Succession actor Jeremy Strong has revealed that he still feels “betrayed” by the New Yorker profile that described him as not getting the “joke” behind his character, Kendall Roy.
The publication interviewed Strong on Friday and asked whether the previous interview “hurt” him.
“I would only say that what I shared, what I talked about, is a betrayal of trust,” Strong said. “I feel like, you know, it could have been met with because I’ve had other different experiences with different journalists, it perhaps could have been met with more compassion.”
Strong previously slammed the lengthy 2021 piece and its writer, Michael Schulman, saying the following year to Vanity Fair that it “ultimately said more about the person writing it and their perspective, which is a valid perspective, than it did about who I feel I am and what I’m about.” He added, “It was something that, for me, felt like a pretty profound betrayal of trust. And that’s what I would have wished for.”
Schulman wrote in the 2021 profile that Strong “has the hangdog face of someone who wasn’t destined for stardom,” and “does not find the character funny, which is probably why he’s so funny in the role.” Schulman also compared Strong’s real-life persona to his character in the show, who he wrote is “often ridiculous in his self-seriousness.”
Critiques from his co-stars drove home Strong’s portrait as “intense” and “difficult” to work with.
Strong hasn’t changed his mind, he said in a follow-up interview with the publication, this time with David Remnick. “I did not read this as a profile that was making fun of somebody above all or anything of the like, but I know that you were hurt by it, at least in the immediate aftermath of it,” Remnick said. “Listen, you know, all’s fear and love and war,” The Social Reckoning and The Apprentice star replied.
Strong has also been accused of “humanizing” problematic characters in his work on The Apprentice, where he plays Donald Trump’s fixer, Roy Cohn. He revealed that he reached out to MAGA-friendly CEO Mark Zuckerberg ahead of the release of The Social Reckoning, in which he portrays an older Zuckerberg in The Social Network sequel.
“The thing about... this kind of work, the work that I care most about, Roy Cohn, these are right on the fault line of everything that’s going on in our world right now,” Strong said Friday. “And so, if I take my job seriously, it is commensurate with the kind of subjects that I feel that I’m working on.”
