Patrick Wilson names his career-defining performance: “OK, he is an actor”
Long before he was at the centre of one of the most successful horror franchises of all time, Patrick Wilson was a Broadway sensation who few thought would ever go beyond being a song-and-dance man.
To many onlookers, Wilson always had darker, more complicated performances than he was capable of and wasn’t afraid to take on roles that didn’t necessarily cast him in a positive light.
Of course, it’s easy to forget that Wilson charmed thousands of theatregoers with his rendition of Curly in productions of Oklahoma! before Hugh Jackman stole his thunder when taking over the role. Making a break into the film industry proved to be a much harder challenge for Wilson, as he wasn’t offered many opportunities in which he could showcase the same range as he had done on stage.
Inevitably, Wilson’s big break came in the form of a project that merged cinema, theatre, and television in a creative way that hasn’t really been topped since. Mike Nichols was one of the most legendary filmmakers of all time, having made classics like The Graduate and Working Girl, so the announcement that he would be adapting the classic Broadway show Angels in America for HBO was a huge deal. No one would ever consider television to be a “lesser” medium when compared to film in this case, as Nichols was pulling no punches by getting as many A-listers as he could to appear in the miniseries.
Today, Angels in America stands as one of the most powerful pieces of American art in recent decades, offering a raw, unflinching look at the many lives affected by the AIDS crisis during the Reagan era. The original stage production broke ground by shining a light on the struggles faced by the LGBTQ community – and when it came time to adapt it for the screen, Mike Nichols knew he had to get it right. To give the project the weight it deserved, he brought in acting heavyweights like Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, and Emma Thompson to lead the charge.
Even if the big stars drew in audiences, Wilson had an immense challenge in playing the character of Joe Pitt, a Republican Attorney and Mormon who realises that he might be gay. Wilson told Moviemaker that the role changed his career because of “the award nominations and the buzz that that show got”.
“I wasn’t a total kid, I’d been on Broadway, but by Joe Pitt being my audition tape for Hollywood, it automatically put me in a certain position,” Wilson said. “People thought, if he can hold his own opposite Meryl Streep and Al Pacino, then let’s offer him Hard Candy, let’s offer him Phantom of the Opera. Basically they thought, okay, he is an actor.”
Few would have expected that Wilson, an actor who had brought sensitivity and grace to his stage roles, would end up becoming the definitive ‘scream king’ of a generation. Although he dabbled in superhero roles with his part as Owl-Man in Zack Snyder’s Watchmen and the villainous Ocean Master in the Aquaman films, Wilson came to be associated with both the Insidious and The Conjuring franchises, both of which appear to have bright futures ahead of them.
Both franchises clearly benefited from the personability that Wilson brought to his contributions; Wilson earned praise for directing Insidious: The Red Door, the fifth entry in the series, and The Conjuring: Last Rites became a box office juggernaut thanks to the audience’s nostalgia for seeing the Warrens partake in a supernatural investigation.
