Michael Shannon plays George Westinghouse in The Current War, which is why he scored the November cover of Esquire. Unfortunately, Michael probably won’t be doing much promotion for TCW, especially given the fact that it was produced by The Weinstein Company and now everything the company touches is radioactive (plus the film is no longer being released in November). So enjoy this, what will probably be Michael Shannon’s only in-depth interview to support this film. You can read the full piece here – it is magnificent, because he is magnificent. He invited the Esquire reporter to his home on the Fourth of July, where he and his partner Kate Arrington were hosting a party. The details are amazing, like Michael has a go-to Hawaiian shirt for parties and the only time he looked genuinely happy was when he was talking to his daughters. Some highlights:
He has a difficult time not worrying about the country & the world: “I think the most terrible, awful things,” he confesses before giving me a list: The environment is screwed; the iPhone is a narcotic; the sheeple can’t control their own brains. When he tells me that “a catastrophe is approaching,” he sounds eerily like his possibly prophetic.
On politics: “It’s simple: The Republican party has zero compassion for human life.” And: “The people who voted for Mitch McConnell have sh-t for brains. I have no interest in understanding them. I don’t care if they see my movies or my shows.” And: “I can find more excuses for what Richard Kuklinski did”—a real-life Mafia hitman with a body count in the hundreds who led a double life as a family man, and whom Shannon played in The Iceman (2013)—“than I can for people who voted for Trump.”
He feels like his job is silly sometimes: “Considering the state of the world, I cannot do stuff right now that feels silly… I can’t quite square the silliness… It’s hard not to feel silly. If I was told, ‘We’re not making movies anymore,’ I’d be fine.”
Fatherhood: When Shannon became a father—or, as he describes it, “when it was thrust upon me”—he felt thoroughly unprepared. Between his untethered youth and his vagabond adulthood, “I didn’t think parenting was in my skill set,” he says. Before meeting Arrington, he never thought he’d have children at all. “Because of the course our civilization is on, I’d been afraid to bring a human life into it. Some people say, ‘That’s a cop-out. Every generation feels that way.’ For me, it was genuine.”
His daughter Sylvie had a health crisis while he was working on Boardwalk Empire. He hated acting at that point, and “I wasn’t a huge fan of that period of the show. It had already gotten perfunctory.” In that moment, “I never cared less about work in my life,” Shannon says. “I was like, ‘What are my lines? Can I go now?’” He clarifies that he didn’t let his ambivalence get in the way of his performance. “I know how to fake it like any good hooker.”
His prophecy of a damaged nation: “Whoever the president is—Obama or Clinton or f–king Abraham Lincoln—people get frustrated. If you think kicking out Trump will make anything different, you’re off your rocker.”
Debating the ethics of consuming meat. “Cows are dumb. They’re meant to be eaten.”
Since I feel similarly about the state of America, I don’t judge Michael Shannon for anything he says here. Recently, CB and Hecate were making some scheduling plans for weeks in advance, and I realized something: I stopped making plans. I’m living day by day with that pit at the bottom of my stomach, watching catastrophe after catastrophe unfold. It’s actually started to bother me that more people aren’t behaving like me and Michael Shannon. F–k this world.
Cover courtesy of Esquire, additional photos courtesy of WENN.
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