YOU DON'T NEED to ply Billy Magnussen with small talk before you get to the big stuff. He'll jump straight to it. We're taking a stroll through Midtown Manhattan on a windy autumn day, and I try to warm up the Austin-based actor by asking what brings him to his hometown of New York.
"No, let's talk about life!" he declares over the gusts whistling through the city streets. "Let's talk about health. Because my character in The Franchise really represents the kind of insecurity that's put into men about their bodies. And it's not healthy, dude. It's one thing to say, 'I'm an athletic person and fitness is part of my lifestyle.' But the pressure to have a superhero body is unsustainable. The superhero body isn't real."
The character he's referring to is Adam, a B-list actor in a B-tier superhero movie called Tecto: Eye of the Storm. (Tecto's signature super skill? An invisible jackhammer.) Its production serves as the setting of the HBO comedy The Franchise, executive produced by Veep's Armando Iannucci, about a Hollywood studio churning out comic book-based blockbusters to diminishing returns. (Sound familiar?) While the show skewers a dysfunctional industry, it tips its hat to the crew members that keep it from total collapse. They're put upon, but they're eminently capable. Adam, on the other hand...?
There was a time in his career where Magnussen could have easily been in Adam's shoes: perpetually chasing fame, insecure, unfulfilled and unstable. (Whether he'd resort to experimental growth hormones or fecal transplants, well, who knows what the multiverse holds?) That he found his way down a different path, playing offbeat roles in movies like Road House, made going down Adam's all the more enticing—and more than a little unsettling. In anticipation of the show's upcoming season finale and whatever fresh indignities it holds for Magnussen's character, the actor talks about body image, mental health, and why The Franchise nails the absurdity of Hollywood.
MEN'S HEALTH: Your character goes to great lengths to achieve an uncanny physique. Were there ever times in your career where you felt the pressure to meet those kinds of impossible expectations in order to land roles?
BILLY MAGNUSSEN: Yeah, there were times. But now I've made my peace with it all—I just want my lifestyle, my health and fitness, to help feel good on the inside and outside. My dad was a carpenter, so I grew up in a carpentry shop; I grew up with a hammer in my hand. If a tool is broken, you have to repair it or replace it if you want to finish the job. I think the body is the same way. My body is my tool. I have to make sure it's in shape and it's working properly.
MH: But to play the character, you presumably had to achieve the kind of body he'd be striving to achieve, right?
BM: That's the funniest part of it! I got cast in the show and I thought: I'm playing an actor who's playing a superhero, who's obsessive about getting into superhero shape, so I'll put on 25 pounds. So I fuckin' put on 25 pounds! Then I showed up to the costume fitting, and they said, "Why'd you do that? We have a muscle suit for you! You don't have to do that." So I didn't fit in the outfit they had for me because I'd gained too much weight!
MH: Adam could have been depicted as a typical Hollywood jerk, but instead the show has taken him in a more interesting, neurotic direction. How would you define his arc?
BM: I think Adam's reality is one of insecurity. The question Am I enough? encapsulates Adam's arc for me. He's someone who's always cusping and wanting more, but who's also afraid to put himself fully out there. Acting is a very sacred space, whether it's on stage or in front of the camera, and you have to be vulnerable. You have to put your emotions and who you are as a person on the line, and that costs you something over and over again. And I do feel like, in my own 20-year career now, it's cost me a lot. And I wonder, How can I protect who I am while still doing this job I love?
MH: As an actor, did you ever go down the route of chasing fame over fulfillment?
BM: I realized about 10 years ago that it wasn't going to be my route, being that I'm a weird guy! Everyone wanted to keep putting me in this "pretty boy" box, and I just don't give a fuck about that. I kept going up for projects and thinking, This doesn't feel right. I want the weird characters, I want the ones that are broken, I want the ones facing real challenges. I would go out for these "leading man" roles, and it just it never clicked because they only wanted a meat puppet. And I was never that. I always think of actors like Robin Williams, who just played. And that's a magical thing, that freedom to just play.
MH: What was the trick to finding a bit of mental stability in such an unstable career?
BM: I learned not to compare myself to everyone else. In my 20s, I was very selfish as an actor. In my early 30s, the more work I got, the more I was all about me, me, me. And because of that, I was isolated—and I was kind of a prick. Now at almost 40, I love community. I love supporting people who are talented. That's part of why I started my own production company. There's so much talent out there. And now I'm able to accept if someone has a talent I don't. I'm able to say, "I'm not good at that, but you're phenomenal at it, and I can help you get put yourself out there." And that's rewarding.
MH: As an actor, if you're not having fun, what's the point?
BM: Dude, it's gotten too serious. It's too freaking serious. We're not saving lives.
MH: So you've never plumbed the depths of insecurity that Adam has?
BM: If I ever feel that way, then I know I'm in the wrong spot. If that's what's motivating me, then it's not healthy. But Adam is a reflection of a lot of people in the industry who do feel that way. There's a reason why plastic surgery is such a big market in Hollywood!
MH: To that end, Nick Kroll has a guest spot as a fellow franchise star who seems to represent some of the worst ways Hollywood can curdle someone's insecurity into cruelty.
BM: There's that scene where Nick's character belittles me on set in front of everyone; I really tried to be as vulnerable as possible in that scene, putting myself in that mindset, when you want to speak up for yourself but don't know how to. And I remember watching the scene for the first time, and I was embarrassed by it. I felt that insecurity. Because I get wanting to speak up, but being in a profession where it can all be taken away from you at any moment. And that's scary place to live in.
MH: There's a running gag about how ridiculous actors look on a green screen soundstage, and how much work the poor VFX artists have to do in order to create what we eventually see on screen. You've been on a few green screens in your time. What does that experience feel like?
BM: Oh man, you feel so insecure. You're literally, like, yelling "Nooooo!" into a nothing green screen. And everyone says, "We know this looks dumb, but once the VFX are done, it's going to look so cool!" And yeah, sure. But until then, you're still a human being just standing in an empty space and pretending.
MH: The show is great at making fun of how silly movie-making is while also respecting all the work and problem solving that goes into it.
BM: When I was shooting No Time to Die, there was this scene where I was flying a plane. And they built this plane on a rig 20 feet in the air, and there's was a mini version of it that you'd move and tilt, and the actual plane would tilt in the same way. It cost, I don't know, $2 or 3 million to build this whole thing to get the shot. Then on the date of the shoot, it didn't work. So all that money spent and what did they do? They had some guy off camera just shaking the wing.
MH: That sounds like something straight out of The Franchise. It's something I could easily see the crew on Tecto: Eye of the Storm having to do.
BM: What I enjoy about the show more than anything is that it celebrates the crew and the people who really make things run. It's like making a magazine—consumers see the face on the cover of Men's Health, but there's a whole team behind the scenes actually putting everything in the magazine together. To be a part of a show that's about people building something, that's really cool.
MH: For such a scathing satire, the show has a lot of affection for below-the-line workers, doesn't it?
BM: The thing is they're actually all good at their jobs. It's just the system around them that's broken. A lot of Hollywood is like that; it doesn't actually encourage people to be artists anymore. There are all these people in the industry who are really great at what they do, but the industry clips their wings. It doesn't give them the support they need to fly. But that's how you get innovation, that's how you get the original Star Wars—you let someone talented really go free to create the world they envision.
This interview has been condensed for content and clarity.
