If you are looking for words to define Jeff Daniels' performance in the new Netflix drama A man in his entirety, “big” might be an obvious word. “Even the Southern accent is larger than life,” she says. Consequence. “The accent is very thick. So they basically gave me permission to go big and go all the way with him. Regina King and Tommy Schlamme, the directors, encouraged it.”
King and Schlamme share directing duties on the limited series, based on the book by literary icon Tom Wolfe and adapted by David E. Kelley, while Daniels plays Charlie Croker, an Atlanta business magnate. Charlie's unexpected bankruptcy makes him a target for enemies who have been waiting for the chance to defeat him; Charlie, however, has made his life and career out of fighting.
Getting inside Charlie's head wasn't difficult, Daniels explains, because of Wolfe's original book: “His writing is very detailed; the character descriptions are, I mean, you're just taking notes. It was so fun to pull that accent because Tom Wolfe described it as, “There are times when he gets angry or frustrated and you can't even understand what he's saying.” So Tom did a lot of the work for me.”
From there, it was a matter of “understanding that he is larger than life, that he is the star of his own show and that everyone he meets is his audience. And he assumes they love him almost as much as he loves himself. Having that big, bloated man with a masculine ego parading around like a peacock is certainly not where the country and the culture are now. But it was very Funny.”
The fun wasn't just playing Charlie at the height of his powers, though: Daniels also enjoyed the idea of Charlie's ego being “like a big balloon and then you blow a hole in it, and for six episodes it just disintegrates.” “.
The key to Charlie's downfall is the people around him, including his ex-wife (Diane Lane) and his ruthless business opponents, played by Bill Camp and Tom Pelphrey. “He was surrounded by a great cast of actors who also saw what he was doing and said, 'Okay, we better get on that train,'” Daniels says. And then everyone stepped it up and it was fun.”
In particular, he continues, “Bill Camp and Tom Pelphrey were great to me. We just feed off each other. You know, half of your performance is in the other actor. And when you have people like Bill and Tom giving it back to you, they do half the work for you. So it's a matter of connecting with them and then letting it all happen in front of the camera.”
While Daniels began her career starring in notable films such as Terms of endearment and Dumb and dumb, the last 10 years have seen him focus more on television projects. This, he says, is because “I've been looking for good writing, because when you have Aaron Sorkin writing The news roomScott Frank writing ImpiousDanny Derman, Adam Rapp writing The Looming Towerand then David E. Kelley… The streamers, that's where the writers went, and the writers were given free rein to go further, do more.”
The biggest difference Daniels finds is that “in television, you have to get it right on the first or second take, because of the timing. You don't have 10 takes to warm up and learn your lines. You have to get it right on the first take, which I enjoy. And when you've worked with Clint Eastwood, like I did, he only shoots one take. “Then I understood what that meant.”
As Daniels adds: “The movies are fantastic and wonderful, and I made a lot of them. But this isn't network television where you're restricted, so I loved it. And in our case, when you're filming a novel, you can literally do more and the writers can write more. I loved being on Streamers and Netflix, and I think it's been a huge help to my career. To be honest, it kept me in business.”
A man in his entirety is streaming now on Netflix.
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