John Gallagher Jr. Interview: Allegories, Winona's Stories, and Reliving Broadway's Days of Glory
The ‘Newsroom’ actor reminisces about ‘Spring Awakenings’, horror films that inspired him, and his new film ‘Gone in the Night’.
Actor of the stage and screen, John Gallagher Jr., will admit that not a lot of people know much about the Wilmington, Delaware area in which he grew up. Now a resident New Yorker, Gallagher still gives interviews to ‘Delaware Online’ so that the local website can boast about their native son, including a story about last season’s role on HBO’s Westworld. In speaking with Gallagher, it is easy to get the impression that the Wilmington area has a great sense of pride, community, family and most importantly mindfulness, as the Tony Award winning actor does not have a tinge of pretence about him.
Gallagher (left) with Jonathan Groff (center) and Lea Michelle (right) in the reunion concert of Spring Awakening
In a rare opportunity, Gallagher sat down with FilmSpeak’s Managing Editor, Michael Winn Johnson twice in the last month, and in these recent weeks, the actor has had plenty of time to look back at his 20-plus-year career in the business, and yet seemingly maintains that ‘Any-town USA’ humbleness about him. The HBO documentary, Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known debuted, chronicling the recent 15th anniversary reunion concert of the Tony Award winning musical. Merely days before speaking with FilmSpeak for the first time, the entire original cast, which contains the likes of musical icons Lea Michelle and Jonathan Groff blew the crowd away at the Tony’s ceremony this year. Since last October, he’s released his sophomore album “8th and Jane”, filmed the reunion performance, and while promoting his new thriller films ‘Abandoned’ and ‘Gone in the Night’, still had time to sandwich a birthday in there as well.
It could have been the reunion concert, or perhaps it is one of the underlined themes of Gone in the Night that has put Gallagher in this strangely reflective mood, but something is clearly triggering it. Gallagher says what drew to him to the project was the way Eli Horowitz, the writer and director had woven timeless human themes into the story. Gallagher specifies. they were themes of aging, and the “need to stay young and try to stay relevant and live forever, if you can. It's kind of the age old trope of the fountain of youth and the search for eternal life. I just thought that the way that he wove that into a more heightened genre film, but at the core of it, it was this very human story about these scared people”.
Arguably best known for his role as Jim Harper in HBO’s The Newsroom, Gallagher has often gravitated towards those ‘heightened genre films’, as those were the formative movies of his youth. “I’ve always been a big fan of the genre, ever since I was a teenager. I was a child of the 90s, o there was a couple of video stores near me where you could rent five movies for five days for $5. That was the big thing, and some buddies of mine and I used to go and raid the horror section. And so it was an informative genre. For me growing up a big part of why I got interested in acting and filmmaking, I just liked the high stakes of it, I liked the way that you're able to tell really universal stories through a very heightened lens. That's just something that I think is really fun to play with, and really effective for audiences and storytelling.”
It’s evident how fun he must think the horror and thriller genre is, as he’s built up quite a name for himself within the cinematic bracket. Immediately after departing The Newsroom, he was in 10 Cloverfield Lane, The Belko Experiment, and played a deranged killer in Hush, an early film by the newly crowned-king of horror, Mike Flanagan. Throughout his career, it’s yet another amazing aspect of Gallagher’s career if you compiled a list of the talent he costarred with. Another aspect which could easily inflate the ego of any mortal man, perhaps just not one from Delaware. When asked about the most intimidating actor he’s worked with in person, Gallagher without hesitation mentioned longtime friend and compatriot of the stage, Michael Shannon. The two, after sharing the stage in a production of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”, the two reunited in the recent slow-burn ghost story, Abondoned, and due to the small size of the cast got to spend even more time together. For further proof as to how even-keeled Gallagher can be, he may be the only person in the world who can call the steely leviathan a ‘teddy bear’ without a trace of irony. “He's hysterical” Gallagher says of Shannon. “He absolutely has me in stitches when we hang out, and he's become a really good friend. But in spite of my years of friendship with him, he can quiet a room with just an icy stare. I've seen him stop some people in their tracks before. You know, he definitely there's a massive intimidation factor there, but he's also a big teddy bear”.
Gallagher (left) and Winona Ryder (right) in Gone in the Night
But it was his costar in Gone in the Night, Winona Ryder that caused Gallagher to show a more human side perhaps for the first time in his career. The film follows Kath (Ryder) and her boyfriend, Max (Gallagher) as they arrive at a remote cabin which they rented to get away from it all. When they arrive, they find a mysterious younger couple already there. The two couples agree to share the cabin for the night, but in the morning, Max has disappeared, and Kath becomes obsessed with finding an explanation. Imagine being in Gallagher’s situation, having studied Ryder’s filmography in his youth, and then suddenly found himself playing her love interest. This man is a consummate professional, but clearly there must have been a moment where he was star struck. “I was a total geek. I’m such a fan of hers. I rented every single movie that she was in from my local video store when I was a kid because I thought she was such a captivating performer. So she was right there in between scenes to tell me stories about working on ‘Dracula’, and what it was like filming ‘Beetlejuice’ and what it was like working on ‘Reality Bites’, and I was just all too happy to just stand there mouth agape, like a kid in the candy store”.
Gone in the Night stars winona Ryder, John Gallagher Jr, and Dermot Mulroney and is in limited theatrical release now.
Check out the full interview below:
