Robert Kojder chats with The Brink of War star Jeff Daniels…
Playing an American president for the first time in The Brink of War is another feather in the cap of a highly decorated career for Jeff Daniels. From dramas such as Terms of Endearment to comedy in Dumb and Dumber to summer popcorn fun like Speed to working in television with political shows such as The Newsroom (for which he won one of his two Emmy awards) to also having a successful career on Broadway, he is a household name and still thriving as an actor everywhere. Here he is Ronald Reagan during the Cold War, focused on nuclear disarmament.
With that said, it was truly an honor to get the opportunity to speak to Jeff Daniels regarding the role in this conversation-driven political thriller that mostly comes down to a series of dialogues and negotiations between him anf Mikhail Gorbachev (Jared Harris), making the world a safer place, shooting on location in Reykjavík, getting into character, reuniting with Broadway co-star Hope Davis, and digging into who Ronald Reagan was at that time and what he was feeling.
Jeff Daniels gives thoughtful answers in a short, matter-of-fact tone that is appreciated, with many nuggets of wisdom to dole out about acting. There is also the feeling that he and I could have kept talking baseball forever, as we briefly do after the interview. I have included that brief conversation. Please enjoy the full interview below:
It’s nice to meet you.
Thank you.
One thing I like about this film is that it’s a series of negotiations between political leaders having real, mostly respectable conversations with one another like adults, which is something I can’t imagine happening today. Is that something you thought about while shooting this film, or something that drew you to it?
No, whatever is going on today was irrelevant to me. This had to do with playing a weekend in Reykjavik in 1986 and what happened inside that house. That’s where my focus was. It was all about asking what Reagan was thinking, and what he was doing. I didn’t have to play politics. I had to play… how do we make this a safer world by sitting down and talking with a bitter rival, Gorbachev? As divided as we are now, as dangerous as the world is now, nuclear weapons are still around now. This is what these two leaders had the courage to try to do… finding a way to talk to each other and negotiate some kind of settlement on nuclear weapons that would make the world a safe place for everyone.
It’s possible. And as divided as we think we are now, those who lived through 1986 will compare it as equally dangerous, equally frightening; 70,000 warheads were pointed at each other with no defense shield. None. If they launched ten missiles at ten American cities, Reagan had seven minutes to launch ten back at them. Mutually assured destruction. And these guys decided they didn’t want to do that. If we had leaders around the world who would consider that kind of approach to where we are now, that would make the world a safer place.
You mentioned filming this in Reykjavik. I know you also filmed in the actual house. How did that further inform your performance? Did you do any research into the house?
Well, you shoot a movie, and if it takes place in, for instance, like in Gettysburg, you shoot in Gettysburg, and you can kind of imagine what it was like. They’re the same trees, the same hills, the same rocks. Same thing with the house in Reykjavik. This is where they met. This is the room where they met. These are the chairs where they sat. So actors are all about anything we can do to use our imagination to become someone else. In this case, it was Reagan and Gorbachev. So you use that room, and you’re open to whatever the vibe is. The feeling of the house, which is like a character in the movie as well, is a bit like a church. There’s a presence in there. Something happened here. You know what it was, and you can kind of let yourself feel it. Then once you feel it, you let that kind of inform and help you… anything you can do to help get you there every day when they say action. Being in that house helped.
Were you given any transcripts from the summit to better understand the role and what happened there?
Michael Russell Gunn [writer/director] had gone through all the transcripts. A good portion of what is in the movie is what they said, and even how they said it. He was very helpful to me. My task was to memorize that dialogue, and there is a lot of it. Then to get that in my head and then put the mannerisms and the voice on top of that, like icing on a cake. You can then go to Reykjavik and suggest Reagan so that the audience can kind of feel what he’s feeling, think what he’s thinking… the story of that weekend. That became my focus and was all that I focused on. That was a lot… playing someone that iconic, that visually known.
I also enjoyed it because it’s not afraid to present Ronald Reagan as a flawed person, sort of wondering if public perception of him as a warmonger is true. Can you talk about digging into those complexities?
Yeah. He mentions it in the movie, “I’ve been called a warmonger by the New York Times”, and, to the degree that he took it personally or cared, he just kind of mentions it. Everything is, I mean, especially whether then or now, people can say things about other people and that becomes the truth. And it isn’t necessarily so. Reagan and any public figure knows this. Not everything they say about you is true. And a lot of it, all of it, you just kind of go, “Well, oh, well.” It gets to a point where you ignore most of it. Reagan was one of those guys who believed what he was doing was right and that he could get Gorbachev to believe in something, maybe even end up changing the Soviet Union. What happened in Reykjavik became the beginning of the end of the Cold War. Reagan didn’t quite know how he was gonna get there, but he got there. For me, that was fascinating because it wasn’t a straight line to getting what he wanted. It was all over the place. That’s what makes the movie so interesting. It’s such a political thriller.
I know you have also worked with Hope Davis before on Broadway. So what was it like finding chemistry, but this time when you aren’t on screen together?
Hope and I did a Broadway play together, God of Carnage, with Jim Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden. It was the four of us. We did it together for, I’m saying, like six months and then another three months. And, you know, you’re buddies, you’re teammates. You have this familiarity. You’ve been through it together. And then here she is again. So there’s this kind of comfort in knowing what she might need off-camera when she’s playing Nancy Reagan, and in being there for her. She’s a friend. I wrapped shooting, and then Hope came in and shot her scenes in one day. And I stayed over and just read the off-screen phone conversation. So I was just off camera with her, and she did the same for me when Reagan was on the phone in the bedroom with the reindeer on the wall, and Hope was sitting off camera. That’s what friends do.
[At this point the interview is over, but Jeff Daniels, so relaxed and nice, briefly made small talk about baseball before I can only assume a publicist kicked both of us off the Zoom call].
That’s cool. Thank you so much for your time. I loved watching you growing up in the 90s, so it’s been a huge honor to talk to you.
Thank you very much. Is that a White Sox pennant?
Yes, it is. I’m a White Sox fan.
Tigers and White Sox, big series this weekend! Hang on.
I know J.K. Simmons is a Tigers fan, I didn’t know about you.
Oh yeah, so am I.
Yeah, you’re from Michigan, I should have known.
Yeah. Good luck to you.
Take care and thanks.
Same to you.
SEE ALSO: Read our review of The Brink of War here
Robert Kojder
