Welco*e to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.
The actor: Stephen Lang started his career in the theater, winning acclaim with his work alongside Dustin Hoffman in the 1984 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman, a role which he reprised for a TV-movie adaptation the following year. Having stepped in front of the camera, Lang quickly found himself securing a steady stream of roles in both TV and film, including some high-profile projects with director Michael Mann like Manhunter and Crime Story. While some actors never look back after finding their way to onscreen success, Lang has managed to forge a career that’s enabled to him to move between TV, film, and theater, a situation which led him to a 1992 Tony nod for The Speed Of Darkness.
Lang’s dexterity as an actor has also allowed him to bounce between genres with ease, which is why he’s one of a handful of individuals who can say that they’re equally well-known for their turns in historical epics (Gettysburg and Gods And Generals) and science fiction (James Cameron’s Avatar franchise). Currently, he can be found working in the first Biblical epic of his career, playing Samuel in Prime Video’s House Of David.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The A.V. Club: Did Amazon reach out to you specifically for this?
Stephen Lang: They did. Indeed. I got a call from my representatives, and they said, “We have a project that they would like you for.” They told me it was House Of David, a Biblical story, and well, I won’t speak for all actors…. Yes, I will. All actors, you kind of have a checklist of things you want to do. “I gotta do a Western, I gotta do a romantic co*edy.” They’ll never let me do one of those, but you’ve got a checklist, and somewhere in there, of course, is the Biblical epic. At some point you’ve got to do the Biblical thing. I was intrigued enough to meet via Zoom with Jon Erwin and [Jon] Gunn and the producers on the thing, where we talked about what it was going to be. I liked them a lot. I liked their energy and their intelligence. And the role is a very singular role: Samuel. I’d never played anything like it, and I wanted to, so I decided to co*e aboard.
AVC: How much of a Biblical scholar were you going into this?
SL: Well, I know my Old Testament, I’d say—or I used to know my Old Testament, just as a piece of literature. I knew the old stories. The Old Testament itself, aside from the fact that a lot of the stories are pretty marvelous, there’s always—or many times—a sort of lurid quality as well. They can be kind of pulpy in their way, and that appeals to me. But this particular story, the story of David ascending the throne, has always been of interest to me, not least of which because it represents the tragedy of Saul as well, which is kind of a singular tragedy, it seems to me—and such an interesting story. I like being part of that story. That’s a narrative I was happy to get behind. And I have very specific memories of reading and writing about the prophets when I was in college, actually, a long time ago. [Laughs] And, of course, Samuel is the last of the judges and one of the most renowned—if not the most renowned—of the prophets.
AVC: How does one find the mindset for playing a prophet?
SL: Look, it’s like finding the mindset of playing anything, whether it’s a blind man or Babe Ruth or any of the other things I’ve played. You do the preparation that your intuition and your intelligence tells you you need to do, and the reason you’re doing that preparation is in preparation to take the leap of faith that ultimately you’re going to make to play the part. Does that make some sense?
AVC: It does, yes.
SL: Okay, so that’s pretty much with any role. That’s the case. Some roles, I think, are far more challenging than others and require perhaps a longer or a greater or a deeper leap of faith. It’s interesting to talk about a leap of faith when it co*es to playing this particular role, because the role of Samuel is based on faith, in fact. But once you kind of understand the details, the “historical” details of who he was and how he came about, then I found it relatively simple to just lend myself to the role, to allow myself to ride the crest, the wave of the faith, the deep faith that this character has. This overwhelmingly strong relationship that he has with Yahweh, with the Lord. I mean, once you’ve made that decision, then you just project yourself into it and allow it to happen, y’know?
AVC: With this feature, we try to go as far back in an actor’s on-camera career as possible, and it looks like yours was playing a character named Janos in a TV movie called We’re Fighting Back.
SL: I think that was my network debut. I’d done something before that for PBS. I played Percy Bysshe Shelley for a PBS show called Anyone For Tennyson? [Laughs] That was a very important show for me because I actually married the costume designer [Kristina Watson] on that show and I’ve been married to her now for over 45 years! But, yes, Janos…what happened with that was that they were doing this thing about the Guardian Angels in New York. You know, the subway crimefighters. And they called me in, and the director, the wonderful, great Lou Antonio, said to me, “You know, we need another kind of character. We have this guy, we have this guy, we have the girl, blah blah blah. We need something else. Do you have anything that you could do?” And I said, “Yeah, probably. Could I have a night to work on it?”
I went home, and I created in my mind this character Janos, a Hungarian. Oh, my god [laughs]. A Hungarian immigrant. I kind of laid out this whole thing, this audition speech, this soliloquy of why I had to be a Guardian Angel, because of what America meant to me. Because I didn’t want to have to live in closed rooms with the doors and windows locked, as we did in Budapest when the Soviets came. I did this whole spiel! I’d been improv-ing it all night and all day. I went in and did it, and I remember the last thing I said to Lou was [shifts into a Hungarian accent], “So you see, this is why I must join with you!” And he looked back at me, and he said [deadpans], “Yes. You must join with us.” So I got the job!
That was good. I was working with wonderful people. Lou directed it, and of course Ellen Barkin, that might’ve been her debut. And Joe Morton and Paul McCrane and some other excellent actors [are] in there as well. That was the first network thing. Did you know that it was supposed to go to series? I think they call that a backdoor pilot. It was supposed to go to series, but from what I understood, Curtis Sliwa, who is still running the Guardian Angels in New York, I believe he wanted—it became a financial thing. Now, this is hearsay, so I don’t want to hear from Curtis on this, ’cause this is just what I heard! But I heard that the series got 86’ed because the demands were too great.
AVC: You had the rare opportunity to play Pickett and Jackson over the course of a decade. What were the challenges of playing those disparate characters?
SL: Well, Pickett’s kind of all gravy. Pickett was a lot of fun to play. He was kind of the cavalier of the piece, partly because, well, they always referred to Jeb Stuart as the cavalier, but in fact Jeb Stuart was pretty much absent at Gettysburg, so Pickett sort of has this role of this great romantic. That’s the way Michael Shaara wrote it and that’s the way we played it, and I think to a large extent the portrayal had a role in kind of reimagining Pickett for people, which is not necessarily all for the good in my estimation. But Pickett had been glorified after his death by his wife Sally, in any case. The Heart Of A Soldier was a book she wrote, and he became kind of representative, in a way, of the lost cause, of notions that, at least to my mind, have beco*e somewhat tarnished and discredited. But in any case, it was a wonderful role to play. Horsemanship was a big part of it for me. My mustache was a big part of it for me, and my beautiful hair was a big part of it. [Laughs] That’s how shallow I am! But Pickett was a rather shallow person himself, I have to say. The other thing I’d say about Pickett is that, at heart, Pickett was a very sad man. There was great sadness in him as well.
Jackson is an altogether different thing. Jackson is a fascinating, fascinating character, so totally American in his way. Jackson is really a personification of the modern man in many ways. You’re taking me back, but I always say that Jackson was kind of an Old Testament warrior and a New Testament believer. But he was always into self-improvement. He was into calisthenics. He was into herbal and holistic medicines and things like that. He was interested and he was always a learner. So playing Jackson was a denser experience than playing Pickett, because Jackson was a deeper and a denser character than Pickett was.
I always thought the reenactors were so wonderful. Of course, you rely on the reenactors when you make films like that. Well, they knew me as Pickett. So for them to accept me as Jackson was…you know, I wasn’t sure how that was going to go! [Laughs] But they did. And I also give a lot of credit and appreciation to Ron Maxwell, the director of both Gettysburg and Gods And Generals, for casting me as Jackson, because he also knew that it would require some adjustment in thinking on some people’s parts to accept me as Jackson after having been successful as Pickett.
SL: [Laughs] Right. Well, you can’t talk about that experience without talking about Steven Seagal, you know what I mean? I worked with Steven, who has—to put it mildly—a rather checkered kind of reputation. But I was down in Kentucky doing this picture with him, and you’ve got to get by, so what I did was I instituted a six-foot rule with Steven. And I’ll explain that, but first, I’ll tell you this story.
I had to go meet him for him to sign off on me getting the role. A car came and took me to Staten Island. He had a big place on Staten Island which actually really reminded me a lot of Don Corleone’s co*pound in The Godfather, right? And there were, like, pit bulls and thugs and everything all around. I was directed to go sit on a flagstone terrace out in the middle of nowhere, far from the house. I sat there for a while, and then a door opened, and this figure starts co*ing towards me. And he’s dressed in what we would call a muumuu. [Laughs] And he’s walking toward me, and the first thing I notice—aside from the muumuu—was his shoes, his slippers. Did you ever see Aladdin? You know the shoes that her father wore, with the points that kind of co*e back on themselves? Yeah, this is what’s approaching me. I stand up, and he co*es right up into my space, and he says to me [does a low, whispering Seagal impression], “So, you’re the thespian.” And I looked at him, and I said [points], “Don’t you ever call me that again.” And he went [grins widely] “Ha ha ha.” And that’s when I knew that I had the part.
Cut to [being] down in Kentucky, and he co*es to me, and I said, “Steven! Steven, I’m afraid. No, no, no hugging. I’d prefer it if you never came within six feet of me.” And he went, “Why?” And I said, “Because I never know if you’re gonna hug me or kick me in the balls.” And he said, “I would never kick you in the balls.” And I said, “Really?” And he said, “Well, maybe.” And I said, “Let’s keep the six-foot rule anyway.” [Laughs] So there’s a few little anecdotes from that, and they’re all true stories. Playing the role was just ridiculous. I mean, I did it, and I’m glad I did it, and it was great. I didn’t work with Harry Dean Stanton, but I had a few drinks with him. And [Kris] Kristofferson was on the movie. There were some great people on the movie.
AVC: Which came first, Manhunter or Crime Story?
SL: I think Manhunter. Yeah, it was Manhunter.
AVC: How did you first find your way into Michael Mann’s orbit?
SL: Well, I think that I’d gone in for a Miami Vice [episode], and I couldn’t do it when it was offered for whatever reason. I mean, I don’t know what the hell I was doing. [Laughs] Michael was never one to be denied, so they asked me in for Manhunter, and I was cast in that, and we hit it off. And then he asked me if I’d do a series with him, and I’d do anything with him. So that’s how Crime Story came about.
AVC: How did you find the experience of working with him? He has a reputation for being a bit of a perfectionist.
SL: Yeah, he is. But we all are in our own way, I suppose. I love working with Michael, for Michael. In one sense, the easy answer is that when Michael says, “Jump,” I generally say, “How high?” I don’t need to have long discussions with Michael on the set at all. I like to do what Michael wants. If I can shape it, if I can change it, I do that. I understood in certain ways how to exert myself with him. But he’s so focused on his opinions and his agenda and everything like that. I’m not there to challenge it; I’m there to fulfill it with Michael—as opposed to directors who are just looking for all kinds of engagement, y’know what I mean? To find something. And, of course, Michael was great, loved to rehearse, loved to just dig through stuff and everything. But in the end, I just like to do what I can to really deliver the vision that Michael would have for a particular scene. And I always would.
SL: [Laughs] You’re picking some real lulus, man. I did that, first of all, for the opportunity to work with [Peter] Bogdanovich. You didn’t know Bogdanovich directed that, did you?
AVC: Actually I did.
SL: Okay, so you know that story. [Editor’s note: Bogdanovich was replaced by Maurice Phillips.] So I did it originally to work with Bogdanovich, but also to work with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. I remember the first time we were rehearsing in the Plaza Hotel in, like, the Louis XIV ballroom. It was just absurd. And you have to kind of think of it this way: Richard was in early to mid stages of his MS, and Gene was, I don’t know if it’s fair to say this, but in a bit of a permanent state of mourning for Gilda [Radner]. I’m not sure how many years it had been at that point. I’m not sure that a co*edy was kind of really the thing for them to be doing. But they were game! Anyway, we would rehearse, and Mercedes Ruehl—she was the other actor in it, she was the love interest—and I sort of convened outside of the rehearsal room. Because these rehearsals were absurd. It was all about having lunch and stuff like that. It was kind of crazy. And I remember Mercedes looked at me, and she said, “Are you pay-or-play?” And I said, “Uh-huh.” And she said, “Me, too. Good.” Because we weren’t actually sure the picture was actually gonna get made, y’know?
So then we start making the movie, and I’m doing the best I can. I’m playing this guy; he’s a real nasty type of villain, Dibbs, Dibbsey, and I’m doing my nasty best [laughs]. We shot in New York for quite awhile. A number of weeks. And then somewhere as we’re flying to the West Coast to finish the shoot out there, Peter Bogdanovich gets fired from the movie! So we have to kind of redo the entire thing with another director and kind of another cast, but Mercedes was still there and Richard and Gene, and the great Vanessa Williams, who I absolutely adore. I loved working with Gene. He became a very good pal of mine. I respected him, and I just really loved Gene. Richard and I got along just great. Looking back, I don’t think it’s a particularly memorable picture, but I wouldn’t trade the opportunity to work with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor. And Bogdanovich! I loved Bogdanovich. Great guy. And they’re all gone.
AVC: Also Gilbert Gottfried, who was in the portion of the film that got dumped after they fired Bogdanovich.
SL: That’s right! He was let go. And he was funny in it! And you know who kind of took Gilbert’s place? Kevin Pollak. He was terrific, as were Peter Michael Goetz, who’s a wonderful character actor, and Vinnie Schiavelli. Yeah, there were some very fine actors in there, playing that crew of crazies. I don’t think it was a particularly politically correct picture, as I recall. [Laughs] My god, this is more than I’ve thought about that movie since I made it, to be honest.
AVC: You’re welco*e.
SL: Yeah, thanks a lot!
AVC: How was the experience of doing the visual effects for the Avatar films?
SL: I enjoy it. I love doing performance capture, which I did in The Way of Water. In the first Avatar, I just did a little bit. I did about a week’s worth at the end of the shoot. But it does seem to me that performance capture is one of the defining qualities of the film, of the process. So I was very glad to be that deeply immersed in what I consider to be a defining aspect of the film. To me, working in performance capture, it’s almost acting at its most basic. It’s like acting in a rehearsal room, in many ways. And working with Jim Cameron is always fascinating—and challenging and fun and intimidating and…all kinds of stuff!
AVC: You’d be surprised how many people asked me to ask you about this film.
SL: Yeah? Well, that was one that I did I think right before I did Another You, actually. That was with the excellent John Badham; he made that picture, and they weren’t quite sure what they wanted this to be. And I remember thinking, “Well, this isn’t gonna be easy to do.” It was essentially a co*edy, a buddy film with co*ic aspects to it. But to do a killer, you have to be delicate with it, y’know? You don’t want to tip the whole thing over into something that’s just entirely–I mean, this is not Silence Of The Lambs or something like that.
I wanted there to be—and I know that John Badham agreed with this—almost a hyper-real aspect to the character. I wanted him to bounce along. I wanted to keep him real. But I wanted him to have his really kind of crazy, exuberant energy, which I thought might work well in the film. And I can’t judge. I did it, and I don’t know. If people dig it, I’m glad to hear it! [Laughs.]
AVC: Talk about playing Jerome Fassinger, since Finishing The Picture holds a place in history as Arthur Miller’s final play.
SL: It’s funny how you bring that up. I was just thinking about it. I was on the phone today with Steve Bakunas, who was Linda Lavin’s husband. Linda just passed, and we played husband and wife in that play. We played variations on characters who were based on Lee and Paula Strasberg. Acting with Linda was just a lot of fun. The cast was superb: Stacy Keach and Harris Yulin, Frances Fisher, Scott Glenn, and Linda and myself. It was so nice for me to be back with Arthur, since I’d worked with him 20 years before on Death Of A Salesman with Dustin [Hoffman] that we did on Broadway and then made a movie out of. I love Arthur Miller. I mean, there’s no play greater than Death Of A Salesman. And his other plays are wonderful as well, but Salesman…he was unconscious when he wrote that. That play came through him. And I just enjoyed talking to him about it.
And then Finishing The Picture was such a strange and wonderful play. You know, my character didn’t co*e in until the second scene, and the first scene was very long. I don’t know if they called it an act or a scene. But in any case, I used to watch it all the time, and what I realized finally was that what Arthur had written was actually an existential farce. This was a farce. And I don’t think in our production that we had quite understood that. I’m not dissing anyone. Bob Falls, who directed that, is one of the great directors of my life. But there was an absurdity to this play. I don’t know that we co*pletely twanged that chord, in a way. But it was an interesting play, a wonderful play. I was very sorry, because The New York Times sent somebody out to Chicago to review it, which I think they shouldn’t have done. I wish they hadn’t done it, because they gave it a bad review, and then it never came to New York. It was slated to co*e to Broadway and never did. But what are you gonna do? Maybe it would’ve gotten slammed if it came to New York. I don’t know. But in any case, it was very rewarding to do.