Christopher Abbott Has Been Hollywood’s Best-Kept Secret for Over a Decade

Abbott, one of the best actors of his generation, sits down with IndieWire to talk his ongoing role onstage in Broadway's "Death of a Salesman" and one upcoming on Netflix's "East of Eden."

Christopher Abbott has long made a striking impression in indie films and popular TV series as tortured New York men contemplating their own self-inflicted wounds — as the self-destructive lead in Josh Mond’s extraordinary and underrated movie “James White,” the angsty barfly onstage in “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” and the eventual heroin addict on TV’s “Girls.”

Most audiences likely know him from Lena Dunham’s zeitgeist-shaking HBO series, but he’s been an edgy, screen-commanding fixture in movies for more than a decade, most recently onscreen in the studio horror offering “Wolf Man” and his friend Mona Fastvold’s period musical “The Testament of Ann Lee.” In that film and Fastvold’s prior effort, the pastoral lesbian romance “The World to Come,” he played an abusive, misogynist husband. (“She needs to give me something else,” he joked in conversation with IndieWire during a recent taping of the “Screen Talk” podcast.)

Right now, though, he’s about to star as the submissive, well-meaning, but naïve patriarch Adam Trask in Zoe Kazan’s Netflix miniseries adaptation of “East of Eden.” And he’s onstage in Broadway starting this week as the emotionally damaged prodigal son Biff Loman in Joe Mantello’s new version of “Death of a Salesman,” opening April 9 in New York.

“I’d never seen a live production of ‘Death of a Salesman,’” Abbott told IndieWire. “Me and [co-star] Laurie Metcalf both hadn’t seen it for similar reasons. We both do this thing where if we think there’s a time in the future where we may do said play, you sort of hold off on seeing that play just in case, so you’re not influenced by it.”

Abbott did not have to audition for the play, which also stars Nathan Lane as capitalism-burdened patriarch Willy Loman, and “The Gilded Age” breakout Ben Ahlers as his more charismatic brother, Happy.

“I’ve been working long enough where, whether it’s theater or any film, there’s enough people who can cite my work … they can assess that I can probably do the part or not,” said Abbott. He resonated with the 1949 Arthur Miller play’s portrait of the declining middle class and falling American dream, but “you can even relate it to nowadays, whether it’s AI taking over jobs. Just the feeling of one being expendable has always been a theme. … I’ve noticed that this is a play where a lot of grown men cry because of the father-son theme. I’ve walked outside after the play, and grown men are still tearing up, and that says something. It’s probably the hardest demographic to squeeze a tear out of.”

Abbott gives a full-throated performance as what turns out to be a projection of Biff’s father Willy’s fantasies about what he might have been before he became a shill of an insurance salesman. But the “Possessor” and “Catch-22” star also made an impression in the off-Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley’s “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” in 2023. He starred opposite Aubrey Plaza, with whom it was announced shortly after this interview that he is having a baby.

“New York guys is apparently my niche,” laughed Abbott, who rarely plays a sweet, innocent person. “There’s a vulnerability, but I’m getting older now. Innocence and sweetness is for the young. Those [days] are gone.”

Abbott has brushed against studio fare, from the chamber horror movie “Wolf Man” to starring in Marvel’s “Kraven the Hunter” in a role he seems circumspect about praising. “One thing I struggle with purely as an actor is probably some lack of control,” he said. “[Theater] is where I feel the most control, of this sort of highwire act of things can go wrong and become improvisational. I like the act of it, and the analogy I use the most is if a band is playing a live show versus making a record in the studio.”

As for “Kraven the Hunter,” he said, “I had worked with and am friends with JC Chandor, who directed that, so he’s the one who asked me to do that. Sometimes, I choose stuff that’s not always for all artistic value — for the example of ‘Kraven,’ I wanted to work with JC. And I liked a lot of the other actors in it … I wanted to just be there and see how these kind of movies get made. I don’t know if my performance is going to be in the pantheon of whatever, but it was interesting to just see how the gears turn on a movie like that.”

When I mentioned that I hope people on these movies get paid well, he said, “I just made a face.”

In the upcoming “East of Eden,” he stars as the often-feckless husband of Florence Pugh’s Cathy Trask, who is the antagonist in John Steinbeck’s book, a woman who uses her feminine wiles to manipulate the people around her. Abbott said that Kazan’s version — an adaptation of a book that her grandfather Elia Kazan mounted in 1955 — is told through that character’s eyes.

“Florence is an actress [where] even on the surface the character might be considered an evil person, you always still try to find the heart and the humanity in that person,” Abbott said. “With this version, there’s a lot more to work with for that character. Obviously way more than in the movie version.” He stars in the Netflix series in a role originally taken on by Raymond Massey in Kazan’s film, which was less focused on his character and more on the later pages of the book. “I adore the book. I’ve been lucky. It’s now my second famous American novel miniseries because I got to do ‘Catch-22’ and this. If this becomes some sort of niche for me, I’ll be happy with that.”

Abbott’s role as Charlie in the first two seasons of “Girls” and the episode “The Panic in Central Park” from Season 5 — widely regarded as one of the very best of the show — is probably what gets him most recognized. He left the show at the end of Season 2 over creative differences with creator/star Lena Dunham, who was able to lure him back for a final appearance as Marnie’s (Alison Williams) ex-boyfriend Charlie at his drug-addicted lowest. Has Abbott participated in the rewatch many people seem to be doing of this show over the last few years?

“I don’t watch myself that much, especially when it comes to TV,” Abbott said. “This is truly honest: I don’t know a good place to do it. Meaning, if I do a movie I will go the premiere, and that’s a great way to experience it. But TV, it gets tricky. If there’s a screening in a theater, I’ll go watch it. I don’t want to sit at home by myself and watch myself for an entire season of something. I think that’s weird. Nor do I want to invite people over and have a party around it. That’s also a strange thing to do.”

“TV’s been the hardest thing to watch myself in. So, no, I’m not part of the rewatch party, and I was only slightly part of the watch party,” he said with a laugh. “If they screen it somewhere, I would.”

Listen to the full interview with Christopher Abbott on IndieWire’s “Screen Talk” podcast starting Friday, April 10. “Death of a Salesman” is now running on Broadway.