{"id":159154,"date":"2025-11-29T05:11:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T05:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/159154\/"},"modified":"2025-11-29T05:11:26","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T05:11:26","slug":"billy-crudup-on-his-new-play-the-morning-show-and-life-with-naomi-watts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/159154\/","title":{"rendered":"Billy Crudup on his new play, The Morning Show and life with Naomi Watts"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the face of it Gary Cooper and Billy Crudup don\u2019t have much in common. Cooper was the epitome of strong and silent reassurance and was said never to have played a dishonest man. Crudup is the shimmering enigma who has played a whole heap of them: a Kim Philbyesqe spy in The Good Shepherd, a slippery space captain in Alien: Covenant<\/a>, a Machiavellian TV boss in The Morning Show, for which he won an Emmy last year. Even his Seventies rock star in Almost Famous (\u201cI\u2019m a golden god!\u201d) had a certain unreliability.<\/p>\n

Yet here Crudup is, taking on one of Cooper\u2019s defining roles: Will Kane in High Noon, the upstanding marshal counting down the minutes until his face-off with a murderous outlaw. The beloved western of 1952 has been adapted for the West End stage by Eric Roth, the Hollywood heavyweight who wrote Dune<\/a> and Killers of the Flower Moon<\/a> and won a best adapted screenplay Oscar for Forrest Gump (1994). The play, which has its world premiere at the Harold Pinter Theatre, unfolds like the film in real time over an hour and a half and uses a ticking clock to crank up the tension.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never played a part like this,\u201d says the New York-born Crudup, 57, who has just finished a day of rehearsals in central London. \u201cThat kind of indefatigable moral certitude \u2014 not articulating it, just knowing it. It\u2019s just a very hard thing to play.\u201d Will he bring the same clarity that Cooper did? \u201cI suspect what I will do is f*** that up.\u201d He doesn\u2019t mean mess it up, he means subvert it, because that\u2019s what Crudup does. As he likes to point out, his surname is pronounced croo-dup, to rhyme with \u201cscrewed up\u201d.<\/p>\n

There are also physical differences between him and Cooper. \u201cHe was 6ft 3in so you understand physically how he\u2019s a marshal. I\u2019m 5ft 9in. You have to think about the different ways I might become a marshal.\u201d Charm, guile and erudition for a start \u2014 plus menace when viewed in a certain light. People with moral certitude can be scary. \u201cThey\u2019re just on the other side of being a lunatic,\u201d Crudup says. \u201cThere\u2019s a cultlike mentality to it.\u201d Which sounds very much in his wheelhouse.<\/p>\n

\"Billy<\/p>\n

Crudup with his wife, Naomi Watts<\/p>\n

RICHARD SHOTWELL\/INVISION\/AP<\/p>\n

If High Noon represents a leap for him, his role in Noah Baumbach\u2019s latest film, Jay Kelly<\/a>, feels deliciously appropriate. Baumbach has all kinds of fun casting George Clooney in the title role of a Hollywood star in crisis and there is a similar knowingness in his choice of Crudup to play Tim, Jay\u2019s old acting buddy, who was always seen as the talented one. While Jay, like Clooney, became a star by playing variations on himself, Tim, like Crudup, committed to transforming himself into different characters.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Harry Clarke review \u2014 Billy Crudup is hypnotic in one-man conman tale<\/a><\/p>\n

There is an extraordinary scene in which Tim demonstrates his Method acting genius by reading a menu in character, breaking down as he reaches the truffle parmigiano fries. Crudup doesn\u2019t see himself as a Method actor but he can certainly convince as one \u2014 it may be the best example of someone playing an actor acting since his wife Naomi Watts\u2019s audition scene in Mulholland Drive. \u201cIt\u2019s a hilarious proximity to me,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve got a lot of friends who I like to talk about this shit with.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Jay Kelly Tim has abandoned acting \u201clike almost everybody who gets into it. It is disheartening, even in a successful career. I can guarantee Leonardo DiCaprio has roles that he wishes he got\u201d, Crudup says. For him, the one that got away was the part in No Country for Old Men that went to Josh Brolin. \u201cCormac McCarthy<\/a> was one of my favourite writers and the Coen brothers<\/a> were some of my favourite film-makers, and I had just done a play with Frances McDormand [who is married to Joel Coen]. I thought, OK, I\u2019ve got a good chance on this one. I wanted it so bad,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I went and saw that motherf***er \u2014 that was never my part. That was Josh Brolin\u2019s part to the bitter end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Billy<\/p>\n

Crudup and George Clooney in Jay Kelly<\/p>\n

WILSON WEBB\/NETFLIX<\/p>\n

Baumbach\u2019s film shows how \u201cwe use a movie star as an analogue for the gilded life\u201d, Crudup says, \u201cwhen in fact that\u2019s bullshit. There\u2019s no correspondence between money and happiness.\u201d Cate Blanchett, who starred with him in the wartime drama Charlotte Grey in 2001, once said that \u201cBilly couldn\u2019t give a rat\u2019s patootie about celebrity\u201d and it is clearly still the case, even if The Morning Show has raised his profile. That is not to suggest that his personal life hasn\u2019t suffered, as Jay\u2019s has in the film. \u201cYou end up missing some major features of your life \u2014 a wedding or a family member\u2019s funeral or the birth of your nephew.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Naomi Watts on hot sex, hot flushes and Hollywood\u2019s last taboo<\/a><\/p>\n

The three-month run of High Noon will mean more time away from Watts, whom he married in 2023 and lives with in New York. They know what they signed up for, though. Crudup is a stage veteran, having played the lead in the Broadway premiere of Tom Stoppard\u2019s Arcadia and won a Tony for doing the same in Stoppard\u2019s Coast of Utopia in 2007. He was last seen in London in Harry Clarke, a well-reviewed<\/a> one-man show in which he played 19 characters. \u201cThat play was kind of overwhelming for me,\u201d he says. \u201cI would do it, then I would sleep as much as I could and then kind of stumble around in Camden and wait for the show to start again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Billy<\/p>\n

Crudup, front, in Almost Famous, a 2000 film about a fictional rock band<\/p>\n

SHUTTERSTOCK<\/p>\n

Roth, who has adapted High Noon, is the opposite of a stage veteran \u2014 this is his first play. Luckily he had Thea Sharrock, the Brit who directed Daniel Radcliffe in Equus and Keira Knightley<\/a> in The Misanthrope, to hold his hand. \u201cEric had never been in a rehearsal room,\u201d Crudup says. \u201cBut Thea\u2019s ability to articulate what we were doing, and his ability to pivot and learn a new skill, was miraculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

This High Noon is again set in the Old West, although there are parallels with the volatility of modern America. Lawlessness, Crudup says, \u201cis probably the most natural state of America, when you go back to look at all the conflicts we\u2019ve had\u201d. The townsfolk, like many of their contemporary counterparts, are consumed by fear \u2014 in this case of the approaching baddie, Frank Miller.<\/p>\n

\"Denise<\/p>\n

Crudup and Denise Gough during rehearsals for High Noon<\/p>\n

In the film their refusal to help Will was seen as an allegory for the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s. The conservative actor John Wayne turned down the role of Will Kane on those grounds and the screenwriter Carl Foreman, a former member of the Communist Party, was blacklisted after refusing to name fellow members to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Today people are similarly afraid of putting their heads above the parapet, whether it\u2019s over trans rights or Israel-Palestine. The play, Crudup says, \u201cis not about courage, it\u2019s about cowardice\u201d.<\/p>\n

A big difference this time is the role of Will\u2019s wife, Amy, whom he has just married. On screen she was played by Grace Kelly and was quite modest. Here the part is beefed up and taken by Denise Gough, the Olivier-winning Irish star of People, Places and Things and the Star Wars series Andor. Crudup wasn\u2019t familiar with Gough\u2019s work but Watts had worked with her on a pilot for a Game of Thrones spin-off, Bloodmoon, later abandoned. Watts told him that Gough \u201cis like a beast, she\u2019s badass\u201d, a verdict with which Crudup now strongly agrees.<\/p>\n

\"Grace<\/p>\n

Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in High Noon (1952)<\/p>\n

GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

It must be nice to be able to say he is married to Watts. \u201cI can\u2019t disagree with you there,\u201d Crudup says with a half smile. They got together after playing a married couple in the TV series Gypsy. Would they work together again? \u201cWe don\u2019t have anything on the books right now but we talk about it often. She\u2019s chomping at the bit to do some theatre.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Denise Gough: Alcohol and drugs kept me alive<\/a><\/p>\n

Crudup hates talking about his personal life. When we last met in 2017<\/a> he quoted an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer becomes the PA to Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger and sells their secrets to the tabloids. Defending his actions, the yellow one says: \u201cIf these big stars didn\u2019t want people going through their garbage \u2026 they shouldn\u2019t have tried to express themselves creatively.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, as Crudup\u2019s journalist once told Natalie Portman\u2019s Jackie Kennedy in Jackie, \u201cYou\u2019ll have to share something personal eventually. People won\u2019t stop asking until you do.\u201d Especially when you have as turbulent a romantic history as Crudup. Before marrying Watts he was with Mary-Louise Parker, the star of The West Wing and Weeds, for seven years, but left her for Claire Danes (Homeland) when Parker was seven months pregnant with their son.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to live with the mistakes that you make,\u201d Crudup said in 2017 of that period. Are he and Parker on better terms now? \u201cWell, without commenting on any of our \u2026 Our adoration for our son is boundless. And he has, through the mash-up of the two of us, been endowed with superpowers for theatricality.\u201d William Atticus Parker, now 21, is an actor, director and writer who has already made several micro-budget films. \u201cHe\u2019s such a badass,\u201d Crudup says. \u201cMary-Louise and I appeared in most of his films.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jennifer<\/p>\n

Crudup with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon in The Morning Show<\/p>\n

APPLE TV<\/p>\n

Once Crudup has finished High Noon he will start filming the fifth season of The Morning Show. Playing Cory Ellison, the impish head of a TV news network, is \u201cso much fun\u201d, he says, saluting the work ethic of his co-stars and executive producers Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. \u201cThey\u2019re just professional animals.\u201d The storylines often pre-empt real life. In one episode Cory sees orange wildfire smoke and says, \u201cDid they make Trump the pope?\u201d The scene was shot before Trump\u2019s re-election, the wildfires in Los Angeles and Pope Leo\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n

Like many actors Crudup had an itinerant childhood, moving from New York state to Texas and then Florida. His father was a bookie, conman, loan shark and salesman who \u201ccould not handle nine to five and always spoke as though everything was on the up and up. When he carried a gun, he had a positive spin on it\u201d. Even when he was dying of cancer, his father put on an optimistic front. \u201cHe was not far off from death, shrivelled up, and I remember him muttering, \u2018I\u2019m going to beat it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 2023 series Hello Tomorrow! Crudup played Jack Billings, a huckster salesman going door to door flogging timeshares on the moon to suburban suckers. \u201cI was doing an impression of my dad,\u201d he says. That, you suspect, is where Crudup got his charm and elusiveness. His father doesn\u2019t sound like a great role model but he inadvertently taught his son some valuable lessons about performance.<\/p>\n

At the Harold Pinter Theatre, London SW1, Dec 17 to Mar 7, atgtickets.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the face of it Gary Cooper and Billy Crudup don\u2019t have much in common. Cooper was the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-159154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}