TERRY GROSS, HOST:
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 with a great actor. Like many fans of HBO's "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 Ipsen'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 streaming. "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 on 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 Cohn 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. Cohn 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE APPRENTICE")
JEREMY STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) What is your business, Donald?
SEBASTIAN STAN: (As Donald Trump) Real estate. I'm vice president of Trump Organization.
STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) Oh, you're Fred Trump's kid?
STAN: (As Donald Trump) That's right.
STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) He's Fred Trump's kid. It sounds like your father's a little tangled up. It looks like he could use a good mowing (ph).
(LAUGHTER)
STAN: (As Donald Trump) No.
STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) Go ahead. Tell us about it.
STAN: (As Donald Trump) Right now, the government and the NAACP are suing us. They're saying our apartments are segregated.
STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) This is America. You can rent to whoever the hell you damn want.
STAN: (As Donald Trump) But our lawyer wants us to pay a huge fine to settle, and we can't. It's going to bankrupt us and ruin the company, so...
STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) Then you tell the feds to f**k themselves.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR: (As character) Damn straight.
STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) File a lawsuit. Always file a lawsuit. Fight them in court. Make them prove you're discriminating.
STAN: (As Donald Trump) Wow. I guess I might have to get us a new lawyer.
STRONG: (As Roy Cohn) Of course, it helps if Nixon and the attorney general are your pals.
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 it.
STRONG: Thank you, Terry. I'm honored to be talking to you. Thanks for having me.
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?
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 Trial Of The 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.
GROSS: But did you ever fact-check any of it? Like, did you feel a responsibility to not only be - have acting truth but have, you know, like, fact truth?
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 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.
GROSS: And I should mention here that the film was written by Gabriel Sherman, who is a journalist who wrote a book about, you know, Murdoch and Fox News.
STRONG: Yeah, a book about Roger Ailes and...
GROSS: Yeah. I should have said Ailes, right?
STRONG: Well, no, I mean, it's also about Murdoch. But, of course...
GROSS: Yeah.
STRONG: ...I read that book when I was working on "Succession" because, you know, during that time...
GROSS: Right. Well, that's the thing. Like, I feel like your recent career is so connected to Trump, because "Succession..."
STRONG: There's intersectionality there, yeah.
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."
STRONG: You know, I don't.
(LAUGHTER)
STRONG: 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...
GROSS: Oh, yeah, yeah. I know who he is, yeah.
STRONG: Jon 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...
GROSS: Yes. I'm going to...
STRONG: ...To play whatever piece of music that I'm given.
GROSS: I'm going to stop you there because I was going to 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.
STRONG: Thank you. You know, I used to when I was in college. I sort of have held on to 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 just 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, the - 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 "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.
GROSS: Well, why don't we listen to the real Roy Cohn's voice? This is from an interview with Tom Snyder...
STRONG: Yeah.
GROSS: ...On his late-night show "Tomorrow," as...
STRONG: I probably watched this a thousand times.
GROSS: Really? As broadcast in 1977. So here we go.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE TOMORROW SHOW")
TOM SNYDER: Now, here is Roy Cohn, who appeared recently on the cover of Esquire Magazine. And the title of that article, as I recall, sir, was "The Legal Executioner."
ROY COHN: Yeah.
SNYDER: And it went on to say that you are really a tough man and that at times you've been...
COHN: Tough, mean, vicious and so on.
SNYDER: What does that kind of publicity do for your business in New York?
COHN: Oh, it's fantastic. The worse the adjectives, the better it is for business.
SNYDER: What are they looking for? What are they buying?
COHN: 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 unless they act promptly and reasonably, that all sorts of terrible consequences are going to flow.
GROSS: So what was it like playing somebody who you find, like - is despicable too strong a word?
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.
GROSS: And just be him.
STRONG: You have to leave your judgment 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.
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's "Succession." 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Jeremy Strong, who became famous for his role on HBO's "Succession" as Kendall Roy. He stars 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. One of the things you didn't do is use a prosthetic nose. Roy Cohn had a very distinctive nose.
STRONG: Yeah.
GROSS: And there's kind of, like, a ridge in the middle of it.
STRONG: Yeah.
GROSS: 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?
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/Toon Town world.
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. He - 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?
STRONG: I was aware - I mean, listen, this movie opens on Friday on 1,500 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. It - 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. I think...
GROSS: Who were they afraid of?
STRONG: They were afraid of litigation, and they were afraid of repercussions from, you know, a possible Trump administration, I would say.
GROSS: Let's talk about "Succession" a little bit.
STRONG: Sure. I don't know if I'll remember anything, Terry, but let's try.
GROSS: OK, 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.
STRONG: Right.
GROSS: 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 is this constant conflict going on within him. What did you relate to about that brew of contradictions within him?
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, you know, 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.
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 successor 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, Shiv's. 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SUCCESSION")
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) I feel like - if I don't get to do this, I feel like that's it - like I might die.
KIERAN CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) Shiv, can we go in that room? Can you just vote?
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) Please. Please.
SARAH SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) You can't be CEO. You can't, because you killed someone.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) What are you - which?
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) What?
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) Wait, what do you mean?
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) Which?
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) Which? What, like, like you've killed so many people, you forgot which one?
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) That's not an issue. That didn't happen.
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) Wait. It didn't, as in what?
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) As in it's just a thing I said. It's a thing I said. I made it up.
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) You made it up.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) Yeah, I - it was a difficult time for us. And I think I, you know, whatever, mussed up something from nothing because I just - I wanted for us all to bond at a difficult moment.
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) Wait, it was a move?
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) OK?
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) No, no, not - there was a kid. It wasn't that kid, but, like...
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) So there was a kid.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) I had, like, a toke and a beer, and not - I didn't even get in the car. It's not...
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) Hold on. What?
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) I felt bad, and I false memoried it. Like, I'm totally clean. I can do this.
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) Wait. Did it happen, or did it not happen?
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) It did not happen. It did not happen. I wasn't even there. It did not happen.
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) Dude.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) Vote for me. Just please, vote for me. Shiv, vote for me.
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) No.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) Yes.
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) No.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) Shiv, don't do this.
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) No.
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) No.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) You can't do this, Shiv.
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) No.
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) No.
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) Absolutely not.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) Yes.
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) No.
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) Absolutely not, man.
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) No.
CULKIN: (As Roman Roy) Absolutely not.
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) No.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) Why?
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) No - why?
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) What - just...
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) I love you. I really - I love you, but I cannot f*****g stomach you.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) This is disgusting. It doesn't even make any sense. I'm the eldest boy.
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy, laughing).
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) I am the eldest boy.
SNOOK: (As Siobhan Roy) You're not.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) And, you know, this - it mattered to him. He wanted this to go on.
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 Roy 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. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF NICHOLAS BRITELL'S "CONCERTO GROSSO IN C MINOR + END CREDITS - 'YOU HAVE TO BE A KILLER'")
GROSS: 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 Roy, 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 guard rail, 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
GROSS: 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 river side, 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 improvised that?
JESSE ARMSTRONG: Sure, yeah, we were there. It was biting cold, and we were - you know, I'm there every day, and certainly for that important scene.
GROSS: What'd you think?
ARMSTRONG: 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'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 on the day. I thought, oh, good Lord above.
GROSS: So, Jeremy Strong, did you improvise that scene? Did you know you were going to do it?
STRONG: Did I know I was going to climb over the barrier?
GROSS: Yeah. Was it - was that something...
STRONG: No.
GROSS: So how did you end up doing it?
STRONG: You, I think, learn over a lifetime to obey your deepest instincts, and, you know, it's that thing of it's better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. I was obeying a deep impulse. I mean, my feeling and strong conviction was 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 had 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.
GROSS: So when you were thinking of doing something as radical as changing the last moment of the series and, like...
STRONG: Yeah, but it's only radical because maybe you weren't there for the way we made the whole show.
GROSS: What would that be?
STRONG: 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.
GROSS: I want to talk a little bit about your life. So you grew up in a - 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?
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 in West Roxbury, and sort of that was where I grew up. And it was certainly more urban than where I'd later move 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 5 years old.
GROSS: Acting has been an obsession.
STRONG: Yeah. Yeah.
GROSS: You know, you mentioned your father was a - worked in juvenile jails in the area, and I think he was kind of the equivalent of a warden. Is that fair to say?
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 murder and rape and heavy, heavy stuff. And - 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 woodshop. And - you know, and 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.
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's "Succession." 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.
(SOUNDBITE OF NONAME, ET AL.'S "BALLOONS")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Jeremy Strong, who became famous for his role on HBO's "Succession" as Kendall Roy. He stars 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 lifechanging events of people - your father, young people who'd been convicted of crimes...
STRONG: Yeah.
GROSS: ...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?
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 'cause 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.
GROSS: Were there parts of yourself when you started acting as a child that you were glad to be liberated from?
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 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.
GROSS: Early in your career, you interned with or worked on crews for films with Daniel Day-Lewis, Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino, three very intense but very different actors. What was your relationship in each of those things? Like, which films, which actor, did you crew for?
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 friends.
GROSS: This is about the Shakespeare play, "Richard III"?
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.
GROSS: (Laughter).
STRONG: 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 had 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 letters...
GROSS: What would you say to your letters asking to work with Daniel Day-Lewis or Dustin Hoffman?
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 Scofield, and Nicholas Hytner 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.
GROSS: Did you get to talk to Daniel Day-Lewis, or...
STRONG: No, no. No.
GROSS: ...Observe his method or anything?
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 10 years after that. So, you know, he's someone that I admire immeasurably.
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's "Succession." 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.
STRONG: (SOUNDBITE OF CURTIS MAYFIELD SONG, "PUSHERMAN")
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Jeremy Strong, who became famous for his role on HBO's "Succession" as Kendall Roy. He stars 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.
GROSS: So I want to end with a song. There are two musical moments in "Succession" that really stand out. One was when you're practicing - you're kind of doing a sound check for your birthday party that you've...
STRONG: Yeah.
GROSS: ...Planned. And it's a very elaborate, really ridiculous party that you've planned that doesn't work out well.
STRONG: Yeah.
GROSS: But what - you're rehearsing or doing the sound check with the Billy Joel song "Honesty."
STRONG: Yeah. Yeah.
GROSS: And...
STRONG: Which was a pitch I made to Jesse.
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 (laughter).
STRONG: Well, you know, the conviction and earnestness part is mine. I'll leave the cringing up to everybody else. But I will say (laughter) 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, in this sort of fishing village outside of Copenhagen, with these speakers outside. So if you happened to walk past this house on many days this summer, you might have heard one of those two songs - 'cause 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.
GROSS: But why did you choose "Honesty?"
STRONG: Well, for a guy who was throwing that party and was going to dress himself up on a cross...
GROSS: (Laughter) Yeah.
STRONG: ...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.
GROSS: The song I want to end with is "L To The OG."
STRONG: Right, which my kids can now do a pretty good version of.
GROSS: Good (laughter). So - if I listen to it any more times, so will I be able to (laughter). OK. So this is, like, the rap that you do at your father's 50th anniversary of his business.
STRONG: Yeah.
GROSS: And...
STRONG: Can I - I just want to say 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.
GROSS: And he wrote the great theme song to "Succession."
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 it 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 to - 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.
GROSS: So just one more question about that - the way you say, L to the OG, the way your voice raises on the OG...
STRONG: Yeah.
GROSS: ...It's like a question mark. Usually, in hip-hop, there's a lot of assertion (laughter), you know...
STRONG: Yeah. That's correct.
GROSS: ...And almost arrogance. You know, like, this is who I am.
STRONG: Sure.
GROSS: So was that a choice, to make it sound, like, a little, like, tentative...
STRONG: No.
GROSS: ...And insecure, like a question as opposed to, like, an exclamation?
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 just ended up feeling like the best way to sing it. And so I just stuck with it 'cause, 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 my - on Kieran and Sarah and everybody's faces, which is just, like, incredible.
GROSS: It was like horror.
(LAUGHTER)
STRONG: But that's because they'd never seen me do it until then.
GROSS: Oh, like they were (laughter)...
STRONG: No.
GROSS: So that was a real reaction in part?
STRONG: Yeah, but that's the thing about film. You want it to be real - or at least, I do.
GROSS: That's really funny. So one more question, and...
STRONG: OK.
GROSS: ...Then I will let you go, 'cause I've kept you a long time. How did it feel to end your relationship with Kendall and the series ended? Did you feel liberated from him, or did you miss him?
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 impostors. 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.
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.
STRONG: Thank you, Terry. Likewise. Yeah, it's so great to talk to you.
GROSS: And let's end with "L To The OG."
STRONG: OK.
GROSS: So this is Jeremy Strong, who stars as Roy Cohn in the new movie "The Apprentice," and here's "L To The OG," which he sings in "Succession." Thank you again.
STRONG: Thanks, Terry.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "SUCCESSION")
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy, rapping) L to the OG - dude be the O-G-A-N - he playing, playing like a pro, see. L to the OG - dude be the O-G-A-N. He playing - playing like a pro. Make some noise. A-1 ratings, 80K wine - never going to stop, baby, f*** Father Time. Bro, don't get it twisted, I've been through hell. But since I stan 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, b****, and go kiss the ring. L to the OG - dude be the O-G-A-N - he playing. Make some noise. When I say L, you say OG. L to the - L to the...
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (As characters) OG.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) L to the...
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (As characters) OG.
STRONG: (As Kendall Roy) L to the - L to the OG.
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, Roy Cohn, in the film "The Apprentice." The awards ceremony is Sunday, January 5. 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 Tonya 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 at @nprfreshair.
(SOUNDBITE OF NICHOLAS BRITELL'S "SUCCESSION (MAIN TITLE THEME)")
GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
(SOUNDBITE OF NICHOLAS BRITELL'S "SUCCESSION (MAIN TITLE THEME)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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