Kieran Culkin said in a new Esquire digital cover story that Jeremy Strong’s acting process was never affected by various criticisms made about his Method acting, most notably by his “Succession” cast members in an infamous New Yorker profile published in December 2021.
“It’s hard for me to actually describe his process, because I don’t really see it,” Culkin told The New Yorker at the time. “He puts himself in a bubble….The way Jeremy put it to me is that, like, you get in the ring, you do the scene, and at the end each actor goes to their corner. I’m like, ‘This isn’t a battle. This is a dance.’”
Regarding Strong’s self-isolation process, Culkin added, “That might be something that helps him. I can tell you that it doesn’t help me.”
The New Yorker profile was also the first time Brian Cox expressed worry over Strong’s Method acting process, telling the publication: “I just worry about what he does to himself. I worry about the crises he puts himself through in order to prepare.” Cox would go on to share even harsher words about Method acting. He told Town & Country magazine last month about Strong’s acting process, “Oh, it’s fucking annoying. Don’t get me going on it.”
When asked by Esquire if he ever discussed The New Yorker profile with Strong or “if it affected their working relationship,” Culkin denied that was the case. “We’re professionals,” he said. “We like to go to work and do the thing. I don’t think it affected the way he did his work at all. Wouldn’t have affected mine. I think it was fine.”
Strong himself told GQ magazine in February that criticisms over Method acting has never impacted his approach to playing characters.
“Everyone’s entitled to have their feelings,” Strong said. “I also think Brian Cox, for example, he’s earned the right to say whatever the fuck he wants. There was no need to address that or do damage control… I feel a lot of love for my siblings and my father on the show. And it is like a family in the sense that — and I’m sure they would say this, too — you don’t always like the people that you love. I do always respect them.”
“Am I going to adjust or compromise the way that I’ve worked my whole life and what I believe in? There wasn’t a flicker of doubt about that,” Strong added. “I’m still going to do whatever it takes to serve whatever it is. Which is not to say that that is the same thing as riding roughshod over other people. It has to do with autonomous concentration. It’s a very solitary thing. I think there’s very low impact on others except for what they might want to project onto it and how that might make them feel.”
The fourth and final season of “Succession” airs Sunday nights at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.
