Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens gets Interviewed

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FLOPCHIN STOVENS INTERVIEW

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan Stevens looks shaken. We are in an empty restaurant in New York and I have justbecome the first outsider he has ever told about his death in Downton Abbey.
“It is very odd,” he says.

After the Christmas special yesterday, the entire world knows that honourable, handsome,happy Matthew Crawley has died at the wheel of his car, reducing a nation to
tears of dismay and disbelief. At the time of our interview last month, there
was a lot of speculation, but no actual confirmation. “It is very strange to
make it official especially since we are talking about it in the future
perfect,” he says, with a laugh. “I am not sure exactly what tense it is, but
it is something very weird.”

That is an almost perfect Dan Stevens joke. He is the charming, well-spoken,Cambridge-educated actor who has become as famous as any movie star thanks to
his role as the romantic lead in Downton. But his literary aspirations, his
desire to be more than just another TV sensation, meant that though his fans
wanted him to stay, they knew that he would probably choose to go.

In fact, he made the decision in February before he even started filming the thirdseries. “We were always optioned for three years,” he explains. “And when that
came up it was a very difficult decision. But it felt like a good time to take
stock, to take a moment. From a personal point of view, I wanted a chance to do
other things.

“It is a very monopolising job. So there is a strange sense of liberation at the sametime as great sadness because I am very, very fond of the show and always will
be.”

As yet, he can’t say what future projects he will take on, though “there are some excitingopportunities”. Until February, he is on stage in New York, playing opposite
Jessica Chastain and David Strathairn in The Heiress, an adaptation of Henry
James’s Washington Square. Stevens is Morris Townsend, who may or may not be a
fortune hunter. He has sideburns and an American accent and when he walks on
stage, there is the strange frisson of seeing him play someone who is notMatthew Crawley – and convey the ambiguities of a darker character very well.

This ambition to do something different is what has spurred him on. “It is a desirefor freedom really,” he says. “I don’t see money or a particular status as an
actor as a goal but I want to do the best work I can in as interesting a range
of roles as I can. And I think a moment like this is quite unique and presentsthose opportunities more than ever before.

“That may not be the case,” he adds, with another laugh. “I genuinely don’t know exactlywhat is around the corner but I hope it will be something a little bit
different. Morris Townsend is a little bit different, and that for me is good
enough.”

His voicetrails away, and he looks down at his hands. When he is talking about books or
theatre, there is no stopping him. When he talks about Downton, he is more
cautious. At the time he signed up, Stevens was mainly a theatre actor familiar
on television for his part in Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. But he
was neither a household name, nor a heartthrob. Downton, playing on his boyish
handsomeness and his passionate affair with the stand-offish Lady Mary, has
made him a star, both in the UK and America. When he walks on stage in New
York, he commands a round of applause just as great as that of his movie-making
co-stars.

‘None of us had any idea of how successful Downton was going to be,” he says. “I thoughtI was signing up for another period drama that had a slightly modern feel. It
had a freedom about it because it was coming out of the head of Julian Fellowes.
Anything could happen and generally did.”

Its appeal, from the first, was its company feel – rare in TV. “There was no maincharacter. Everybody owned their storyline. And it was fun. It had a tongue in
cheek element which set it apart. I had done quite a few period dramas at that
point and I was ready not to do another one and then these scripts came along
and the Matthew/Mary relationship was just such fun – I am really glad I didn’t
turn it down.”

Stevens’s affection for Downton is unmistakable – he generally tweets “Hound’s bum abbeytime” as each episode starts, a reference to the dog’s bottom that opens the
credits. “In terms of its popularity,” he explains, “there is a kind of ironic
enjoyment as well as a serious enjoyment. One of my ways of coping with the
attention that it has received is to join the ranks enjoying the mania of
Downton rather than take the whole thing too seriously. But that is my way with
most things. Not to take them too seriously.”

That much is clear. He laughs a lot while he talks, and makes rather good jokes. But healso uses this charm to deflect questions. If he has felt any frustration, he
does not show it: but he did make his decision to leave after the second
series, the one in which Matthew – apparently paralysed in the war – was forced
by the plot to rise from his wheelchair like Lazarus from the grave.

“I think it was harder for the people who had to react to me getting out of the chair,”says Stevens, with a grin. “That was a particularly strange point in the
narrative. I think there were some justifiable criticisms of series two and its
pace. I think from what I have seen, series three has been a lot stronger. But
from the actor’s point of view all the bombs and the mud and everything were
great to film and I had a great time.”

Nevertheless,for so intelligent a man, it must have hurt when his peer Benedict Cumberbatchwas quoted as describing that second series as “f------ atrocious.” “From what
he has told me, and from what I understand, he was misquoted or certainly
quoted out of context,” says Stevens, loyally. “But the thing that upset people
was that there is a sort of unwritten rule that whatever you think of other
people’s shows you don’t diss them to journalists.”

He insists, however, that it is Downton’s capacity to surprise – whether it is aTurkish diplomat expiring in Lady Mary’s bed or the unforeseen death of Sybil
in childbirth – that sets it apart. “You think you are trotting along with a
nice Sunday night drama and something happens. It wouldn’t be Downton if it
wasn’t for all the big twists and shocks.”

Now Mathew’s death is the melodrama that has left viewers reeling. “It was veryemotional shooting the end of this series, because those guys are like family.
We have been living together for three years and have been on the most amazing
journey. I don’t think any of us, with the possible exception of Maggie, have
had this kind of explosion in our career paths, and may never again. It has
been so bizarre, and only those who have been through it can understand it.”

His closeness to the Downton tribe is obvious: he describes Hugh Bonneville andAllen Leech (Branson) as being like “hilarious brothers” to him and the
experience of working with Maggie Smith as a joy. “There are certain takes
where you can see us still half-chuckling from some remark she has made just
before ‘action’.” He will miss Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) because “after
everything we have been through it will be sad not to see the relationship
continue”.

“On the other hand, I won’t be sorry to see the back of that dining room,” he says,with a roar of laughter. “It may have held some of the key plot points, but it
is just a nightmare to shoot in. There are so many angles and edits and it gets
very airless and stuffy – and it is blacked out so even at 10 in the morning weare in the dark.”

For all his expressed sadness, he almost glistens with the excitement of what is tocome. He has left after what he describes as the “busiest year I have ever had
professionally. I hope I never have another year that is quite like this.” Even
listing what he has done is exhausting: seven months of shooting Downton, being
a judge for the Man Booker prize, producing the film Summer in February, in
which he also stars, co-editing an online literary magazine (thejunket.org),
writing a column for the Sunday Telegraph, passing 30, becoming a father for
the second time (a son, Aubrey to join Willow, aged three), starring on
Broadway.

This may have had some effect on his choice. “I was in Cornwall producing my first film.I had 145 novels on my plate with the Booker, I was writing and editing, we had
our second baby on the way [his wife is the jazz singer and teacher Susie
Hariet] and things were getting kind of crazy.”

His natural curiosity is revealed by the way he talks about each aspect of theyear. The Booker judging, in particular, allowed the bright boy who sailed out
of Croydon via public school and Cambridge to fulfil his intellectual
ambitions. “Whenever we met as judges it was like some of the finest supervisions
I had at university, talking about literature with brilliant people.” On the
other hand, in the early stages of trying to read so many novels, “I can’t even
begin to describe the depths of despair I was in at some points.”

He feels he can reveal that thanks to his liking for the experimental, he wasparticularly fond of Will Self’s Umbrella. “It is without question an
extraordinary novel but ultimately the question was, are we choosing the most
ground-breaking book or the best work of literary fiction that year. Hilary
Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies is a brilliant, brilliant novel. And if you have
written the best work of literary fiction you should win the prize, so in that
sense it was unanimous.”

Next on the cards, I suspect, though he is guarded, is not theatre or literature, but abig film. “I haven’t done as many films as I would have liked,” he says. “A lot
of my contemporaries have done more. I don’t have ‘I will be a movie star’
emblazoned on anything, but I’d like do a bit more screen stuff and then when
the time is right come back to theatre. When it is good, theatre takes a lot of
beating both to watch and perform.”

It is possible, I suggest, that his life will never again reach this high point offame. “Oh it is quite possible that none of us in Downton will ever again get
the ratings this has had,” he smiles. “But from a career point of view, it has
opened so many doors.

“I genuinely don’t feel ‘I must play this role’ or ‘I must take this much at thebox office’ in order to fulfil my happiness quotient. As long as I am given the
opportunity to keep performing and keep exploring in whatever medium, I’ll be
happy. As long as I get to spend time with my family, I’ll be happy. As long as
I can write in some form, I’ll be happy. It is the essential things like that I
equate with happiness.”

However sad the end of Matthew Crawley, the happiness of Dan Stevens is likely to growand grow.

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Michael Pitt in BULLET MAGAZINE INTERVIEW AND PICS

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Michael Pitt’s American Psyche

by Murphy Cameron

Photography by Jeff Bark

He might look like an angel, but Michael Pitt’s career has been built on a foundation of brutal violence, premeditated attacks, and heartless executions. So it’s surprising to hear that the actor, writer, model, musician, artist, and pugilist considers himself a pacifist—especially when he’s tearing into a slab of red meat.

MICHAEL PITT woke up this morning in the Brooklyn brownstone he shares with his fiancée, model Jamie Bochert, and their cat, Crackhead. He rode the subway into midtown Manhattan, where he sat in on a writers’ meeting for a new film he’s doing. After four or five hours of that, the 31-year-old actor went to Union Editorial to talk to the editors of another movie he’s working on. Then Pitt headed to Mendez Boxing for 12 rounds of sparring. From the gym, he made his way to the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn, where he stopped by his recording studio and art workspace to add to an 8′x8′collage comprised of Native American prints. To top it all off, Pitt slugged through a three-hour work session with Mike Cahill, the director of Another Earth. Now he’s sitting across from me at a French restaurant in Williamsburg, unremarkable but earnest in its bourgeois-bohemian rusticity.

Pitt looks relaxed, his face free of the pugnacious, punked-up expression he wears in many of his films. Shrouded in layers of black, a loose tuque swallowing most of his head, the notoriously press-averse actor acknowledges that skeptics are sometimes cynical when it comes to his wide-ranging non-film projects. “It’s difficult,” he says, cutting into a medium-well steak. “It’s not that common right now, but it is the future. Patti Smith has talked about it—how people thought she couldn’t be a writer because she was in rock and roll. Well fucking read her book.”

Although he’s almost always writing, recording, editing, painting, and training, Pitt is best known for his film and television characters—most notably and recently Jimmy Darmody on HBO’s Martin Scorsese–produced prohibition blowout Boardwalk Empire. Darmody was a conflicted and ambitious bootlegger who murdered men and once bedded his own mother before dying at the hands of his former mentor, Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi), during the rain-soaked finale of last year’s second season.

It’s been a year since Pitt’s departure from the show, and he’s clearly moved on. Already in the works is an adaptation of adventurer Jack Black’s memoir You Can’t Win, a period piece set in the underground world of 1920s prostitution and vagrancy. Pitt stars in the film, which he also produced and co-wrote. He’ll soon start shooting a mafia drama called Rob the Mob, in which he’ll share the screen with Broadway breakout Nina Arianda. “It’s the true story of a Bonnie and Clyde–type couple, who, in the ’90s, decided to rip off Italian social clubs. It started a war within the mafia and the FBI used that commotion to get everyone to rat each other out. It fucking killed the whole thing—it was the mob’s last hurrah.”

In the course of his still-young career, Pitt has worked with some very provocative filmmakers: Larry Clark, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gus Van Sant (twice), Michael Haneke, and Martin McDonagh—the Oscar-winning playwright with whom he collaborated on the recently released film, Seven Psychopaths. (“Stanley Kubrick,” he deadpans when asked if there’s anyone he would die to work with.) But despite—and maybe because of—his many art-house triumphs, the name Michael Pitt hasn’t hit the Hollywood marquee, which is exactly how he wants it.

Pitt was 14 when he started taking the bus to New York from his home of West Orange, New Jersey. On one occasion, he hitched a ride with a friend who’d been studying acting at the American Academy for Dramatic Arts, where Pitt ended up crashing a Bill Bartlett lecture. “He was one of my angels,” Pitt says of the actor, director, and teacher. “Basically, Bill told me, ‘I can’t teach you how to act. I can show you what I know, but you should get the fuck out of acting class and just go do it.’ That’s oversimplifying it, but it was really valuable advice.”

Although West Orange is an upper-middle class suburban community, Pitt encountered his share of tribulations growing up. He hopped between high schools and juvenile detention centers before dropping out at 16. Pitt eventually moved to New York, where he became another struggling kid dabbling in crust-punk homelessness and cheap communal living, with the hope, like so many before him, of somehow subsisting on music, acting, or art. “I sort of bummed around Manhattan when I didn’t really have an address,” he says. “I moved to Brooklyn for financial reasons. Then I learned that there were a lot of people in the same financial situation that I was in.” He’s lived in Brooklyn ever since, physically and spiritually detached from Hollywood’s hollow industrial heart.

Paychecks from discerningly chosen acting parts in independent films aren’t exactly meaty, so Pitt occasionally subsidizes his income with high-end, high-paying fashion gigs, as he did last year when he became the face of Prada’s Spring/Summer 2012 ad campaign. “I’ve done stuff like that to support specific artistic endeavors,” he says. “It’s one of the big reasons I’ve been able to pay rent in New York. Fashion, for all its vanity and superficiality, actually raises a lot of money for organizations and supports many artists. I did the Prada campaign because, one, they asked me, and two, because they really know how to make a fucking suit.” Pitt has also worked with Yves Saint Laurent, another brand that somehow bolsters his already airtight artistic integrity.

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Josh Hutcherson Interview on The Late Show with David Letterman (2012.11.20)

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L.A Times interviews Jonathan Groff-1 video and pics

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The Tony nominee says he's grateful for the experience he's gaining alongside Alfred Molina in the play 'Red' and Kelsey Grammer in the TV series 'Boss'.

Jonathan Groff, 27, who earned a Tony nomination for "Spring Awakening," squares off opposite Alfred Molina in the Mark Taper Forum's production of "Red," about the Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko. Groff also joins the cast of Starz's original series, "Boss," as the assistant to Chicago Mayor Tom Kane (Kelsey Grammer), which has just returned for its second season.

It's interesting that you play an assistant-apprentice in both "Boss" and "Red," but the characters are pretty different. Can you talk about your roles?

I feel that the best way to learn is to work with people who are better than you. On "Boss," I got to play the assistant to Kelsey Grammer, who is an incredible actor and doing something in that show that I think nobody has ever seen him do, and he's just killing it. And then to play the assistant to Alfred Molina [as Rothko]. He's just a total beast onstage, and getting to see him play Rothko, which I think is one of those stage performances that people years from now will say, "I got to see Alfred Molina play Mark Rothko in that production of 'Red,'" and it goes down in theater as one of those historical performances. The fact that I got to play the assistant to both of those actors playing both of these characters was a huge lesson and growing experience for me, and both happened to be generous, sweet men.

So what were the lessons?

It's learning by osmosis, by acting with them and soaking it in and seeing how they work. Certainly in my experience with Fred [Molina], I get to do the same play with him every day in a two-character, so we spend 90 minutes onstage together going back and forth every night, which is different from being with Kelsey, being on set doing the scene once and then never again.Kelsey's process is fascinating: Kelsey turns that character on and off in the blink of an eye. It's insane. And the way he knows how to work the camera, he would coach me even on camera angles and where to look and how to stand. It's watching a master at work and taking mental notes. Then with Fred, watching him night after night re-create these incredible moments and keep it fresh every night is a lesson. It's the best way to learn. I never went to college for acting. I moved to New York pretty much right after high school, so all of my training has been on the job.

It's interesting that you play apprentices and, in real life, there's that element to your work. In "Boss," your character is learning to out power-grab the power-grabber, but in "Red," your character is told to "banish the father ... respect him but kill him." In real life, since your generation will be paying a big chunk of the tab for boomers' excesses, do you have a sense of how your peers view the world they're inheriting? Is it something they want to emulate or smash?

Certainly every person is different. Our generation comes with this world of social media and self-empowerment in feeling the need to share everything on the Internet at all times. Playing the character, what resonates with me is hearing Fred talk about the importance of having reverence for the past and knowing what's come before you in order to move ahead; that's really hitting me in a big way. And I think it's something my generation needs to hear a little bit more of, which is to say I think we all feel really empowered to share by Facebook and Twitter, but oftentimes the listening is going out the door. Sometimes there's a little more output and a little less input.

You weren't familiar with modern art before "Red." Has the play sparked your interest in it?

It really has. I was doing "Boss" [in Chicago] right before I came here to do the play, and they just happened to be doing a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective at the Chicago Art Institute, which I got to check out.

Whom you mention in the play.

Yes, and who's the background of my phone right now and is the poster in my dressing room. I'm inspired by that exhibit. Then during a day off from rehearsal, I flew to Houston for the day and went to see the Rothko Chapel, which is really fascinating. I was reading a lot about Rothko and Jackson Pollock and their art and opinions of their art, and seeing the art was so much more affecting than simply reading about them. We took a little field trip from rehearsal to go to MOCA. I went to "The Painting Factory" exhibit between shows with Fred last weekend. Fred's voice is always in my head; whenever I look at a painting, I hear, "Lean into it. Engage with it. Let it affect you." So it's more fun now to look at art because I feel so ready to be open to it. I'm so blessed and lucky that I got to do this play, because it busted open a whole other side of me that wasn't there before.

You grew up in Amish country in Pennsylvania, and your father is a Mennonite horse trainer and driver. He's not a cabbie; he races them, yes?

Yes, it's harness racing.

Does your father eschew 20th and 21st century technology?

I was raised Methodist. My mom is Methodist, my dad was raised Mennonite. Amish are the ones with the horse and buggy, and Mennonites are very conservative — like my grandmother wore a covering over her head and simple handmade dresses — but they definitely drive cars and tractors. A lot of them are farmers. It's simple living. Interestingly, the Mennonites in my hometown are very close with the Amish. My grandmother had Amish people work in her garden and clean her house, and the Amish are allowed to ride in cars but not drive them. So I would drive the Amish from her house to their farms.

Professionally, you were involved in community theater in Pennsylvania. Was there much between that and being cast in the lead role in "Spring Awakening"?

When I graduated from high school, I went on tour for a year with "The Sound of Music," and then went from that to living in New York; after a year and a half in New York, I got "Spring Awakening." So there was a year and a half of auditioning and waiting tables and doing summer stock, and then I did an understudy role in a Broadway flop musical. And right after that, I got "Spring Awakening."

 

Let's talk about that Newsweek critic who, when you were guest-starring in "Glee" two years ago, said you were unconvincing as Lea Michele's character's straight love interest. He said, you seemed "more like your average theater queen." You're laughing now, but how did you feel about that at the time?

To be honest, I feel the same way now as I did then. Here's the deal — I go to my auditions and plug away and try and do my best. People are going to say whatever they're going to say about your performance, and at the end of the day, you can't let that stuff affect you. Everyone is entitled to his opinion, and it started a lot of good conversations probably. All I can do is laugh and keep moving forward. Sexuality is such an interesting thing. Unless you're playing a very effeminate person, a stereotypical queen, it's hard to say what it means to play gay.

You casually came out at a gay rights event in 2009, and you're featured in the current issue of Out magazine. And you and Zachary Quinto are public about being a couple. So what do you think about gay actors who stay in the closet?

Ultimately everyone has their own journey. The more people that come out the better, because it makes it easier for the next generation of people coming out, and it makes people more comfortable with it, the more people they know. But at the end of the day, if people don't want to come out, it's their personal choice. I feel really blessed to be living in 2012. Certainly there's a long way to go, but I feel really positive about how, even in the last 10 years, being gay has become more accepted.

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