Jeremy Strong confirms Springsteen biopic casting and reveals favourite album
It’s an early ‘80s classic for the ‘Succession’ star
Actor Jeremy Strong, best known for playing troubled media heir Kendall Roy in TV’s Succession, has told NME that he’s definitely on the cast for upcoming Bruce Springsteen biopic Deliver Me From Nowhere.
Rumours first emerged in May that he was up for the part of Jon Landau, The Boss’s longtime manager, but were never officially confirmed by Strong’s team. Now he says he’s rubber-stamped the deal – and revealed his favourite Springsteen record to boot: 1982’s stark, introspective gem ‘Nebraska’.
“It just always spoke to me, there’s a melancholy to it,” he said. “I am doing [Deliver Me From Nowhere] but I’d always felt that way about that album. There’s a narrative to it that comes from a very deep place in him and you can feel that.”
Strong also singled out Van Morrison’s acclaimed 1968 release ‘Astral Weeks’ as one he always goes back to. “It’s transportive and it’s pretty perfect,” he said. You can watch the full video interview, in which Strong is joined by Sebastian Stan – his co-star from new film The Apprentice – above.
The Apprentice, out this week, details the rise of Donald Trump (Stan) from his early days as an ambitious real estate businessman in New York City to billionaire property developer. It focuses particularly on his relationship with mentor Roy Cohn (Strong), the ruthless and feared lawyer who helped Senator Joseph McCarthy jail suspected communists during the 1950s.
The film has drawn the ire of Trump supporters for its often negative portrayal of the former president and, recently, even Trump himself. “A FAKE and CLASSLESS movie written about me, called, ‘The Apprentice’ (Do they even have the right to use that name without approval?), will hopefully ‘bomb’”, he wrote on his Truth Social platform this week.
We’re not trying to defame him or vilify him,” said Strong. “We’re trying to tell an accurate story of these historical figures.” Check out the rest of our interview below, which digs deeper into the political controversy stirred up by The Apprentice, what music the actors listened to for research and the time Stan auditioned for Bono’s disastrous Spider-Man Broadway musical in 2010.
Hey guys, were you ever worried that The Apprentice might never see the light of day?
Jeremy Strong: “It came very close to being blocked and not allowed to be shown in America – which was really unsettling and troubling. And you know, even though we narrowly escaped the jaws of censorship, it almost tipped the other way. I find that very dark.”
