One of the most impressive tricks that successionof HBO, has made viewers for four seasons is to generate sympathy for reprehensible people.
Last Sunday’s episode, number 8 of this fourth year, in which democracy is liquidated, ostensibly because Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) ate too much chicken as a child, puts an end to much of that sympathy.
It also ended Connor Roy’s ridiculous presidential campaign (Alan Ruck), the eldest and most clumsy of Roy’s sons, who launched his candidacy to address what he considered America’s biggest problems: “usury and masturbation”.
But even by accepting, Connor insults the voters and launches a veiled threat to unleash the “Conheads”, his supporters, after saying he would not stoop to petty behavior.
It was perhaps the darkest moment for a character who has largely been relegated to jester status, but Ruck sees Connor’s ignorance as his primary tool. politics.
“It’s the Best Script”
“That day he will believe whatever looks good to him,” Ruck said in a recent video call filled with vivid anecdotes and laughter.
“He’s going to read something on the internet or listen to something on TV, and that’s going to be the core of his platform for that day. And tomorrow it could be something else entirely, because it’s not person-centered.”
As Connor, Ruck, 66, has woven decades of character acting prowess into some of the show’s most spectacular moments.: “hyper-decant” a bottle of wine in a Vitamix blender; anger at the texture of butter as he supervised his father’s black tie ceremony; hinting to his prostitute-turned-fiancée, Willa (Justine Lupe), that their marriage has “barbed wire and bickering” to hype her presidential campaign.
“It’s hands down the best script I’ve ever seen.week after week, ”he said. But I think it would be fun to move on after basically playing the family fool for what has been six years.”
A gift for your career
Ruck sees the series as “a gift” in a career that was often party or famine, with odd day jobs to pay the bills. In 1986, he played Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (A fun expert), a quintessential Gen X character in a quintessential Gen X teen comedy.
But the role didn’t immediately translate to stardom, and Ruck found Cameron’s character’s shadow to be quite long.
“There were a lot of erratic years where I basically made just enough to get by,” she says. “When people came during that time and said something Ferris Buller, it irritated me because I felt that this was the case. That was my chance.”
From successionhe said, “I’ve been dreaming of such a series for years.”
its beginnings
ruck, what grew up in a Cleveland suburb, found solace in acting when he got to high school. As a student at the University of Illinois, he said, he spent most of his time on stage.
The university’s performing arts complex was designed by Max Abramovitz, the lead architect of New York’s David Geffen Hall, but “there was another kind of student theater that was just a small theater space in an armory Ruck explains. “They’d give you a $25 budget and you could put on any show you wanted. So that’s a lot of experience in a short time.”
He moved to Chicago in 1979, a time when the theater scene, anchored by companies like Steppenwolf and Wisdom Bridge, was starting to take off. And after the box office success of The Blues Brothers (1980), Hollywood has shown more interest in the city, he said, making it an ideal place to be a budding actor.
“You could walk into any talent agency on a Wednesday and just say, ‘Hi, I’m new,’ and they would sit down and talk to you,” he said. “I talk to people who started out in New York or Los Angeles about it, and they’re like, ‘What are you talking about? You can’t just go see someone like that.’ It was like a minor league.”
When Broadway casting directors came to Chicago to audition Biloxi Bluesby Neil Simon, Ruck landed a role. He moved to New York and shared the stage with Matthew Broderick.her future co-star in Ferris Bullerwho remembered Ruck as someone with that “good actor from Chicago” aura.
“He looked like someone like a James Dean,” Broderick said, laughing. “Everyone in that play had very different personalities. But we all became kind of a unit and Alan was a very big part.”
The success
It was during the show of Biloxi Blues when did the casting for Ferris Bueller’s day off. Ruck had met the director, John Hughes, in Chicago when he auditioned for an early version of The Breakfast Club, and his agent pitched him for the role of Cameron. But the casting directors thought Ruck, then 28, was too old.
“But then he came along and read it and it blew John Hughes’ jaws,” Broderick says. “Everyone thought it was perfect.”
Source: Clarin
