The one album Jeremy Strong couldn’t live without
Jeremy Strong has been acting for almost two decades now. Having worked with director Adam McKay on The Big Short in 2015, who then went on to produce HBO’s Emmy-winning Succession, Strong has forged his own path in the world of entertainment. As a result of their strong working relationship, McKay also offered Strong the role of the show’s tragic protagonist, Kendall Roy, five years ago, and Jeremy Strong was thrust firmly into the cultural limelight.
Since then, Strong has gained a reputation for his committed method acting style and his passion for fine art – whether visual or musical. He’s known to quote other artists with ease in interviews, telling GQ, “I’m sure I sound like a jackass when I say stuff like that, but I’m just going to keep quoting shit because this is who I am.”
Strong’s devotion to art comes through in nearly every interview he gives, including a recent conversation with GQ about the ten items he can’t live without. Amidst Succession props, a pair of Jacques Marie Mage sunglasses, and a book of paintings by Howard Hodgkin, Strong names Bach: The Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould as the record he couldn’t go without.
He shares: “This is a record of Glenn Gould’s recording – first recording, he did two recordings – of the Goldberg Variations by Bach. It’s a piece of music that I’ve loved for my adult life. I listen to it all the time.”
Gould’s recordings of the Bach Goldberg variations were first released as his debut album in 1956 and later re-recorded and released just before his death in 1981. Strong shares his admiration for the pianist and his rebellion in performance in particular, “Glenn Gould was a really eccentric individual, and he broke all the rules about what was considered appropriate kinds of concert pianist protocol. He would hum, exclaim and make sounds while he was playing.”
He goes on, in true Jeremy Strong style, to quote Gould: “And he said something that I wrote down that I think about sometimes. He said that the purpose of art is not a momentary ejection of adrenaline but rather the lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity. So, that’s what I think about when I think about Glenn Gould.”
Strong also notes the influence of music on his acting process, noting that he sometimes uses it as an entry point, “depending on the emotional valence of a scene. Music can help me enter into a deeper place in myself that I might need to come from. So music is an access point for me.” It’s fitting that a classical piano album would help Strong into Kendall Roy’s state of mind – Nicholas Britell’s score for the show combines piano with 808s to emulate the soundtrack the Roys might imagine for themselves, a mix of classic and contemporary.
Strong goes as far as to suggest that Gould’s piano playing would be “the piece of music I’d wanna listen to if I am lucky enough to choose the piece of music I wanna listen to at the end.”
Not unlike Gould, Strong’s acting style has broken acting rules, garnering him some complaints from his costars, and Brian Cox called his acting style “fucking annoying” in an interview with Town & Country. But his knowledge of the arts is unparalleled, and with the final episode of Succession just behind us, a look into his process for Kendall Roy is never unwelcome.
