches, cartoons and commercials. Nothing happened instantly; he walked dogs and sold shoes while writing scripts that didn’t go anywhere and auditioning without success for Saturday Night Live. But sometimes all you need is the proper attitude. When asked to join the Improvised Shakespeare Company (a Chicago-based improv troupe that performs spontaneous plays in Elizabethan-sounding English), his first thought was, “That sounds impossible. Sure!” When you’re fearless and open, fate tends to fall in line. A goofy, impromptu sketch for a Second City training program, in which he rapped about his faux-abiding love for Chicken McNuggets, sat out on the internet for a year before it caught the attention of a creative director for McDonald’s, who cracked up. Cue commercials, newfound exposure and two valuable lessons: a) fate can hide in odd, deep-fried places and b) keep going until someone laughs. Since then, he’s worked with some of the most talented names in comedy, including Zach Galifianakis, Key & Peele, and Jay Roach. He’s created voices and characters for shows including Beavis and Butt-Head, The Office, Comedy Bang! Bang!, and cult web series Jake and Amir, all while writing and making a seemingly ceaseless string of odd, humorous shorts. Even if all that hadn’t happened, we bet Middleditch would still be putting funny stuff into the world, if not to entertain us, then solely to entertain himself. You get the feeling that if his schedule ever slowed down or (god forbid), his internet connection died, he’d be perfectly fine in front of the mirror making faces, voices, and scenes. But small chance of that. He’s just finished playing the title role in Jeff Baena’s Joshy and will star in the upcoming Entanglement. He’s also slated to be animated in Henchmen and Captain Underpants. Though his dance card is largely filled with comedies, Middleditch remains open to playing any kind of character that interests him, and wouldn’t mind venturing into more dramatic territory. We’d like to see him try. Seriously—we’d really like to see him try.

If you’re an actor who’s signed on to share scenes with Michael Shannon, you’ve got yourself a bit of a dilemma. On one hand, you can count on people watching; on the other, you can be pretty certain they won’t be watching you. To be fair, nothing could be further from Shannon’s intent; co-stars and directors routinely praise his generosity and dedication to the success of any project he’s in. It’s just that the guy is – inherently, chronically and helplessly – riveting. Evidence of this seemingly hypnotic power came to light most publicly with his fairly small role in Revolutionary Road. Variety wrote, “The pic’s startling supporting turn comes from Michael Shannon, who’s mesmerizing as the clinically insane son of local realtor and busybody… When Shannon is onscreen, it’s impossible to watch anyone else.” In that instance, “anyone else” included Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Or take 99 Homes, which Time magazine called “a showcase for Shannon, who magnetizes all eyes, like a cobra in the corner.” Those are just two in a canon of some of the most consistently beaming reviews an actor could ever hope to paste in his scrapbook, though Shannon doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to keep one. If he did, it would be encyclopedic, as he’s piled up over 50 award nominations and an impressive number of wins over a career that comprises at least 100 film, TV and stage credits. So why is he not a household name? Hard to say, unless actors have to become “stars” to claim any permanency in our memory banks. What’s more confounding is that Shannon never planned to be an actor. He was a troubled, late-blooming kid who floundered in school and only defaulted to drama to get out of sports. He left school at 16 and with no formal training, was on stage in a year, TV the year after, and in Groundhog Day the year after that. Shannon tried working with an acting coach only once in his career, and said it was the worst audition he ever had. With fate apparently having done the heavy lifting, an impressive range of directors were quick to capitalize, including Michael Bay, Cameron Crowe, Oliver Stone, Peter Bogdanovich, Sydney Lumet, and even Tom Ford. As did HBO, casting him as Boardwalk Empire’s repressed G-man Nelson Van Alden. But no one has taken better advantage of Shannon’s facile embodiment of complex characters than Jeff Nichols, who directed him in Take Shelter, Midnight Special, and Shotgun Stories. Nichols has said, “Shannon makes me a better writer. He certainly makes me a better director. I wanted [Midnight Special] to be a very lean screenplay in terms of narrative and exposition, and if you’re writing that part for Mike, he’s going to be able to fill those spaces with all the subtext that you don’t want to have to write about. He can carry all of that on his face, and that makes him a very powerful tool for a writer/director like me.” What more directors need to take advantage of is Shannon’s range, which seems to be hiding in plain sight. He’s known for playing menacing, angry, possibly crazy guys whose ability to keep it all just beneath the surface keeps us in their thrall – quiet bears you do not want to poke. While he plays them subtly and brilliantly, he also made a surprisingly good low-key romantic lead in Frank & Lola. His comic chops are most evident on the stage, where he still spends as much time as possible. Look no further than his portrayal of showbiz huckster Felix Artifex in the comedy Mistakes Were Made, a role he’s reprised several times to wildly enthusiastic crowds and ticket sales. The New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood said Shannon shouldered the part “with a full arsenal of gifts: a subdued but strong natural presence, a voice rich in grit and capable of imbuing Felix’s wheedling and needling with a variety of emotional colors, a keen understanding of how pathos can feed comedy and vice versa.” Roger Ebert put it more succinctly: “His performance in Mistakes Were Made was one of the most amazing I have ever seen.” Given that it’s a one-man play, it may also be the only performance in which Shannon risked being upstaged. For all the taut wiring that sparks below his surface, Shannon says he’s learned to relax a bit more these days, and that approach has made him a better actor. Besides begging the question whether it’s possible for him to be any better, it also demonstrates a broad interpretation of the word “relax”. He already has eight projects in the works for next year, including Horse Soldiers, a Special Forces drama with Chris Hemsworth, and Signature Move, which he’s executive producing. He admits he may have a small problem turning down a great script. All the better for us. Maybe Shannon wasn’t looking to become an actor, but sometimes fate just gets things right.

In 2009 The New York Times ran a story about the New York Comedy Festival and the independent standup community that had become a hunting ground for late night shows looking for the next round of potential talent, citing Jenny Slate, Donald Glover, Aziz Ansari and Zach Galifianakis as formerly unknown comics lifted from the cramped rooms of obscure bars in hidden basements to a larger stage. The article’s new reference was a guy named Kumail Nanjiani, who “could be poised to follow… Or not.” On circumstance alone, “or not,” seemed more likely. Nanjiani grew up in Karachi, Pakistan (“not necessarily a very funny place”), raised Shia Muslim in a predominately Sunni nation. But a lot depends on how you see things. His dad was a psychiatrist (a fact he found inherently funny) with an inexplicable love of designer jeans (just blatantly funny). He got a taste of American comedy through movies his dad occasionally brought from the video store, and TV shows like Beavis and Butt-Head and Picket Fences. When he moved to the U.S. for college – and his own safety – he was most excited about being able to see movies and TV shows right when they came out. One of the first happened to be a Jerry Seinfeld comedy special on HBO. Nanjiani was 18 and had never seen standup before. A shy Computer Science/Philosophy double major, he finally worked up the courage to do a 30-minute set in his senior year. He walked on stage so nervous he could barely move, and walked off feeling ready for Letterman. Or at least Chicago. He got a day job and started doing standup at night, developing his first one-man show, Unpronounceable, which The Comic’s Comic called “a very personal and quite poignant work, punctuated by powerful punch lines.” It got him an agent and brought him to New York and the attention of the Times. Nanjiani never considered that comedy might not work out. He wrote standup material in the mornings, potential TV material in the afternoons and did open mics every night, twice a night if he could. Steadfastly refusing to look at the big picture, he focused only on each step. “What’s next? Now what’s next?” His wife has said she sometimes worried about paying rent, but never about his work ethic. The “nexts” started piling up quickly in the form of TV appearances on The Colbert Report, Saturday Night Live, Portlandia, Franklin & Bash, Veep and too many others to mention. Small movie roles (Collider called his scene in 2013’s The Kings of Summer the funniest part of the movie) started as a trickle and became a steady downpour – sixteen from 2013-2016 alone. In the biggest bit of karmic fortune, Mike Judge, whom Nanjiani had idolized since his Beavis and Butt-Head fandom, cast him as one of the stars of his hit series Silicon Valley. “When I was casting, I was looking for actors you could believe were really intelligent programmers but were also able to play the comedy of it all,” Judge told The Washington Post. “I thought he was fantastic.” As Dinesh Chugtai he veers between sarcasm and charm, and a blend of ambition and insecurity you might expect in a Pakistani immigrant programmer trying to be cool – and maybe a Pakistani immigrant comic who actually wasn’t very good at his five-year tech day job. We’re guessing Nanjiani sees the humor in that one, too. That kind of exposure can be heady stuff, but Nanjiani never let writing and standup take a back seat to his increasingly packed schedule (or his proudly geeky video game and X-Files podcast passion projects). In 2014 he co-founded The Meltdown, a Comedy Central standup series filmed in the back of a comic book store, featuring his loose, unrehearsed banter with co-host Jonah Ray, and guests like Nick Offerman, Marc Maron, Rachel Bloom, Fred Armisen and Reggie Watts. His second special, Beta Male, premiered on Comedy Central in 2013 to raves. From A.V. Club: “Kumail Nanjiani could easily be ‘that guy.’ He could be the Pakistani guy, joking about his otherness in America, his life growing up as a Muslim in Karachi. He could be the videogame guy, playing off his excellent podcast, The Indoor Kids, which caters to the thriving crossover crowd of gaming and alt-comedy nerds. But he’s not. He can weave those themes into his act without it feeling shticky.” Or too narrow. That praise grazes what he’s called the elephant in the room. His Muslim upbringing does play a role in his work, perhaps more unavoidably now than ever. But as his career progressed, Nanjiani determined not to ignore it, but also not to commoditize it or take roles that exaggerated it. His comedy became wider and his talent more apparent. He is relaxed and observational on any number of topics, and a master of setup, his build to a joke often funnier than the punch line itself. He has a comic’s timing and a storyteller’s ear. That sense for story finally made him turn to the biggest one in his own life. He penned an account of how his real-life girlfriend's serious illness jolted him into maturity and coming to terms with his conservative parents. His (now) wife Emily V. Gordon co-wrote the script, Judd Apatow produced, Michael Showalter directed, and Nanjiani went to acting class in order to play a fictionalized version of himself. The Big Sick sent studios scrambling at Sundance this year (Amazon won for $12 million); Variety wrote that he and Gordon “…mine their personal history for laughs, heartache, and hard-earned insight in a film that’s by turns romantic, rueful, and hilarious. It’s a no-brainer to connect with art-house crowds who like their comedies smart and funny, but this one deserves a shot at the multiplex, too. Where most movies might be content to follow the culture-clash comedy through its typical ups and downs, The Big Sick proves to be a far messier affair, and all the more rewarding for it.” Nanjiani recalls the first joke he ever wrote: “I wrote about how I always wanted to have a unit of measurement named after myself, because all the cool scientists had one. Then I’d do an act-out of a submarine commander telling his crew to turn the torpedoes up to 5 Nanjianis.” If you’re measuring in laughs, better turn it up to 11 Nanjianis.

When Carey Mulligan first stepped foot on set of 2005’s Pride & Prejudice, she was convinced she won the lottery. It was her first professional job and her first time acting in front of a camera, but there she was, acting alongside Judi Dench, Keira Knightly, and Jena Malone. “The entire experience was like summer camp; it didn’t feel like work at all.” Carey was living her dream, but she was still convinced it was all a fluke. “I remember thinking, ‘After this, I’ll reapply to drama school.’” In reality, her acting career had just begun—with the best yet to come. Her first lead role came in 2009 with the coming-of-age film An Education. Her compelling performance led to an Oscar “Best Actress” nomination and widespread critical acclaim, even though Carey was originally devastated when she first watched her performance: “It was like listening to your voice on the answering machine and wincing because of how awful you sound—but multiply that by 500.” She had gotten so used to flying under the radar in supporting roles that she was unaccustomed to the pressure and spotlight of the lead. Carey was convinced her first shot would be her last—“Sundance is going to be a disaster. They’re going to send me home.” Of course, the opposite happened. Since then, she’s amassed a stunning body of work onscreen and onstage (Shame, Far From the Madding Crowd, Mudbound, Girls & Boys, and many more), and her incredible performance in Wildlife, Paul Dano’s directorial debut, is the newest addition. She plays a unique female character, struggling to find her identity underneath the crippling expectations that come with her role as a wife and mother in the 1960s. As a complicated and volatile woman, her character is not without controversy for those used to more idealistic portrayals of women—“It’s amazing that we still live in a world where a real, complex woman, expressing herself in a multitude of ways, is dismissed as unrealistic because she’s not what we want to see.” But she cherishes the opportunity to change hearts and minds through her work. Carey joins Off Camera to talk about battling stage fright, learning how to put her insecurities in perspective, and why sometimes the key to unlocking a character is to…take off your shoes.

Thanks to movie posters and pull-quote “reviews”, we’ve heard “electric” used to describe a performance so often that it barely registers as an adjective. But think back for a moment to the first time you saw High Fidelity. Now, think about the first moment Jack Black appeared on screen and jolted that film alive. It’s a great movie with a great cast, but let’s face it – his very presence flipped the switch. And that movie flipped the switch on Black’s film career, though it was a part he came within inches of turning down. But as the Guitar Pick of Fate would have it, he said yes, ending a 10-year struggle as a glorified extra that followed his first film role as a rabid political acolyte in Bob Roberts, where his real-life nerves turned out to be all the prep he needed to turn in another performance you must to go back and see. The good news about that flame-out decade is that he met a certain KG, and you know what rose from those ashes. But let’s flash-Black for a moment to our guest as a teenager who began auditioning for commercials because he so desperately wanted his friends to see him on TV, and even more desperately the acceptance and attention he figured would follow. A stint in Tim Robbins’ The Actors Gang followed, as did high school plays and musicals; and though he lost the girl (and wrote the requisite power ballad) he quite literally found his voice. Through music, The D, the hilarious Mr. Show and eventually film, he got the totally merited attention he wanted, if not the confidence he probably thought would come with it: “Man, I spend my life just trying to relax.” But he achieved at least some degree of artistic peace in figuring out that his way in to any role – or any song, for that matter – was with a chaser of comedy. If that covers up some vulnerability, well, as he puts it, “You can’t hurt the clown.” So back to the present, where under all the over-the-top antics and outrageousness it’s not hard to scent the sensitivity and empathy that no amount of good-humored depravity can disguise. It takes one very human clown to connect us immediately with otherwise improbable characters and films (for more must-see proof, we offer School of Rock and the truly excellent Bernie). As an artist Black says he doesn’t seek out challenges as much as he does resonance. In this high-minded and philosophical discussion, we will hit you with lessons on artistic angst and toehold moments, as well as true tales of Cannes-crashing, the fearsome warlock powers of Stephen Frears, and a fever-dream nightmare of an Elliott Smith tribute gone horribly wrong…then right. That, and a scholarly debate on the merits of Gene Krupa vs. Buddy Rich vs. Peter Criss – Sam and Jack hologram it out. By now, Jack Black knows who he is, and what he’s here for. So watch his work for the subtle or the shenanigans, but watch you will, because it’s impossible not to. He’s proof you can’t underestimate the power of a raised eyebrow, wait-for-it timing or an unexpected turn of phrase. In that regard, he ranks up there with Jack Benny and other masters of comedy who simply knew how to deliver a line. Ladies and gents, we give you the Bard of Off Camera.