It’s not hard to recognize John Slattery: lanky, smiling, with that easy authority that so distinguished both Mad Men’s quick-witted libertine Roger Sterling and the older version of Marvel Universe fixture Howard Stark.
It’s that same quality Tom McCarthy wanted when he cast Slattery in Spotlight as Ben Bradlee Jr., an editor at the Boston Globe who was key to that paper’s investigation of the Catholic Church’s efforts to shield predatory priests from prosecution. As Slattery explained when we sat down at TIFF, it was a role he was uniquely equipped to play.
In Spotlight, I noticed that, at least for the purposes of the movie, Ben Bradlee Jr. is basically you.
When I met Ben, the first thing that struck me was we’re not very similar physically. Some of the guys in the film – Brian d’Arcy James looks like Matty [Carroll] quite a bit, and Mark Ruffalo looks like Mike Rezendes. I didn’t want to do some sort of physical impersonation of Ben, and not that many people in a viewing audience are going to know exactly what Ben Bradlee Jr. looks like. So you get something to hang your hat on, whether it’s an attitude or a sound, something that actually helps you. If you’re playing someone who’s incredibly well known, then that’s a whole other thing.
So what did you find?
There’s a gruffness about Ben that Tom kept sort of grounding me in and reminding me of. In the beginning, I was maybe conflating it with his physicality – which, if you’ve seen Ben, was sort of a touchstone. It was just sort of how he moves around. There’s an almost pugilistic vibe that comes off of Ben. And I think it’s probably because of what he does for a living. You have to fight through the general to the specific and fight through people’s desire to leave a story partially untold. That was his job. There’s an impatience, I think, to the character – though not necessarily the real Ben.
The movie’s Bradlee seems to have a certain easy authority that I already associate with you as an actor – although he’s under more pressure than your usual characters.
Yeah, there were all kinds of pressures from the city of Boston and the Catholic Church to leave this story alone. And it’s not all necessarily overtly [on-screen]. [He’s] a journalist from a predominantly Catholic city, with a large Catholic readership, and this is a very delicate story that would have been easier to let lie.
He’s also the character who could easily have played an adversarial role in the story: the boss who keeps asking for more clarifications and more detail. But, then, everyone else is asking for those things, too.
Which is difficult, with a story like this. Which was difficult, I think, in All The President’s Men – or any story where it’s “Well, this person said this and this person said that.” A lot of it is expository, and how do you make that dramatic? How do you make it active? We’d sit around the room, whatever set we were shooting on, and find a way to make it as active as possible. Because just yelling isn’t necessarily gonna do it. I mean, it takes energy and emotion to make it dramatic, but it has to be organic, too.
What was the casting process like?
I was in The Station Agent briefly, so I’ve known [McCarthy] for a while. I’ve acted with him, we’ve been friends, we live near each other. I grew up in Boston, so it seemed like kind of a no-brainer to put me in there somewhere. I’m not sure when the idea of [playing] Ben came up. You know, usually I get something after someone else turns it down or gets another job.
Really? Still?
Yeah. Everybody does, really. There’s about four people who get everything first and then the rest of us wait for the scraps. In this case, it worked out. But I think it had to be right. It’s so specifically cast, and everyone’s so good – just being in those rooms with Mark and Michael and everybody – all of ’em. Stan Tucci’s great. So specific. I mean, to me, the whole thing is like, “Can you make it specific? Can you make that specificity work to make the story universal?” That’s, to me, what moviemaking is all about.
Now that Spotlight is done and you don’t have another season of Mad Men to shoot, what’s next?
I’m gonna look for an acting job, and I’m going to adapt a book. I did that before. I actually made a film called God’s Pocket a couple of years ago that I adapted [from a novel by Peter Dexter]. I’m going to do that again, that process. Then I don’t know – bounce around, do a couple of things here and there.
Don’t miss our review of Spotlight and our interview with director Tom McCarthy.
