Jeff Daniels surges back with MUST-HEAR message on Trump (interview w/ Brian Tyler Cohen)

who expressed interest or who tried to audition or you already know the comic iterations? of Trump uh no there wasn't a moment where uh I thought very seriously that Cate Blanchett could do this and people talked me down from that roof and they just said uh no, no, um, she's me, I had a moment , I had a moment and talked to Kathleen about it and my manager and I were like, What if I played both? Could we do that Patty Duke thing from

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in the '60s or '70s or whatever and then both of us?

I said think of all the lines you're going to have to learn. I said you're right, forget it. That would have been amazing. No, it wouldn't have been. been a trick it wouldn't have been so good and Brandon Brendan brought something, I'll tell you what he brought, he brought a film of private darkness. The acting is behind the eyes and we enter the character through the eyes in film upon film and Brendan knew how to do it, so give me a great actor because he. I'll know how to do that and you're attracted to him, he's attracted to you and I felt it sitting at that loyalty dinner, he just attracted me.

You know that day, after we shot the first take, I looked at director Combe. He was right over my left shoulder and he said you're ruining my day in a great way, he said you're taking me

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to what that dinner was like and this is exactly what I felt and that was pretty gratifying, it was kind of like that. It was a big moment that was a touchdown, so Jeff, uh, playing these heroes that you know, who are unknowingly walking into the center of political storms, has become kind of a recurring theme for you, since Will Mcavoy to Atticus Finch and James Comey, it's not on purpose.

It's just what comes and I'm very grateful that it comes, a newsroom has set off this whole second or third act of my career, that's very rewarding for me, all I see are complicated characters that I could fail miserably and that is the challenge. at this age it's what keeps me interested and comey was exactly that and i think you know mcavoy triggered everything you see and you start oh he can do that well so maybe he can do this like some kind of domino so I think that's that's I'm I'm excited about that excited about the arc from dumb and dumber to a character like James Comey is uh it's kind of like well that's the fun of this that's just with Hollywood that's just What do you want? say with what he made fools and fools?

Well he can't do drama again and it took him a few years to be taken seriously because Dumb and Dumber was a huge hit, but I always wanted to be the guy who could go from Gettysburg to Dumber and Dumber to Will McAvoy to James Coleman Atticus Finch I just love the variety of everything I thought that's what we were supposed to do you know create characters uh that was the last word I

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d so that's what I've been doing but you know now you can To say that they've doubted Jeff at many stages of his career, oh my god, and when he was getting dumber and dumber, the producers of that movie were so doubtful that he could pull it off. that the first days of filming that movie were scenes in which jim carrey did not appear because they were sure that it was not going to work and that they were going to have to recast and it took a couple of days doing scenes without jim for the producers to say oh no, no, he absolutely can do this, so the joke about Jeff's career being cut short because he did comedy is that the people who cast him didn't think he could do comedy and then he did, it's true.

It's true, but when this came up, everyone knew I could do comedy and everyone knew it was my first choice and the studio's first choice and the network's first choice and the only pain in the butt was that we really wanted it out of there. . I killed a mockingbird early so we could film more before the end of the year and he insisted on completing his one-year commitment, uh, to do this kind of cal ripken, you know, a consistent, reliable guy never missed a performance in one year, not one performance. He wasn't going to go down well, so that meant we had to wait until he finished on November 3rd, which by the way completely imploded our schedule, but he was worth it, so we worked on it, but that's Jeff, I gotta say it selfishly.

I'm glad he did it. I was lucky enough to, uh, Jeff, see "To Kill a Mockingbird" on Broadway and it was by far the best show I had ever seen in my life, so, you know, I'm sorry. billy, but I'm glad that didn't work out, it became a real thing, the last two months were, uh, were, uh, just for a lot of reasons, usually when shows fall apart people start calling for phone and we, we. In the end we had surgical precision on that show that I'm very proud of, but it meant I stayed there until the end and I'm glad I did and a week later we were filming Comey and I trusted Billy.

He was so tired mentally dead, um, really Billy was a great comic historian. I did all the research, I did all the book and the audiobook and all that YouTube, but I trusted Billy a lot, especially in the first two months, thank you. You know, a week before we started filming, I flew to New York, this was back in the old days when you could still get on a plane and fly places without a mask, yeah, I remember, yeah, and I was sitting in uh , at Jeff's. apartment and his wife, who is lovely, walked by and I said, do you have any advice for me? and she said yeah, there will be times when he'll be quiet and moody on set and you'll think it's you, it's not you, it's just in his head and that really helped me especially in that week, yeah, especially because There are times when you give Jeff instructions and he looks at you like that's the direction you have for me and you and it's easy to take it personally and then you realize it. oh no, that's not what he meant at all, he was just processing it in his head and he doesn't have that filter that says oh

jeff

nods like they just told you something smart and if you're waiting for that like a director you're going to be standing there. for a long time, it's usually the actor who needs the validation oh no, I'm an empty shell, I absolutely need it, but also Jeff is a very different type of actor than any actor.

I've worked with every other actor I've worked with, the goal is to get there completely organically, never give them a result, never tell them what you want them to do, but just help create the emotional space so they can. He gets there and Jeff is not like that at all. Jeff will come up to you and say, "Okay, so you want me to cry on the third syllable." It would be great, it's fine and then he leaves and finds a way to get there. It was a great learning experience for me. What was the uh and this one is for you two?

The best and worst day on set. I've never had a worse day. On set, every day was the best day on that set for me. The cast was spectacular. The team committed suicide for me. They all felt it was their civic duty to be part of this project. It was a great esprit de corps and they felt. uh how hard we were all working and they knew our schedule was impossible, we were essentially shooting two movies in 51 days, tons of dialogue every day, like I said, four scenes in one day, but no one, no one called, I mean all. that team and that cast gave me the best every day and uh, everything was a joy, I know it's a bad copy, but it was a joy for me, it's not always like that, I mean, they're hybrid ensembles mixed together. results of who gives and who doesn't this wasn't that at all this was that we were doing something that mattered so every day was a good day certainly the loyalty dinner was the best day I'll tell you another best day um because we had to have three things , we had to have a comey, which we knew it felt like after about six weeks, I felt like I think we're good and we have to have a win and then Brendan came along and bang, I mean, and we have to have an Obama. and the day kingsley worked and arrived with his obama i turned to billy and told him we understood it, we understood it, we understood that that was also a great day, the Obama thing was really critical because it's so early in the movie that it's the first big scene from the movie and if you have an Obama, that's right, I think the movie would have lost a lot of credibility, but Kingsley nailed it and he comes in and does that Obama accent and all the gestures and gets the silence right and he had the confidence uh yeah, that was definitely a great day definitely a great day I saw him in a room with some people and as soon as we

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d uh as soon as we heard Obama Speak, you know, everyone was like, Yeah, that's exactly it, you know, you got it right for complete.

Then you add what student Mcnairy did for Rod Rosenstein and what Holly Hunter does as Sally Yates and what Michael Kelly does as Andrew McCabe. These are people that are recognized out there and if you do those things well you're in trouble and on this show we had people like peter coyote showing up for a day to do bob tumbar, I mean we had jonathan bank showing up to do trash, this was like a great wealth in terms of performance and everyone delivered, we were loaded in every way, yes, that being said, like they knew they were in the unique position of telling a story as it unfolds and now we are seeing the same Russian influence What happened in 2016 is happening again.

Do you feel better or worse about the prospects for a safe election this time? Know? Do you think we can see through the Russian disinformation campaign this time? Well, there are two. answers to that question um, this time I look at the democratic national convention compared to what happened in 2016, where the Russian hack that was distributed through Wikileaks destroyed the 2016 democratic convention. None of that happened this year, which me He says What makes the difference is that Julian Assange is on the sidelines this time or that the intelligence community has realized what the Russians are doing.

Both are very, very good signs; however, there is a counterbalance to that, which I think is the ultimate bad sign. And this time the Russians have cooperation within the United States government, perhaps at the highest levels, which I find discouraging. As it happens, I think the American people are ready for it. I think the Democratic party and the Biden campaign and the individual campaigns for the Senate and the House of Representatives are ready. I think they have lawyers like crazy and they do what they can, but when you have a president who is willing to open his own post office and a postmaster general who is willing to do that and when you have an attorney general who has decided that his job it's protecting the president, not democracy, um, yeah, that's discouraging, uh, I don't know if we're any safer than we were in 2016.

I would add that all of us that I would also add that, um, what can we do about it? You know, I mean expressing outrage on social media is not enough. Having politicians standing there in the capital's roundabout and shouting their outrage is not enough. What can we do about it? and the first thing we can do about it is vote in large numbers because America who doesn't agree with this outnumbers Trump's white Republican party who wants to stay in power even though they're a minority, you know, like this which I hope that the first thing we can really take action and do other than protests is vote in large numbers now, that doesn't mean the Russians won't go in there and hack the machines and change the numbers, that's where I go to people smarter and more connected than me is what are you doing about it, but the first thing people can do, Billy, was a dramatic movie out of the series, you know, there was a time when it was going to air after the elections. and that was a move you strongly opposed.

Why was it so important that the series aired before Election Day? Two reasons, one is that a big part of our history is what the Russians had done in the 2016 election. It's very important to understand that. That story was told before Americans went to the polls in 2020 just as a warning, but the second part was much more self-serving to me. I had just seen spectacular performances from an incredible cast and I wanted those performances to be seen and there was no I have the question that you broadcast this at the end of September of an election year, you will get attention and those performances will look like they should broadcast this at the end of November or early January, it's a historical artifact at the time and the audience would have been half the size, so this was very important to me and I think it's lovely that people think that a letter I wrote somehow went back, You know a company the size of Viacom, I'm sure that's not true, I think it is.

I gave them some cover. I think that's what they did. I think they knew that as a part of the business, this was much more valuable at the end of September than it would be after the election, so they did the right thing and I'm grateful that they did that.

jeff

this is for you can you say in one sentence or less why America is the greatest country in the world I agree with I agree withsorkin, we are not, not a sentence or less, we are not the greatest country in the world, but If we were to address issues like systemic racism that has been in the world, certainly in the United States for about 400 years, then maybe We could be the greatest country in the world.

That's the only phrase that works for me. Do you have any? ideas about what nickname Trump is going to give you at 2 am on a Sunday if the president of the United States is tweeting at an actor at 2 in the morning something tells me we need someone who knows more about you to do I mean Which is a complete waste of the President of the United States' time? If you ask me, I can't imagine the president doing this series a greater service than tweeting about it. So Jeff, about a year ago, you were on MSNBC. Pretty surprising moment where you asked who the heroes would be, you know this was during the Trump impeachment trial we're seeing a parallel to that.

We now know, for example, that Trump disparaged the troops and Republicans ended up silent. We know that Trump knew the seriousness of the virus and intentionally downplayed it and again the Republicans have remained silent. Are we done waiting for some Republican Party hero? I don't know what it's going to mean for Russia to offer bounties to American soldiers and not respond at all by calling the military losers and fools. I don't know what they are. waiting really no maybe you're right maybe it doesn't matter maybe I'm in such survival mode that they're looking at the end of the republican party certainly the republican party that my father belonged to was gone um and a lot of those guys that you know were From that resigned center-right persuasion, the left emerged outnumbered.

I don't know, I don't know if I believe that the people who are there now, if they don't speak up, if they don't take a step forward. They are certainly part of the problem, but they are also as guilty as Trump of putting party first. to the country. I think it's embarrassing, I really do, but you know the elections are still a month away. They have time, but talking about that. that that small portion of the country um there is a small portion of the country that is still undecided what do you have to say to those people I would say educate yourself just educate yourself you need to educate yourself you need to know more than you need uh you need to live if you're worried about Biden you need to dig deeper. he you need to figure out if he's better for you than Trump um he's better for the country than Trump uh we need to start thinking about people other than ourselves and I know that's very difficult for people when they have their noses and their phones most of the day, but this is the time when we have to think about other people and who we want to be, who we want to become. you have to decide if you want to be, you want to follow Trump or if you want to apply to Biden.

It's a pretty clear choice. It shouldn't be that hard to decide who you want to go. One of them has decency, compassion, generosity. and take care of other people, the other one doesn't, I would say that uh, Trump asked for your vote in 2016 based on four promises, um, I will bring back manufacturing, your healthcare will be better and cheaper, Mexico will pay for the wall and I will . drain the swamp, you had a Republican House and a Republican Senate and you surpassed four of those promises, which means they weren't good ideas or you're not a terribly effective leader, but either way, I'd say you deserve better and I would evaluate it strictly. in terms of performance, yes, thank you both so much, please everyone, make sure to watch Comey Rule on Showtime on September 27th and 28th.

Thank you, thank you all, Billy and Jeff, I appreciate you coming, thank you, it was a pleasure.