Justin Kirk :: juggling stage and screen (and staying warm)
Justin Kirk’s acting career is filled with a little bit of everything, but he always brings a depth to any role he plays. He’s played a blind gay man in both stage and screen versions of Terrence McNally’s Love! Valour! Compassion! And received an Emmy nomination for his performance as Prior Walter in Angels in America, HBO’s epic miniseries adapted by Tony Kushner from his Pulitzer Prize winning play.
Hip television viewers know him as the always horny but newly lovelorn Andy Botwin in Showtime’s Weeds. Currently, Kirk is appearing as Harry, an understudy to hunky Mark-Paul Gosselaar (from TV’s Raising The Bar) in Theresa Rebeck’s off-Broadway comedy The Understudy, which runs through January 17th off-Broadway in New York City.
To find out more about how Kirk juggles the various roles in his career as well as how he still hears from people about Angels, Edge’s Jim Halterman called him up on a recent bitter cold New York day when Kirk was longing for warm California weather.
Kafka-lite
EDGE: How did the role in The Understudy come your way?
Justin Kirk: I work with Scott Ellis on Weeds. He directs many of our episodes a season and he came to me and said ’I’m doing this play at the Roundabout with Julie White?’ And here we are in nine-degree weather!
EDGE: In doing a show about a show, does that take off any of the prep time for you since you live it all the time?
JK: My character doesn’t know anything about Kafka so I thought ’Oh, good, I don’t have to learn about Kafka. I just have to tap into my bitter actor aspect.’ [laughs] Yeah, I tend to really love movies and plays about movies and plays and this play is great because it’s just about these three people who are all dissatisfied in one way or another and try to remedy that to great comic effect.
Watch Justin Kirk talk about his role on Weeds.
