Jeremy Strong Asked To Get Sprayed With Real Tear Gas In The Name Of ACTING
Move over Piven, Irons and Renner, there’s a new eye-roll-inducing Jeremy on the scene! IndieWire reports that Succession star Jeremy Strong has been following in the hand cobbled footsteps of the MC Method Master, his one-time employer Daniel Day-Lewis, and is perhaps taking his role as one of the Chicago Seven, a bit too seriously. Jeremy plays civil rights activist Jerry Rubin in The Trial of the Chicago 7, an upcoming Netflix movie from Aaron Sorkin about the infamous trial that followed the aftermath of the protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Apparently, not satisfied with doing the old Sorkin walk and talk, Jeremy asked to do a Sorkin walk and get sprayed in the face with actual tear gas. I can’t wait to see him on Broadway in For Method Actors Who Have Considered Tear Gas / When Onion Juice Is Enuf.
IndieWire reports that Jeremy worked as DDL’s assistant on the set of 2005’s The Ballad of Jack and Rose. He must really have been inspired by DDL because even though Jeremy is from Boston, he went on to cultivate an esoteric European lifestyle by marrying a Danish psychiatrist and moving to Copenhagen where he has two daughters with twee old fashioned names (Ingrid and Clara, via Wikipedia). So him wanting to get squirted in the face with actual tear gas in the name of ACTING is not all that surprising.
According to Sorkin, while filming riot scenes on location in Chicago’s Grant Park, Strong demanded that an ex-cop starring as a storm trooper in the movie throw him to the ground before each take. “Jeremy begged me to spray him with real tear gas,” said Sorkin, who declined to do so. A contender for this year’s Emmys for “Succession,” Strong plays civil rights activist Jerry Rubin in the film, seen in the first look in tie-dye and a headband, smoking pot. Rubin was cofounder of the Youth International Party, or Yippies, a radical offshoot of the antiwar movements of the 1960s.
Here’s a first look at Jeremy in The Trial of the Chicago 7 which also stars Sacha Baron Cohen, Eddie Redmayne, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (hello!), Frank Langella, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
MY OSCAR CAMPAIGN FOR JEREMY STRONG STARTS NOW pic.twitter.com/IrPnlrqmhI
— mrtn⁷ (@mniwrchl) July 22, 2020
That better not be a wig and that joint better be real or else papa DDL will have cause to be very stern with you! On second thought, anyone who’s seen Succession knows that disappointed daddy shame is totally his kink. In fact, his Succession daddy Brian Cox talked about Jeremy’s method methods back in June.
“It’s completely the antithesis to the way I work. But in a way, I find it quite good, because I think it puts you on your metal, because you’re dealing with someone who really inhabits the fragility almost in a way that is…you worry about him sometimes. He is so committed as an actor. Jeremy’s commitment is undeniable, and his results are equally undeniable. That’s what the key thing is, is the results, his performance, which was pretty magnificent, actually. It’s a pretty magnificent piece of work.”
As someone in the middle of a Succession re-watch, I have to admit that Jeremy is on to something. He’s very effective as a walking open wound. And as long as he’s only abusing himself, I have no problem with actors being silly and pretentious for their art. Too bad they already filmed those riot scenes, because if Jeremy wanted someone to spray him in the face with tear gas today, he could probably just stick his head out the window in any one of several U.S. cities and get an eyeful of the stuff.
Pic: Wenn.com