Corey Stoll starred as Bo in Appropriate on Broadway at the Belasco Theatre through June 23, 2024.

Stoll is best known for his Golden Globe-nominated performance as Congressman Peter Russo on Netflix's House of Cards. His other major TV roles include Dr. Ephraim Goodweather on The Strain and Michael Prince on Billions, and his film credits include Ant-Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, First Man, and Steven Spielberg's West Side Story.

Stoll has appeared in the Broadway shows A View From the Bridge, Old Acquaintance, and Henry IV. For performing in the Off-Broadway play Intimate Apparel, he was nominated for a Drama Desk Award.

Corey’s recent projects are:
https://deadline.com/2024/06/the-better-sister-series-adds-corey-stoll-bobby-naderi-to-cast-1235957989/

https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/rebel-moon-cast-zack-snyder

I am very much an introvert. I can be very shy. Acting allows me to be out-going and gregarious.

In my recent Broadway play, Appropriate, there’s one laugh that I get—it’s a shock wave—there’s a bomb going off, and you can feel it. And it keeps rolling. It’s not just my laugh, it’s the whole play, the writer and everyone on stage. How they’re reacting to what happens. For that brief moment I can exactly control 700 people who burst into an explosive laughter.

Do you modify your performance each evening?
Yes. It’s instinct; a million little things. It’s how I feel the audience has been that particular night. The timing and the intensity of the line that’s fed to me that leads to that. How my throat is feeling. The million things are mostly subconscious.

This particular play is a very tight band that feels like ski slaloming. If you miss a turn, you really feel like you’re going to go careening.

When that happens the audience isn’t even aware of it. They don’t know what it was the night before. For all of us it’s very precise work actually. There’s an accumulative effect: one night you’ll just stray a little bit, and risk missing a great moment because it’s not feeling real.

Or you’ll create this color that you had never created before. You start to explore little by little. Another night, somebody will mess up, and it will create this whole cascading effect. We respond to what the other actors are doing, creatively. Everyone’s very sensitive to what is going on.

I went to Tisch School of the Arts to act. It was great—like bootcamp. We went from nine in the morning till 11 at night. You get to a place where you’re working so far beyond your capacity to deliver polished work, that you’re forced to be failing all the time. And so, you develop courage and a sense of play, a sense that every performance is an act of discovery. Even when you have really worked something into an incredibly fine detail.

It was the first time that I had no real sense of competition. We were a group where other people’s successes were my own. We all felt ownership for everybody else’s growth. Everybody was terrible, all of us, multiple times a day. Once you’re a professional that’s almost impossible to maintain. Because you are competing for roles. The more you can shut that out, the better.

Those actors that I have continued to have good relationships with are generous. But it’s scary out there and you’re never sick, you’re never home. You’re always moving. And I think that the more you embrace the fact that it’s changing, the healthier you’ll be. I think a lot of actors get into trouble when they try to hold onto something. When you sign on for a TV show you sign on for a seven year contract, and that seems like a marriage. It’s a one-way street.

I have a journaling practice, and a meditation practice. I write three pages in a journal—no more, no less—every morning. Just automatic writing, just trying to get that first layer of conscious mind. The whole point is to never show it to anybody, never read it, it really is just the sense of taking the top little bit of monkey brain and just holding onto it. Just writing it down to solidify it, slow down my thoughts for a little bit, and let them go.

And I meditate, usually about half an hour every day.

How do you express resistance to a director?
I think the ultimate resistance that an actor can do, especially in theatre, that is really self-defeating, is to not, at least try it once. On film it’s a little different. Because if you say yes, and they’re filming it, that very well be the take they use. And then you have lost all control.

In theatre, you should at least attempt every direction, at least in rehearsal. Because there’s nothing to lose. You can talk yourself into saying, ‘I’m not going to, they’re wrong. I’m not going to try it.’ But you can never really know until you do it.

Do you ever have ideas that almost change the writing, and how do you handle that, what do you do?
Well, if it’s in rehearsal, the only reason not to just go ahead and do it, is if it’s going to hurt one of the actors—such as destroy a prop, or create damage. That’s one of the things that’s such a luxury about rehearsal that you rarely get in film and TV, where you can try something and there isn’t a money counter going.

Do you rehearse for films? How’s that different from television?
It’s very different. And you always feel that the taxi meter is going and the pressure. Every second is money when you’re on a film set.

I think it’s even more so on television. In general, you’re going straight into the medium and the closeups, and actors sort of determine the blocking and how physically they affect each other. You’re often going right into the words, and the relationship.

How do you access your creative subconscious? You’re living in this part, and things will come to mind to try. What happens within you to do that?
It starts with the script, with the playwright, the screenwriter had some idea of who this character was. And used the words as a sort of a blueprint for it.

Every time you read a script though, it’s a different script. Right. Every time you read a script, do you see something that you hadn’t seen or appreciated before? Tomorrow is different from today. You’re different. How does that inform the result?
It has to. I think so much of the actor’s work is to be in the state of relaxed open readiness. You have to have a certain degree of relaxation. Your body, your voice, your perception has to be able to move in any direction. The more you try to force something to happen, the farther it gets away from you.

Do you take your characters home? Do you find you sometimes talk to your son as your character?
There are some people who really fetishize. There are kind of actors that just completely identify with their characters. It’s impossible not to. But it’s not in such a sort of one-to-one relationship. When my wife and I were doing Macbeth, I remember we started doing it and it was like, oh my God, it’s going to be really tumultuous, and you’re going to be fighting all the time. And it was, and just playing that character who goes through such hell, and goes to such an incredibly dark place every night. It was some of the lightest I’d felt. You know, I just sort of went through it all. And I went to hell and back.

How is it as an actor, going through a part that makes you miserable, unhappy, and angry; how does that affect you, your psyche, your physiology? Your life?
Your body can’t really tell the difference. You know even though intellectually you know that this is make believe, and that you’re safe. The body keeps a score, and it can unlock certain things. But sometimes it can be an enterprising light you’re able to express yourself in the most articulate and unrestrained way, there’s a release, there’s a catharsis. But it can be exhausting.

Do you discuss your work with others, fellow actors, playwrights, colleagues, friends?
One great thing about being married to an actor and an artist, is that we can really talk about this stuff. And that she can understand it. I definitely talk with her.

One of my teachers from grad school, Jim Calder, would say, go up and do something you know. And we’d do some exercise. He’s like, he’d turn to the rest of the class, be like, that was boring, uh? And it was all so shocking to us. We’re all so used to being handled so delicately. It was real, I loved it so much, because of course, it’s boring. Of course you’re going to do boring things. You can’t be so identified with it. Every little bit of work you do is a verdict on your ability as an actor. Or, your worthiness as an artist. You know, everybody, the best artists create boring work. And you have to face that, and find out what’s boring about it. And even in the most boring work, there’s always some kernel, something interesting in there. Once you’re being paid to do something, there’s this incredibly strong drive to always be at least good. And that is a trap.

Once the director has gone away. You rehearse and then you start previews. And then while you’re in previews, you’re performing, and you’re also rehearsing. And the director is giving you notes. Once you’re open, there is a sense that it is now the actors. Now the stage manager is keeping notes, and if you’re starting to go off and change the blocking, or add ten minutes to the second act, or you know, doing all these other things. It’s their job to rein you in, like, this is the show we designed together, and let’s stay within those parameters.

Is there a creative rhythm among actors in a play? Is there, just to use a metaphor, a beat, a rhythm, a sound that you tend to get out a wavelength, all together, and it all changes together?
This play in particular has a very demanding rhythm, it’s very fast, it’s overlapping, and it’s very precise. And if you look at the script, it has these slash marks. So, it’s at this point in the line, where the next person interrupts them, and starts talking. It’s the difference between what’s written as a beat, or a pause, or a long beat, or a long pause, these are all very specific things that as a company, we sort of figured out how it all fits together. And, this show, maybe more than any show that I’ve ever done, I feel I could come in two words later in a sentence, and it will have cascading effects, and make it sound just the music will just be totally off. And the audience may not really register, at least not on a conscious level. But for the actors it feels huge.

Do you ever get too close to the work that you can’t see it?
I think you never see the whole work. I think any sort of collaborative art is in some ways a school of fish, or flock of starlings, where there’s a certain shared intelligence you know. In the end it’s the director who has the broadest view.

Do you ever astonish yourself? Oh my God, I can’t believe I did that.
That’s what it’s all about. I don’t know how often that happens, but that’s the reason why you do it all. To surprise oneself, I think, is the greatest joy.

What’s tomorrow? Where do you want to go, what do you want to do that you haven’t done? What do you hope to be able to explore that you haven’t?
I’d love to play a very gentle, quiet person. I’m a big guy, I’ve got a big voice, I’ve got an incredibly strong sense of will that I can project, and people project onto me. I play a lot of high-status people. I would love to play a character whose effect on the world is felt a little bit more subtle.

Are you enjoying this 30-year journey?
Oh yeah. It saved my life, I mean, you know I think about what other paths my life could have taken, if Mrs. Gunns hadn’t made me do a musical in fifth Grade, if I hadn’t met Ann Retray, our junior high school teacher. I think it was teachers who really convinced me that this was something that I had some ability in. So many teachers along the way.

I’ve had so many disappointments, I’ve had so many rejections. But I’ve had enough successes and I’ve been able to dedicate my full time to this. You know, since I left grad school, I've never had a day job.

Acting is such an incredible gift. I’ve gotten to work with so many brilliant, interesting people. But it’s never enough. I’m greedy, definitely. I want more.

CREW CREDITS:
Talent: Corey Stoll
PhotoBook Editor-In-Chief: Alison Hernon
PhotoBook Creative Director: Mike Ruiz
Photographer: Howard Schatz
Tearsheets by Daniel López, Art Director, PhotoBook Magazine
Interview by Howard Schatz

Corey Stoll, Recently Starring on Broadway for Appropriate