ByRebecca Alter,
a staff writer who covers comedy and pop culture
Nancy is actually just out of frame, and I think you can guess where.
Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Robin L Marshall/FilmMagic, Harry Langdon/Getty Images
Back in May of this year, Dennis Quaid went on Piers Morgan Uncensored to give a truly breathtaking endorsement for Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election, saying of the 45th PO(TU)S, “People might call him an asshole, but he’s my asshole.” Trump might be Quaid’s own asshole, but he’s not the actor’s favorite wrinkly old orifice. That honor would go to the original Sundown Kid, Ronald Reagan, whom Quaid plays in the biopic Reagan, out on August 30. “He was my favorite president,” Quaid said, promoting the film on the Today show August 29. “Reagan is like Muhammad Ali. You show a picture of him to anyone in the world and they’re going to say, ‘That’s Reagan.’”
This is far from the first time Quaid has played a president. In 2006, he was a Bush dupe in American Dreamz. In 2010, he played Bill Clinton in the made-for-TV The Special Relationship. He was announced to play George W. Bush in American Crime Story: Katrina, but Ryan Murphy got distracted, and it never got made. Still, there’s something different about a famous conservative, in a conservative movie (it co-stars Jon Voight, tragically hit with the de-aging ray), months before an election. The trailer teases John Hinckley Jr.’s assassination attempt as a major part of the film, so it’s hard not to draw parallels to this current moment in politics. Today host Craig Melvin asked Quaid about releasing the movie during an election year as a Trump supporter, and Quaid responded with a spiel about how “Facebook for some reason has been banning and censoring our advertising and promotion on it, which is very interesting, I think, because they said we were trying to influence an election.” Furthermore, he says the Ronald Reagan biopic about the Cold War “wasn’t meant to be political at all.”
By far the most interesting part of the conversation, besides the close-ups on Quaid’s miniature English bulldog Peaches, is when he praises Penelope Ann Miller’s performance as Nancy Reagan. “She just was Nancy, even in the lunch line,” he said, explaining how committed she was to staying in character. “At the core, the movie is a love story.” This should excite any Nancy-heads in the crowd, even if the movie is only PG-13. Learning that one specific plotline didn’t trickle down into the final cut is a tough pill to swallow.
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