Jeremy Strong Sees Acting As An Escape From Self

Summary

Fresh Air Episode Summary: Jeremy Strong Sees Acting As An Escape From Self

Host: Terry Gross
Guest: Jeremy Strong
Episode Title: Jeremy Strong Sees Acting As An Escape From Self
Release Date: December 26, 2024

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Introduction to Jeremy Strong and His Career Highlights

In this episode of Fresh Air, Terry Gross engages in an in-depth conversation with acclaimed actor Jeremy Strong. Strong is widely recognized for his riveting portrayal of Kendall Roy in HBO's Succession, a role that earned him an Emmy Award. Recently, he has expanded his repertoire to the stage, securing a Tony Award for his performance in Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. Currently, Strong stars in the film "The Apprentice," released in October, where he plays Roy Cohn, the ethically questionable lawyer and mentor to a young Donald Trump, portrayed by Sebastian Stan. Strong's performance in this role has garnered him a Golden Globe nomination.

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Portraying Historical Figures with Depth and Accuracy

Terry Gross delves into Strong’s approach to embodying real-life figures, emphasizing his commitment to historical veracity and emotional authenticity. When discussing his role as Roy Cohn, Strong reflects:

“I feel always an enormous sense of responsibility to a kind of historical veracity and accuracy to try and capture and render the essence of these people” ([06:14]).

Strong underscores the emotional and intuitive process of acting, rather than merely an intellectual exercise, to truly inhabit his characters.

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Insights into "The Apprentice" and the Character of Roy Cohn

Strong provides a comprehensive look into his portrayal of Roy Cohn in The Apprentice. He describes Cohn as:

“Like, not someone who really espoused truth with a capital T. He thought truth was a plaything that you could do as you wish with it” ([06:47]).

Highlighting a pivotal scene early in the film, Strong recounts the intense dynamics between Cohn and a young Trump:

“[03:23] Jeremy Strong: What is your business, Donald?...

[04:14] Terry Gross: Jeremy Strong, welcome to FRESH air. I love the film and that scene has so much energy to it. You have such swagger.”

In discussing the decision not to use prosthetics to alter his appearance for the role, Strong explains:

“Roy is enough, innately a monster. This, me objectively... we don't need to put a hat on a hat” ([12:16]).

This choice was deliberate to maintain the raw and unsettling presence of Cohn without additional visual alterations.

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The Collaborative Nature of "Succession" and Improv Moments

Transitioning to his work on Succession, Strong shares insights into the collaborative environment of the show. A particularly memorable moment he discusses involves an improvised scene:

“[24:28] Jeremy Strong: Sure, yeah, we were there. It's biting cold...”

He recounts how during the filming of the final scene, he spontaneously climbed over a rail, driven by his character’s despair:

“[25:18] Terry Gross: So, Jeremy Strong did you improvise that scene?...

[25:24] Jeremy Strong: Did I know I was gonna climb over the barrier?...”

This improvisation added a layer of raw emotion and unpredictability to the character’s arc, showcasing Strong’s dedication to authenticity.

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Personal Background and Early Inspirations

Jeremy Strong opens up about his upbringing in the Jamaica Plain area of Boston, highlighting the contrast between his early life and later suburban moves. His father’s role in juvenile justice and his mother’s work as a hospice nurse infused his childhood with profound experiences, though his parents shielded him and his brother from the associated dramas.

“Acting was initially an escape and wanting to escape from where I lived, from the heaviness that I felt...” ([34:04]).

This desire to escape through acting underscores his deep connection to the craft as a means of personal liberation.

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Early Career and Mentorship from Legendary Actors

Strong shares his early career experiences, including internships with acting legends like Al Pacino, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Dustin Hoffman. His time on projects such as Looking for Richard with Pacino and working on the set of The Crucible provided invaluable exposure and inspiration.

“I still have a Dog Day Afternoon poster on my wall. And Al has seen the Apprentice... which meant the world to me” ([36:09]).

These formative experiences fueled his ambition and honed his skills, ultimately shaping him into the versatile actor he is today.

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Balancing Personal Life and Acting

Throughout the interview, Strong emphasizes the importance of separating his personal identity from the characters he portrays. Reflecting on the end of Succession, he states:

“I've put it away because I have a life and children... it's all you need to be involved with” ([45:36]).

His approach to handling success and failure mirrors the philosophy of treating them as transient phenomena, focusing solely on the present role.

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Conclusion: The Essence of Acting as Self-Escape

Jeremy Strong encapsulates his view of acting as a profound escape from the self, allowing him to transcend personal confines and fully immerse in diverse characters. His dedication to authenticity, coupled with his rich personal history and professional experiences, positions him as one of the most compelling actors of his generation.

The episode concludes with a light-hearted moment where Strong performs a rap from Succession, showcasing his multifaceted talents and the genuine camaraderie he shares with his co-stars.

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Notable Quotes

• Jeremy Strong on Historical Accuracy:
  “I feel always an enormous sense of responsibility to a kind of historical veracity and accuracy to try and capture and render the essence of these people.” ([06:14])

• Strong on Roy Cohn’s Perception of Truth:
  “He thought truth was a plaything that you could do as you wish with it.” ([06:47])

• On Acting as Escape:
  “Acting was initially an escape and wanting to escape from where I lived, from the heaviness that I felt...” ([34:04])

• Reflecting on Succession’s Final Scene:
  “I've put it away because I have a life and children... it's all you need to be involved with.” ([45:36])

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This comprehensive discussion with Jeremy Strong offers listeners a profound understanding of his artistic process, the depth he brings to his roles, and the personal experiences that shape his approach to acting. Whether you're a fan of Succession, intrigued by The Apprentice, or passionate about the craft of acting, this episode provides valuable insights into the mind of one of today's most talented actors.

Transcript

[Terry Gross]

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[Jeremy Strong]

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[Jeremy Strong]

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[Terry Gross]

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Today we're kicking off our End of the Year series featuring some of the 2024 interviews we particularly enjoyed starting a great actor. Like many fans of HBO succession, I became a big fan of actor Jeremy Strong through his portrayal of the character Kendall Roy, one of the siblings hoping to take control of their father's media empire while the father is growing old and possibly nearing death. Strong won an Emmy for that performance and a Tony for his recent starring role on Broadway in Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. Now Strong is starring in the film the Apprentice, which came out in October and is now available to rent for the Apprentice refers to the young Donald Trump as he's trying to establish himself in his father's business as a real estate developer. The person who is mentoring him in how to become successful is Trump's lawyer, the infamous Roy Cohn, played by Jeremy Strong. Strong is nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance. Roy Cohn was known for prosecuting and winning the federal government's case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on charges of giving nuclear secrets to the Soviets. In a controversial decision, they were sentenced to death and executed in the electric chair in 1953. In 1954, during the communist witch hunt period, Cohn was the chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy's Senate investigations into the communist influence in the U.S. cohn and McCarthy were also leaders in the anti gay movement that led to an executive order banning gay people from serving in government. But Cohn was a closeted gay man who died of aids. He never came out and insisted that his disease wasn't aids, it was liver cancer. He was disbarred weeks before his death in 1986. Strong's performance personifies what was written about cone on his patch on the AIDS memorial quilt. It read, bully, Coward, victim. Let's start with a scene from early in the film when Trump and Cohn first meet. Trump has just gotten accepted to a private dining club in Manhattan. Cohen is seated at a table with several mobsters, including Fat Tony Salerno, the boss of the Genovese crime family. When Cohn notices Trump, who he's never met, he asks his friend to bring Trump to the table. Cohn is interested in finding out who Trump is. Trump is played by Sebastian Stan. Jeremy Strong as Cohn speaks first.

[Jeremy Strong]

What is your business, Donald?

[NPR Sponsor]

Real estate.

[Jeremy Strong]

I'm vice president of Trump Organization. Oh, you're Fred Trump's kid. That's right. He's Fred Trump's kid. It sounds like your father's a little tangled up and looks like he could lose a good mortal, but tell us about it. Right now the government and the NAACP are suing us. They're saying our apartments are segregated. This is America. You can rent to whoever the hell you damn want. But our lawyer wants us to pay a huge fine to settle and we can't. It's gonna bankrupt us in ro. Do you tell the feds to themselves, damn street? File a lawsuit. Always file a lawsuit. Fight him in court. Make them prove you're discriminating. Wow. I guess might have to get us a new lawyer. Of course, it helps if Nixon and the attorney general are your pals.

[Terry Gross]

Jeremy Strong, welcome to FRESH air. I love the film and that scene has so much energy to it. You have such swagger.

[Jeremy Strong]

Thank you, Terry. I'm honored to be talking to you. Thanks for having me.

[Terry Gross]

Oh, it is totally my pleasure. You know, a biopic is different from a film based on an original story. So you had a character who is a known person who you had to portray. What did you do to know to watch, to listen to him before playing him?

[Jeremy Strong]

Yeah, you know, I'll just say I haven't watched the film in a while and hearing that scene back, it's really so charged, isn't it? And Roy in that scene encapsulates the playbook which the film examines, the idea that, you know, what Roy Cohn stood for, these principles that he passed on to Donald Trump. Always attack, deny everything and never admit defeat. They're all kind of the DNA of that scene contains all of them. It's a great introduction of a character. But your question about playing historical figures, you know, I've done a fair amount of work playing people who, you know, were either alive or were historical figures. John Nicolay in Lincoln James Reeb in Selma, Jerry Rubin in The Charlie Chicago 7. Lee Harvey Oswald. I feel always an enormous sense of responsibility to a kind of historical veracity and accuracy to try and capture and render the essence of these people. And ultimately, it's not an intellectual. You're not writing an essay on someone. So the information is sort of emotional, intuitive, visceral information.

[Terry Gross]

Did you ever fact check any of it? Like, do you feel a responsibility to not only have acting truth, but have fact truth?

[Jeremy Strong]

Absolutely. Yes. I absolutely feel a sort of fidelity to truth with a capital T, which is funny in this case because Roy Cohn, if he's anything to me, he's like the progenitor of. Of alternative facts. He's like, not someone who really espoused truth with a capital T. He thought truth was a plaything that you could do as you wish with it.

[Terry Gross]

And I should mention here that the film was written by Gabriel Sherman, who is a journalist who wrote a book about Murdoch and Fox News.

[Jeremy Strong]

Yeah. A book about Roger Ailes.

[Terry Gross]

Yeah. I should have said Ailes. Right?

[Jeremy Strong]

Well, no, I mean, it's also about Murdoch. But of course, I. I read that book when I was working on succession because, you know, during that time.

[Terry Gross]

Right. Well, that's the thing. Like, I feel like your recent career is so connected to Trump.

[Jeremy Strong]

There's intersectionality there.

[Terry Gross]

Yeah. What I want to know is, do you feel very adjacent to Trump? Like that, you know, Trump? Because your characters have been so, you know, related to Trump in one way or another and very directly related in the Apprentice.

[Jeremy Strong]

You know, I don't. I don't. If I'm honest, I feel that my job is to almost be a sort of vessel, which involves kind of clearing myself out. I went on a silent meditation retreat last week. Terry and the teacher, who's an incredible man named Jon Kabat Zinn, who's written a lot of great books.

[Terry Gross]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I know.

[Jeremy Strong]

John talked about a term called anatta, which means no self or not self. And it really resonated with me because I find that that is the place where I tend to be when I'm working, I think creatively. But your question about whether I felt adjacent to Trump. I guess I don't. I guess I feel like my job is to be a musician, a first chair musician, to play whatever instrument it is that I'm given.

[Terry Gross]

Yes.

[Jeremy Strong]

To play whatever piece of music.

[Terry Gross]

Because I was gonna ask you if you notate your scripts as if they were music, because, like, in the scene that we just heard, there's real music in your voice, you've got a rhythm.

[Jeremy Strong]

Thank you. You know, I used to, when I was in college, I sort of have held onto old scripts and plays. And when I did, you know, American Buffalo or something, look back in anger in college, I have a million notes and it's sort of notated and annotated to death. And then at a certain point I stopped writing anything down. I guess at a certain point you develop a trust in your unconscious, intuitive self that if it's properly absorbed something, then it will be there somehow. Now, I think voice is very important to me for any character. And Roy had a very, very particular way of speaking and a very specific pentameter. And the music of that is something that becomes your job to both master and then throw away. You know, he writes in. In Hamlet, Shakespeare says that use can almost change the stamp of nature. And I feel that actors, especially when you're attempting to do some kind of transformational work, which is the kind of work that I love the most and have been inspired by in my life the most, your job is to kind of change the stamp of your nature. And voice is a really key part of that. Because there's something about a person's voice that is like their eyes. It's such a way in to that person.

[Terry Gross]

Well, why don't we listen to the real Roy Cohn's voice? This is from an interview with Tom Snyder on his late night show tomorrow.

[Jeremy Strong]

I probably watched this a thousand times.

[Terry Gross]

Really, as broadcast in 1977. So here we go.

[Jeremy Strong]

Now here's Roy Cohn, who appeared recently on the COVID of Esquire magazine. And the title of that article, as I recall, sir was the Legal Executioner. And went on to say that you are really a tough man. And that at times you can tough, mean, vicious, so on. What does that kind of publicity do for your business in New York? It's fantastic. The worse the adjectives, the better it is for business. What are they looking for? What are they buying? Scare value. Going back over a period of years, when I call somebody or write a letter or something like that, this is supposed to make them tremble and think. And unless they act promptly and reasonably.

[Terry Gross]

That all sorts of terrible consequences are going to flow. So what was it like playing somebody who you find like is despicable? Too strong a word.

[Jeremy Strong]

I mean, I don't think it's too strong a word. But, you know, you have to really check that at the door. As an actor, when you approach a role, you have to leave your judgments at the door and try to, in an almost diagnostic way, identify their wounds and their struggle and then fight their fight the way they did. I'm simply trying to inhabit him in a fully dimensional way, as you do for any character.

[Terry Gross]

One of the things you didn't do is use a prosthetic nose. Roy Cohn had a very distinctive nose, and there's kind of like a ridge in the middle of it. And the ridge became discolored. And I think a lot of actors would have had some kind of prosthetic on their nose to duplicate Roy Cohn's nose. You did not do that. Was that your decision?

[Jeremy Strong]

Yeah. At the end of the day, you know, it was something our director wanted to do, and we discussed it, and you pick your battles, but that was one of them for me. Yeah. He had this operation, this botched surgery. His mother, Dora, wanted to get his nose fixed because she felt that it was a Semitic nose and she wanted to get it fixed. And instead they botched it. And he was stuck with this sort of gash in the middle of his face for his whole life. And it's a sort of, you know, Ali Abbasi, our director, who's a brilliant filmmaker, and he essentially has made these sort of monster movies. And so I think he saw this in the same way. And I felt that Roy is enough, innately a monster. This is me objectively, before I, you know, as I'm approaching the work and making those aesthetic decisions that we don't need to put a hat on a hat. And I felt that the scar in the middle of my face could be in danger of taking us into, you know, Dick Tracy Toontown world.

[Terry Gross]

Yeah. So, you know, the film is in part how Trump became so litigious, like suing so many people and getting sued a lot, too. So the movie's in part about that. And to underscore how litigious he can be, he threatened to sue the film to prevent it from being distributed. His lawyers wrote a cease and desist order to try to prevent it from opening. So there's been a lot of complicated behind the scenes goings on in terms of finding a different distributor and more funding and dealing with this threatened lawsuit. So how involved were you in that part of the story and in even knowing what was going on?

[Jeremy Strong]

I was aware. I mean, listen, this movie opens on Friday on 1500 screens. I think it's playing in every state in this country. I personally think it's sort of imperative that people see this movie just to be. Just to learn and become informed. The movie explores essentially how Trump was made and his philosophical moral framework. But, yeah, no one would touch this movie. The studios were afraid to touch it. The streamers were afraid to touch it.

[Terry Gross]

Who were they afraid of?

[Jeremy Strong]

They were afraid of litigation, and they were afraid of repercussions from a possible Trump administration.

[Terry Gross]

I would say let's talk about Succession a little bit.

[Jeremy Strong]

Sure. I don't know if I'll remember anything, Terry, but let's try.

[Terry Gross]

Okay, great. Thank you. So Succession is the HBO series about a media mogul who owns a Fox News, kind of conservative cable network. He owns theme parks and cruise ships. He's old, his health is fragile, and his four adult children are competing to see which of them will take their father's place. So you auditioned initially for Roman, the Kieran Culkin character, And then Adam McKay, who was an executive producer of Succession. After you didn't get the part of Roman, he asked you to audition for Kendall, which is the role you became famous for. And, you know, Kendall is this mix of, like, confidence, sometimes overconfidence and insecurity, uncertainty, indecisiveness, sometimes decisiveness, but the decision is frequently not the right one. So there's this constant conflict going on within him. What did you relate to about that brew of contradictions within him?

[Jeremy Strong]

You know, my experience as an actor was an experience of years and years and years of kind of struggling and feeling thwarted and feeling a sense of being denied, a sense of being in a wilderness. So those feelings were accessible to me the way that Kendall, who begins the series as the incumbent and then is sort of, you know, held down and subverted and thwarted, but with a great need and desire to do the thing he feels that he is born to do. That's something that Vector was very alive for me.

[Terry Gross]

So in one of the final scenes in Succession, the father has died, the children are fighting to keep the company, while the head of another company is trying to buy it out. Kendall has pitched himself as the success. At the final board meeting before the decision is made, they're about to vote, and each of the three siblings has a vote, too. And the decisive vote is going to be the sister shivs. And before she says what her vote is going to be, she calls a meeting in another room with you and Kieran Culkin's character, and she explains why she's not going to vote for you. And this refers back to when you confessed to your siblings that you had accidentally killed a young man while you were very high and he had a drug contact and you were too high to be driving, and you accidentally drove off the road into a lake, and you couldn't rescue him from the car. So what you did was, like, run away and then, like, pretend like you had nothing to do with it, but you confessed to your father, who covered it up for you, and then you were indebted to him. So I want to play that scene where the three siblings are in a separate room, and Shiv, your character's sister, is explaining why she's not going to vote for you.

[Jeremy Strong]

Hmm. I feel like if I don't get to do this, I feel like that's it. Like, I might. I might. Like, I might die.

[Terry Gross]

Shiv, can we go in that room? Can you just vote, please?

[Jeremy Strong]

Please?

[Terry Gross]

You can't be CEO. You can't, because you killed someone.

[Jeremy Strong]

Which. What?

[Terry Gross]

Wait, which. Which what? Like. Like you've killed so many people you forgot which one.

[Jeremy Strong]

That's. That. That's not an issue. That didn't happen.

[Terry Gross]

Wait, it didn't as in what?

[Jeremy Strong]

It's just a thing I said. It's a thing I said. I made it up.

[Terry Gross]

You made it up.

[Jeremy Strong]

It was a difficult time for us, and I think I, you know, whatever, must have something from nothing, because I just. I wanted for us all to bond at a difficult moment. Wait, it was a move. No, no, not. There was a kid. There was that kid, but.

[Terry Gross]

So there was a kid.

[Jeremy Strong]

I had, like, a token, a beer, and not. I didn't even get in the car.

[Terry Gross]

Hold on.

[Jeremy Strong]

What? I felt bad and I false memoried it. Like, I'm totally clean. I can do this.

[Terry Gross]

Wait, did it happen or did it not happen?

[Jeremy Strong]

It did not happen. It did not happen. I wasn't even there. It did not happen. Dude, vote for me. Just plea. Vote for me, Shiv. Vote for me.

[Terry Gross]

No.

[Jeremy Strong]

Yes. Shiv, don't do this. You can't do this. No, absolutely. Absolutely not, man. Absolutely not.

[NPR Sponsor]

No.

[Jeremy Strong]

Why? No.

[Terry Gross]

Why?

[Jeremy Strong]

What? Just. I love you.

[Terry Gross]

I really.

[Jeremy Strong]

I love you, but I cannot stomach you. This is disgusting. It doesn't even make any sense. I'm the eldest boy. I am the eldest boy.

[Terry Gross]

You're not.

[Jeremy Strong]

And, you know, it mattered to him. He wanted this to go on.

[Terry Gross]

Such a great scene. And I should mention that's Sarah Snook playing Shiv and Kieran Culkin playing Roman. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jeremy Strong. He stars in the new film the Apprentice as the unethical lawyer Rory Cohn, who became Donald Trump's lawyer and mentor when Trump was a young man in the HBO series succession Strong played Kendall Roy. We'll be right back after a short break.

[Jeremy Strong]

Terrence.

[Terry Gross]

I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH air.

[NPR Sponsor]

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[Terry Gross]

Support for NPR comes from Google. This year, Google is celebrating the breakout.

[Jeremy Strong]

Searches of 2024 that captured the world's attention and shaped our year in ways we never saw coming. Watch the film at G co yearinsearch.

[Terry Gross]

Google search on this is FRESH air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Jeremy Strong. In the new film the Apprentice, he plays Roy Cohn, the unethical lawyer who became Donald Trump's lawyer and mentor when Trump was a young man trying to establish himself as a real estate developer. Jeremy Strong is up for a Golden Globe as best supporting actor for his performance in the Apprentice. Strong's breakout role was in the HBO series Succession, in which he played Kendall Royce, one of the siblings competing to become the successor to their father, who reigns over a media empire but is old and possibly nearing death. So in the final scene of succession, you've lost the company, you've lost everything that you've ever had or ever wanted. And you're sitting on a bench next to the Hudson River. The only thing that separates you is a guardrail. And you look so dejected, in such despair that it looks like you are seriously considering jumping into the river and ending it. And the series ends like that. When I interviewed Jesse Armstrong after the end of the series, I asked him about that scene and I want to play my question and what Jesse Armstrong had to say. And Jesse Armstrong wrote this episode and, you know, was the showrunner and creator of this series. So here we go. My understanding is that Jeremy Strong improvised a take in which he Climbs over the railing from the pedestrian side of the river to the riverside and looking as if he's really maybe about to jump in. And his bodyguard like, runs over to prevent that from happening. And that was improvised. Were you there when Jeremy Strong improvise that?

[Jeremy Strong]

Sure, yeah, we were there. It's biting cold and we, you know, I'm there every day and certainly for that important scene.

[Terry Gross]

What do you think?

[Jeremy Strong]

I was terrified. I was terrified that he might fall in and be injured. He didn't look like he was going to jump in, but once he climbed over that barrier, you know, when you film, there are generally a lot of health and safety assessments made. And that was not our plan that day. And normally I know that if we, if we'd even been thinking of that happening, we would have had boats and frogmen and all kinds of safety measures, which we didn't have. So my first thought was for his physical safety as a human being, not anything about the character. Yeah, so that's what I felt. Hey, good lord above.

[Terry Gross]

So, Jeremy Strong, did you improvise that scene? Did you know you were going to do it?

[Jeremy Strong]

Did I know I was gonna climb over the barrier?

[Terry Gross]

No. Was that something?

[Jeremy Strong]

No.

[Terry Gross]

So how did you end up doing it?

[Jeremy Strong]

You, I think, learn over a lifetime to obey your deepest instincts and, you know, it's that thing of better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. I was obeying a deep impulse. I mean, my feeling and strong conviction was and, and is. But it's Jesse's show at the end of the day. And by the way, it makes me so happy to hear his voice, was that this was a extinction level event for Kendall and that there was no coming back from it. And at this point, he had lost everything. He had lost his father, he had lost his siblings, he'd lost his ex wife, he had lost his children, he'd lost his putative reason for being. And also remember he was an addict. So I just did not believe that he was coming back from that.

[Terry Gross]

So when you were thinking of doing something as radical as changing the last moment of the series.

[Jeremy Strong]

Yeah, but it's only radical because maybe you weren't there for the way we made the whole show. It's not radical at all. I mean, I, you know, over seven years I was as much involved in what happened on the show or what happened in any given scene, and I was as much an authority and had as much ownership over my character as the director and the writers did. So it was always a collaboration. At the end of the day, it's in the edit that Jesse and Mark Mylod's sort of authorial decisions take precedence over mine. But they always welcomed my impulses and often used them. You know, the moment I think that Jesse chose is extremely powerful, and he's sort of frozen in a kind of inner scream, and I love that he chose that. The moment that I attempted to search for I'd had no idea what would happen was equally truthful to what we had done so far.

[Terry Gross]

I want to talk a little bit about your life. So you grew up in, I think, what you've described as a rough neighborhood in the Jamaica Plain area of Boston, and then your family moved to a suburb. What was the difference in neighborhoods and what was the difference in who you were in each neighborhood and how you tried, if you tried to fit in?

[Jeremy Strong]

Yeah, you know, Jamaica Plain, which has now become quite gentrified, was different in the late 70s and early 80s. And I went to school and West Roxbury and sort of that was where I grew up. And it was certainly more urban than where I'd later moved to. It was really diverse. It was really. My father worked in juvenile justice and ran these essentially jails for the Department of Youth Services. My mother was a hospice nurse. They're both sort of givers, you know, they're both empaths and I think, really courageous people. And, you know, I started doing plays in the basement of a church down at the bottom of the hill from the street. I grew up on Jamaica street, and, you know, that was kind of it. I don't even really remember, but it's been an obsession of mine since I was maybe five years old. Acting has been a pleasure.

[Terry Gross]

You know, you mentioned your father worked in juvenile jails in the area, and I think he was kind of the equivalent of a warden. Is that fair to say?

[Jeremy Strong]

Yeah, but much more benevolent than that and much more loved than what you think of as a warden. You know, these were facilities for minors, but kids who had been locked up for very serious offenses, gang and. And murder and rape and heavy, heavy stuff. But my father really believed in the rehabilitative potential and redemptive potential of these kids. And I would go visit him at these places, and some of them would make, you know, things for me in wood shop. And, you know, that was his world. But, yeah, I was like a street kid. And then When I was 10, we moved out to an affluent suburb that was just a different world. You know, I'd never seen homes like that, or I don't think I'd ever seen a Mercedes Benz before and we rented a house there. And, you know, I think I felt like an outsider.

[Terry Gross]

Well, let's take a short break here and then talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jeremy Strong. He played Kendall Roy in HBO Sex Session. He now stars in the new film the Apprentice as the young Donald Trump's lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn. We'll be right back. This is FRESH air.

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[Terry Gross]

This is FRESH air. Let's get back to my interview with Jeremy Strong, who became famous for his role on HBO Succession as Kendall Roy. He star in the new film the Apprentice. It's about Donald Trump as a young man striving to become successful and his unethical lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn, played by Jeremy Strong. Both of your parents had very dramatic jobs. Both of your parents were immersed in life changing events of people your father, young people who've been convicted of crimes and your mother, people who were approaching death. She was a hospice nurse. That's a lot of drama to grow up with. Was there a lot of discussion of their work in the house? Were you always hearing stories about kids who, you know, got into trouble and people who were dealing with imminent death and were in hospice?

[Jeremy Strong]

No, I think they actually really shielded my brother and I from that and protected us from any of that heaviness or drama. But I did sort of grok as a young person how important and how much their work mattered to them. That had an effect on me. And I'm sure I sound incredibly self serious in this conversation, which I don't mean to But I. You know, I don't take any of this sort of frivolously because these are lives. These are people's lives that essentially I'm playing with and, you know, someone like Roy Cohn. So, you know, it's not a game for me. And I do think there was something about how central my parents work was to their lives and how much they gave of themselves to it that imprinted itself on me.

[Terry Gross]

Were there parts of yourself when you started acting as a child that you were glad to be liberated from?

[Jeremy Strong]

Sure. I mean, acting and the impulse to do this was initially an escape and wanting to escape from where I lived, from the heaviness that I felt from the sort of frayed, strained financial situation and struggles that my parents had. You know, it's a bit of a. It's a bit of a sort of Houdini act, you know, because you can enter into an imaginary world and be free of all of that. Be free of your circumstances and. Yeah, and be free of yourself, you know, because self, as we all, I think, know, can be a kind of prison. So acting is a liberative process because you can just immediately be free from the prison of self and from your environment and circumstances. At least you feel that early in.

[Terry Gross]

Your career you interned with or worked on Cruise 4 films with Daniel Day Lewis, Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino. 3 Very intense, but very different actors. What was your relationship in each of those things? Like which films? Which actor did you crew for?

[Jeremy Strong]

Yeah, well, you know, I grew up so far away from any of this, and I had such a yearning to do it and to be part of the world of it. I still feel that yearning. And those were three of my greatest heroes and still are. So I worked as an intern on Looking for Richard, which was a documentary that Pacino made about Richard iii, which is really incredible. And I stayed at some family friend's.

[Terry Gross]

This is about the Shakespeare play Richard iii.

[Jeremy Strong]

Yeah, about Richard iii, the play. And, you know, was very, very, very peripherally involved in anything. I think I was 14 or 15 and. But, you know, I still have a Dog Day Afternoon poster on my wall. And Al has seen the Apprentice. And of course, Al played Roy Cohn in a definitive way and was very kind to me about it, which, as you can imagine, meant the world to me. But, yeah, so I worked on that and sort of got to observe that and observe him a bit and learn about Shakespeare and, you know, just soaked it all up. And I'd heard that the Crucible was going to be filmed in Massachusetts and so, you know, you just kind of by hook or by crook, I wrote letters and dozens and dozens of what.

[Terry Gross]

Would you say to your letters asking to what Daniel they learned or Dustin Hoffman?

[Jeremy Strong]

I don't really remember. You know, for the Crucible, it was just I'm this kid and, you know, I'll take off from school, I'll work for free. I'll do anything. And I ended up working in the greens department as an intern, an unpaid intern, like hanging leaves on trees on a place called Hog island outside of Ipswich, Massachusetts. And, you know, just getting to be a fly on a magnificent wall. You know, it was Daniel and Joan Allen and Paul Schofield and Nicholas Heitner directed it. And, you know, as a young person who's never been on a film set or who's never been in the presence of what you consider to be real actors, it's just priceless to be able to witness some of it and some of the texture of what it actually is.

[Terry Gross]

Did you get to talk to Daniel Day Lewis or his Method or anything?

[Jeremy Strong]

No, not then. I mean, observe. Sure. From a distance. And, you know, later, much later, I worked for Daniel on a film and then we made a film together ten years after that. So, you know, he's someone that I admire immeasurably.

[Terry Gross]

Well, let's take a short break here and then talk some more. If you're just joining us, my guest is Jeremy Strong. He played Kendall Roy in HBO Sex Session. He now stars in the new film the Apprentice as the young Donald Trump's lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn. We'll be right back. This is FRESH air.

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[Jeremy Strong]

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[Terry Gross]

What makes a great pair of glasses at Warby Parker?

[Jeremy Strong]

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[Terry Gross]

This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Jeremy Strong, who became famous for his role on HBO Succession as Kendall Roy. He stars on the new film the Apprentice. It's about Donald Trump as A young man striving to become successful, and his unethical lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn, played by Jeremy Strong. So I want to end with a song. There are two musical moments in succession that really stand out. One is when you're practicing, you're kind of doing a sound check for your birthday party that you've planned, and it's a very elaborate, really ridiculous party that you've planned that doesn't work out well, but you're rehearsing or doing the soundcheck with the Billy Joel song Honesty, which.

[Jeremy Strong]

Was a pitch I made to Jesse.

[Terry Gross]

Oh, really? How did you choose that song? And I should mention that you sing it with, like, conviction and earnestness, and everybody in the room is just cringing.

[Jeremy Strong]

Well, you know, the conviction and earnestness part is mine. I'll leave the cringing up to everybody else. But I will say that my. I don't know if it was my nanny or my wife, but they told my kids about these songs, and my kids, who are 3 and 5 and 6, started to listen to them, especially when I'm away, which I have to be a lot for work. And we have a house in this village in Denmark, and this sort of fishing village outside of Copenhagen with these speakers outside. So if you happen to walk past this house on many days this summer, you might have heard one of those two songs, because I think I know what the other one you're referring to, playing, like, loudly over speakers from my own house, which certainly makes me cringe, but is very sweet because my kids have come to really love them.

[Terry Gross]

But why did you choose Honesty?

[Jeremy Strong]

Well, for a guy who was throwing that party and was gonna dress himself up on a cross with a USB Crown of Thorns, it felt. I learned two songs for it. I learned Honesty and I learned King of Pain by the Police. And I did both of those songs on the day, and so I think either of them would have worked. King of Pain is also a great song.

[Terry Gross]

The song I want to end with is L to the og, Right.

[Jeremy Strong]

Which my kids can now do a pretty good version of.

[Terry Gross]

Good. So if I listen to it any more times, so will I be able to. Okay. So this is like the rap that you do at your father's 50th anniversary of his business.

[Jeremy Strong]

Yeah. I just want to say to that. You know, it's such an interesting object lesson in how you know these things when you're making them. You know, it's just you in a room with a couple people. And I was in Glasgow. We were filming Nick Britell who's the composer, called me up in my room.

[Terry Gross]

And he wrote the great theme song this session.

[Jeremy Strong]

He wrote the theme song and he wrote this and he said, hey, I have this rap. Maybe you could do it at the dinner. We were filming it three days later, and he played it for me on the phone, and I have a recording of it in my voice notes, and it was roughly what it became. I made up the chorus for and made up the melody for it and made it up in the car as we were driving from Glasgow to Dundee. And it's just a pretty ad hoc thing in the making of it. You're just kind of throwing something together and you're dancing as fast as you can. And I asked the costume designer. I sketched out a jersey that I thought I could wear, and they made it for me and had it three days later. So, again, to say a little bit to that question of, like, how on earth could I try and do something different in the final scene? Like, the way we made that show was incredibly collaborative, and so that became something that people reference and know about.

[Terry Gross]

So just one more question about that. The way you say L to the og, the way your voice raises on the og yeah, it's like a question mark. Usually in hip hop, there's a lot of assertion, you know, and almost arrogance, you know, like, this is who I am.

[Jeremy Strong]

Sure.

[Terry Gross]

So was that a choice to make it sound, like, a little, like, tentative and insecure, like a question as opposed to, like an exclamation?

[Jeremy Strong]

No. It's interesting. You know, back when I would go to some acting classes, people would always say, oh, I like the choice you made, or, that's an interesting choice. I never, ever experience anything as a choice. I experience it as an impulse, and I've learned to trust those impulses. So that's just when I was trying out things in the car, trying to learn that rap in the back of a sedan on my way on some road in Scotland that's just ended up feeling like the best way to sing it. And so I just stuck with it because, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. And I had, like, two days to be able to stand up there and do it, and I didn't want anyone to hear it until the first take. So one thing I love about that scene is the look on. On Kieran and Sarah and everybody's faces, which is just, like, incredible.

[Terry Gross]

It was like horror.

[Jeremy Strong]

But that's because they'd never seen me do it until then.

[Terry Gross]

Oh, like, they were. So that was a real Reaction?

[Jeremy Strong]

In part, yeah. But that's the thing about film. You want it to be real, or at least I do.

[Terry Gross]

That's really funny. So one more question, and then I will let you go, because I've kept you a long time. How did it feel to end your relationship with Kendall when the series ended? Did you feel liberated from him or did you miss him?

[Jeremy Strong]

To be honest, I've sort of just put it away. Like, I put away all of these things. You know, I have a stack of scripts in my office, and it's like this stack of lives that I've had that when they're over, they're over, and you just put them away. And I put it away because, you know, I have a life and children. And then I moved on to the Ibsen play, and that took up all of me. So, you know, I don't feel more of a kinship with that role than I do with any other role that I've ever played, which might sound like a strange thing, because I know it's the thing that I've become known most for. You know, one day, maybe I'll watch it all back and sort of take in the magnitude of what it was, but I've probably had to protect myself from that because I don't think that that would serve me, if that makes any sense. You know, it's the Rudyard Kipling thing of, like, you have to treat success and failure as imposters. I find that you do your work, you do it on the day, you give it everything, and then that's it. Like, that's all you need to be involved with. So whether it becomes the biggest thing in the world, whether something wins the Academy Award, that's not your concern. Your concern is to be all in when you're doing it.

[Terry Gross]

Well, it's just been great to talk with you. I admire your work so much. Thank you so much for being on our show. Likewise.

[Jeremy Strong]

Yeah, it's so great to talk to you.

[Terry Gross]

And let's end with Elta, the OG okay, so this is Jeremy Strong, who stars as Roy Cohn in the new movie the Apprentice. And here's EL to the OG which he sings in succession. Thank you again.

[Jeremy Strong]

Thanks, Terry. L to the OG dude be the OG A N he playing, playing like a pro C L to the O G DO be the OG A and he playing, playing like a pro make some noise. A1 ratings ADK1 never gonna stop, baby for the time, bro don't get it twisted I've been through hell but since I san dad I'm alive and well. Shaper of views, creator of news, father of many paid all his dues. So don't try to run your mouth at the king. Just pucker up and go kiss the ring. L to the OG dude, be the OG A n he playing make some noise when I say L U say O G L to the L to the L to the L to the L to the O G.

[Terry Gross]

My interview with Jeremy Strong was recorded in October. He's nominated for a Golden Globe for his role as Donald Trump's lawyer and mentor Rory Cohn in the film the Apprentice. The awards ceremony is Sunday, January 5th. The host will be Nikki Glaser. We'll hear my interview with Glaser on Monday and tomorrow on Fresh Air. As our holiday week series continues, we'll hear Tanya Mosley's interview with TV journalist Connie Chung. Chung will talk about her climb to the top of her white male dominated field, her love of hard news and her nearly 40 year marriage to tabloid talk show host Maury Povich. I hope you'll join us to keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews. Follow us on Instagram. P R Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is R.G. bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Stanischewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Annmarie Botinato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co host is Tanya Moseley. I'm Terry grand.

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[Jeremy Strong]

Elegant as the most expensive brands, but.

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[Jeremy Strong]

Com.