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storkmuffin · 2 months

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VOGUE US March 2024

On His Terms

by Sarah Crompton

With his red cap pulled down over horn-rimmed glasses, Tobias Menzies walks into a London hotel with the wariness of a man who might just be recognized. It's his face that would catch him out, those deep lines running from eyes to chin. "He had those even as a young man," says his friend the theater director Rupert Goold. "It's like someone has taken a knife and carved them. And I feel those lines run deep inside him as well. He's grown into his face like a lot of actors do."

Menzies's smile is warm and his handshake firm, and though he lives not far from here in north London's Crouch End, he is dressed more as a country dweller than a man-about-town, in jeans and blue gilet zipped over a soft mustard-and-red-checked shirt. Only his Grenson trainers, white and red and with flashes of the same yellow, suggest he might belong to an artier milieu.

"I don't get recognized on any intrusive level, but it's not a part of [the job] that I love," he admits as we settle down to talk. "I like to watch people—I don't like them to watch me." I've asked him about the experience he's having at 49—that of a talent stepping into his prime. Blame it on The Crown, in which he played the second incarnation of Prince Philip across two seasons (a role that won him an Emmy), and last year's wry, acclaimed comedy You Hurt My Feelings, in which he starred opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus ("He's one of the most warm and present actors I've worked with," says its director, Nicole Holofcener). And now, he's appearing in two leading-man roles, as Edwin Stanton, Abraham Lincoln's secretary of war, in Apple TV+'s series Manhunt in March, and he's currently onstage in The Hunt, an adaptation of the 2012 Thomas Vinterberg film directed by Goold, playing at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn five years after its London premiere.

"I've got to be honest, I really liked it," Menzies says of the status he enjoyed in Manhunt. "Being in the engine room of it and part of the storytelling decisions." The series is part thriller and part history lesson, set over the 12 days following Lincoln's assassination in 1865 as Stanton attempts to track down the president's killer, John Wilkes Booth (it's based on historian James L. Swanson's 2006 bestseller). Episodes skip forward and backward, tracing the story of a tumultuous time and the ideological schisms that caused the Civil War and continued long after it. Stanton, a brilliant lawyer and strategist, is at the center of everything, clashing with Lincoln's successor, President Andrew Johnson, as he attempts to preserve the late president's legacy.

As gripping as any detective story, Manhunt addresses painful facts of America's past: "The implications of losing Lincoln and what that meant for African American people," says showrunner Monica Beletsky, who spent four years developing the project and who has followed Menzies's career since they overlapped as students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London (she on a stint studying there from the US). "You could argue in a way that the Confederates won the peace," Menzies points out. "What is important about Monica making the show is that she is a person of color, and arguably the big fallout from Lincoln's assassination was that Reconstruction was lost until 100 years later and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Voting rights, land rights—they didn't happen. A lot of the things that African Americans have been fighting so hard for, for so long, were on Stanton's agenda."

Menzies studied carefully for the role ("He prepares months in advance," says Beletsky), working to find Stanton's voice and make his accent seem effortless, but also reading widely about the Civil War and its aftermath. Doris Kearns Goodwin's classic history Team of Rivals was a particularly rich source: "It takes you into this very disparate group Lincoln collected around him," Menzies says. "There was such a diversity of opinion and a lot of antagonism, but that was part of the power of it." Menzies also studied Gregory Peck's towering performance as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. "I was thinking of those archetypes that American literature and film are full of," he says. "Because it's such a whirlwind story with so many different characters floating through it—so you need a moral compass."

The key to the character became a combination of "stoicism and radicalism," Menzies says—and as an actor, he's exceptionally good at playing men who are fighting such opposing impulses, with strong currents of feeling running beneath an impassive surface. "He is one of those rare actors who does a lot with silence," Beletsky says. "He makes you believe you can feel what he is thinking, and he can do those things without saying a word."

Goold, who has directed Menzies many times onstage—including as Hamlet, as Valentine in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, and as Edgar in King Lear—thinks this quality has become stronger as Menzies has grown older. "He's got this wonderful physical expressiveness, but there's a slightly remote quality to him, I suppose," Goold says. "The quality I find really compelling in him is his committed curiosity. It's quite rare, especially for British actors, to keep their craft developing, to become more rigorous and investigative, and I think Tobias is an outlier on that."

Menzies is attracted to roles that conceal depths. "There is a certain magic about that. Part of the maths is that there is more on the inside than on the outside"

Their most recent collaboration is The Hunt, a haunting story in which a small-town teacher becomes ostracized when a six-year-old child accuses him of abuse. Menzies will be reprising his devastatingly observed performance from the play's 2019 London premiere. "When we put it on, we felt it to be about false accusations and the way that cancel culture was creating pariahs," says Goold. "But it is as much about someone who is shut out from their community because they choose to live apart. There is part of Tobias that is like that."

Menzies acknowledges that he is attracted to roles that conceal depths. "It's partly a taste thing," he says. "I like the kind of acting where I can't see the performance, I can't see how it is happening. There is a certain magic about that. Part of the maths is that there is more on the inside than on the outside, there's a kind of mystery there."

Menzies was born in London, his father a radio producer for the BBC, but after his parents separated when he was six, he lived with his mother, a drama teacher, and his brother in Kent. On their regular cultural outings, he was inspired by contemporary dance and the experimental theater companies he saw: Pina Bausch, Complicité, Shared Experience, Cheek by Jowl. "I was interested in companies that were making their own work," he says, "and I tried to go to train with [the radical movement coach] Jacques Lecoq in Paris; but I didn't have the money for that, so I went to RADA."

He never dreamed of being a famous actor. "My obsession as a kid was tennis," he says, with a grin. He was good enough to be on the fringes of the team for the county of Kent but gave it up when he realized he would never be truly first-class. He stopped playing for a long time. "Periodically I would pick up a racket and try to play a bit, and my game had completely fallen apart and it made me so angry. It was so frustrating. A few years ago I thought, Let's start again, do my 10,000 hours, and let's fix it." He approached the task with "monomaniacal" intent, working for a year on his forehand, and a year on his backhand, then adding his serve. Now he plays three times a week at a local tennis club, either with a coach or taking on other members in clay court matches. "I'm pretty obsessive about it," he says. "I just find it fascinating. It is such a mental game—a very interesting microcosm of one's brain."

His hero is Novak Djokovic. "He has less natural flair than Nadal or Federer but there is an epic quality to his tennis. He is able to endure and suffer, and so he can do it all in some way. There is a sort of purity to what he is doing. I think only if you have struggled with tennis do you realize that even though it looks plain, what's going on, the footwork, the ability to get to that ball and then hit it—it's just rather remarkable."

Menzies admits that his attitude to life mirrors his tennis. "I am probably on the methodical end of things, yeah," he says, with another low laugh. I ask about his film roles, which have been getting bigger and richer of late. He loved filming in New York with Holofcener on You Hurt My Feelings—"It was definitely bucket list"—and is currently appearing alongside Brad Pitt in the as-yet-untitled Formula 1 drama directed by Joseph Kosinski, which is filming scenes at Grand Prix around the world.

Before the actors' strike interrupted production, they had shot two scenes at Silverstone in the UK. "It was bonkers because we are in amongst everything else. So we did this scene on the grid before the race and the grid is live: real drivers, real cars, celebrities wandering around." He pauses, then adds: "It was like theater on steroids—really, really fun." He has nothing but praise for Pitt—"a lovely, lovely person, very collaborative, very nice to act with, and supersmart"—but working with him brought Menzies face-to-face with a level of fame that he doesn't aspire to. "How does he go out? It is very constraining to have that level of visibility."

Partly from a desire to preserve his anonymity as much as he can, Menzies took an early decision never to talk about his private life. "Is that old-fashioned of me?" he asks. "I'm going to stick to my guns. It's partly natural shyness on my part. But to be a bit more grandiose about it, the idea of celebrity moving into the arts and acting does have an effect on how we watch."

Through it all Menzies is genial and engaged, asking a lot of questions, yet there is something formal about him too. This is someone who is deeply serious about acting, pursuing projects that interest him and then immersing himself in them. I ask if being able to choose work of quality and interest is part of this new level of success, and Menzies says that it has come at a good time. "The question for me would have been whether as a younger person I would have handled it very well," he tells me. "I just think at some base level, it has taken me time to get really good." He laughs gently. "If I'd had a lot of exposure early on, I don't think I'd have been ready. I know I am a lot better now than I was 10 years ago. Acting keeps you very humble because you never quite know day-to-day. You can do all the work in the world and try the best you can, and sometimes it just lifts off and sometimes it doesn't."

#tobias menzies #one of my perennial favorites

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haggishlyhagging · 10 months

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Jul - Dec 2023 Reading List:

Bernard, Jessie. The Future of Marriage. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.

Budapest, Zsuzsanna Emese. The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries. San Francisco: Weiser, 2007.

Cady Stanton, Elizabeth, “The Destructive Male.” 1868. http://edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/stanton_destructive_male.html

Chollet, Mona. In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women are Still on Trial. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2022.

Christ, Carol P. Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1997.

Cloninger, Sally J. “A Rhetorical Analysis of Feminist Agitation.” The University of Michigan Papers in Women’s Studies 1, no. 1 (February 1974): 44-50. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mfs/acp0359.0001.001/46:4

Daly, Mary. Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation. Boston: Beacon Press, 1973.

Dworkin, Andrea. Right-Wing Women. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1983.

Echols, Alice. Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America: 1967-75. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989.

Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. New York: HarperCollins, 1987.

Faludi, Susan. Backlash: the Undeclared War Against American Women. New York : Crown Publishers, Inc., 1991.

Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. New York: The Free Press, 1992.

Griffin, Susan. Pornography and Silence: Culture’s Revenge Against Nature. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.

Harding, M. Esther. Woman’s Mysteries: Ancient and Modern. Boston: Shambhala, 1990.

Janega, Eleanor. The Once and Future Sex: Going Medieval on Women’s Roles in Society. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2023.

Johnson, Sonia. From Housewife to Heretic. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1981.

Jones, Ann. Women Who Kill. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980.

Jones, Beverly and Judith Brown. “Toward a Female Liberation Movement.” Jul 1968. https://www.redstockings.org/index.php/main/classics-of-1968

Judd, Elizabeth. “Women Before the Conquest: A Study of Women in Anglo-Saxon England.” The University of Michigan Papers in Women’s Studies 1, no. 1 (February 1974): 127–49. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mfs/acp0359.0001.001/129:8

Koedt, Anne. “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm.” 1970. https://www.cwluherstory.org/classic-feminist-writings-articles/myth-of-the-vaginal-orgasm#

New York Radical Women, Notes From the First Year (June 1968). https://www.redstockings.org/index.php/main/classics-of-1968

Raworth, Kate. Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017.

Reed, Evelyn. “The Myth of Women’s Inferiority.” The Myth of Women’s Inferiority by Evelyn Reed 1954. Accessed July 9, 2023. https://www.marxists.org/archive/reed-evelyn/1954/myth-inferiority.htm.

Spender, Dale. There’s Always Been a Women’s Movement This Century. London: Pandora Press, 1983.

Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999.

Women’s Majority Union, Lilith (Dec 1968). https://www.redstockings.org/index.php/main/classics-of-1968

Zeisler, Andi. We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl®, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement. New York: BBS PublicAffairs, 2016.

#personal reading list

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purpleplaid17 · 5 months

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Jess Watches // Mon 20 Nov // Day 59 Synopses & Favourite Scenes & Poll

Person of Interest (rewatching with mum) 5x03 Truth Be Told

Reese's cover could be blown when he realizes the latest POI has ties to his old CIA colleague, Kara Stanton.

Cocoon above! Cocoon below! Stealthy Cocoon, why hide you so What all the world suspect? An hour, and gay on every tree Your secret, perched in ecstasy Defies imprisonment! An hour in Chrysalis to pass, Then gay above receding grass A Butterfly to go! A moment to interrogate, Then wiser than a "Surrogate," The Universe to know!

Ofc The Machine would be aware that Root knows Emily Dickinson poems. The lesbian (and American) that they both are.

Workin' Moms (with mum) 1x02 Rules

Kate manages to find time for everything except for her husband. Anne deals with her misbehaving daughter. Jenny's first day back at work doesn't go as planned.

Trivia: When Kate is trying to nurse her son, who hasn't been nursing for a little while, Catherine (the actor and creator) ended up using her own son in this scene. And suddenly after a two week hiatus, he latched on and started nursing. Kate's reaction and pure joy at this moment was a real life reaction.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (rewatching) 3x01 Anne

Buffy -- living on her own in a big city -- assists a girl whose boyfriend has mysteriously vanished. Back in Sunnydale, Buffy's friends do their best to battle the forces of evil without her.

I loved Willow's outfit. The purple hat and skirt with a stripey top to match. Very cute. I would wear it now. Then there was Buffy's hair smh. The late 90's really weren't kind to SMG's hairstyles. I don't even know how to describe it but it was very distractingly bad. Poor lass. Hasn't she been through enough?

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters 1x02 Departure

Monarch closes in on Cate, Kentaro, and May as they try to track down a key individual. Keiko, Lee, and Billy stumble on a major find.

I'm very much into each timeline having it's own trio. The dual storylines are contrasting really well so far. And it's another Apple show they've clearly put lots of money into making it a visual treat so far. I don't get why Monarch are acting so shady though when they clearly need all the help they can get. Also, that Cate and May scene in the hallway. Oh my. Both actors having played gay before too. Something to keep both eyes on 👀.

#person of interest #workin' moms #buffy the vampire slayer #monarch legacy of monsters #polls #my polls #jess watches #day 59

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 11 months

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Who's To Say They Can't

Concerns and worrywarting continues to swirl after the not-so-great opening weekend of ELEMENTAL...

The talk of the town is largely "Pixar will become a sequel factory from here on out", but I'm also seeing such alarmist takes as "Pixar will be forced to make a live-action remake of one of their movies."

Meanwhile, a pal of mine and a critic who goes by Mr. Coat suggested...

Believe it or not, Pixar had considered at least one book adaptation at some point in their existence...

Remember the movie EPIC? The one about the shrunken human and all the bug warriors and such? That film, made at the sadly-defunct Blue Sky Studios, was based on the William Joyce book THE LEAF MEN AND THE BRAVE GOOD BUGS. Director Chris Wedge started the project at Fox, who was Blue Sky's home, and of course - Disney bought Fox AND Blue Sky. However, for a brief bit, Wedge was able to shop it over to Pixar... And Wedge was good friends with John Lasseter, so this book adaptation was actually going to go full-speed ahead there... Until Fox wanted it back, so the production moved back there and began around 2009, with the movie releasing in spring 2013.

Interestingly, Joyce himself was at Pixar during production of TOY STORY and A BUG'S LIFE. You can see a lot of his concept art for the former on all the film's home video release bonus features. Another one of his books, DINOSAUR BOB, was in consideration for a feature at one point, too... But someone else had the rights at the time. Several other Joyce stories became animated movies and shows, one of which was A DAY WITH WILBUR ROBINSON, which became Disney Animation's MEET THE ROBINSONS, which Lasseter heavily oversaw and had retooled during production.

So it all shows that Pixar wasn't entirely against doing movies that were based on a pre-existing source material, and not their own material. LIGHTYEAR is interestingly in that it's a spin-off of their own movie series, inspired by a character by said series. Everything else is either a homespun original story or a sequel to one of those original stories...

Personally, I wouldn't mind if they finally - after making over 27 movies - tackled a book or a comic. Something dynamic that would be brought to the screen spectacularly through animation. And it'd be something a little familiar, too, if they had trouble trying to crack the next original idea nut. I don't see why that's a bad thing, either... The big, beloved new animated movie out right now is the umpteenth cinematic adaptation of a Marvel character. The animated movie based on those Italian plumbers fighting bad turtles became the 4th highest-grossing animated film of all-time, and most folks are super-duper-pumped for webcomic adaptation NIMONA. The beloved PUSS IN BOOTS Dos from last year is a fairy tale adaptation.

So... Why not? Every other big-time animation studio in the West has adapted pre-existing works. Disney Animation has a WHOLE history of that, right down to their first ever animated feature. DreamWorks? A good chunk of their beloved movies are book adaptations, SHREK included. They even took on something biblical. Sony Animation has done it all from comics (SPIDER-VERSE, SMURFS) to children's picture books (CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS) to - also - the Bible (THE STAR). Illumination has two Dr. Seuss movies and Super Mario in their library.

Honestly, I'd love to see a filmmaker at Pixar take a crack at a fantasy novel or a really weird and wacky comic, or a sci-fi novel. And if the thing does well, they already have the sequel work built for them, and it'd be a nice way to bypass sequels to their legacy favorites like TOY STORY and THE INCREDIBLES.

HECK! Any of you remember when Pixar was supposed to join forces with Walt Disney Pictures (live-action division) and Warner Bros. to make a Brad Bird-directed adaptation of the novel 1906? Or when FINDING NEMO/WALL-E director Andrew Stanton's live-action/CG JOHN CARTER OF MARS project was initially thought to be the studio's foray into live-action? JOHN CARTER OF MARS (I often refuse to call it by the title Disney ended up giving it) had plenty of animation in it, so if Pixar were to ever do some live-action, they could do something like that.

Just a few thoughts, ya know...

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