Maybe Jeremy Strong Just Likes Doing Voices

Picture it: You call up your good pal Jeremy Strong; it’s been a while since you’ve chatted, and you want to catch up. But when the call is answered, there’s a Polish man on the other line. “Oh, sorry, I must have the wrong number,” you say, but alas, you don’t. Strong is simply in the middle of shooting a limited-series adaptation of The Boys From Brazil in which he plays an Eastern European Nazi hunter and thus has opted to stay in that accent — on and off the set — for the full seven months of the shoot. Because of course!

That includes keeping the accent in the interviews he gave for GQ’s new profile of him, which was meant to be about his upcoming role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Reckoning, but naturally a fair amount of focus was on the fact that he was suddenly Polish. The GQ writer notes that Strong doesn’t acknowledge the accent until their second meeting, perhaps worried that it will distract from what the conversation was supposed to be about. If only there were a way to avoid that. Perhaps — I’m just spitballing here — by not speaking in a Polish accent? But again, Strong is committed enough that he’s willing to run the risk of coming across as eccentric, explaining the intense process by saying, “I don’t want it to feel like an accent. I want it to just be a person, and that’s their voice — and our voice is the most individual thing about us.”

That very actory process earns admiration from plenty of Strong’s co-stars and collaborators in the profile. Aaron Sorkin talks about getting a call from Strong with no explanation of the new accent, Bradley Cooper says he’s had many conversations with “Mark Zuckerberg” with Strong staying in character (I would hang up), and Jessica Chastain says he learns things nobody asks of him for his roles. This perhaps excessive process is impressive, but no more so in the end than for an actor who doesn’t have to do all that to get the same result. 

But ultimately, who cares whether Strong is doing too much. I’m more fascinated by the logistics of staying in character (or at least staying in a character’s accent) that long. A lot happens in your life in seven months, and I need to know if anything made Strong break his accent, even momentarily. Did he read bedtime stories to his kids in a Polish accent? Let’s say he gets pulled over for speeding — is he doing one of his silly little voices to the cops? God forbid, he has to go to a funeral during those months; is he saying “Sorry for your loss” in an Eastern European dialect? 

Are there any exceptions to this process, and if not, can we test the limits? Let’s cast Strong in an animated movie playing Donald Duck … just to see what happens. That will be the true test of his commitment to voice and character. If he speaks like Donald Duck for a year, he’ll have earned the right to commit to any process his creative little heart desires.