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The big man had come to Little Island.
One Friday morning last month, Nicholas Braun crossed a bridge over the Hudson River with his six feet and seven inches to this man-made floating park that has fascinated him since it opened in the spring. Or as he put it, “I’ve seen this place from the freeway many times, but I never feel the time to go.”
He has traveled through its landscapes and through its topography. He spent a few moments admiring the hypnotic rotations of a giant spinning record (“Oh, that made me dizzy in five seconds,” he said) and a little less time listening to a slightly repetitive band play in. an amphitheater (“They could use a few more words”). He eagerly explored a cavernous tunnel that turned out to lead to the toilet.
Overall, he came away with a new perspective on the value of public space. “Looks like there should be mini golf here, right?” ” he said.
When you’re around Braun, almost anything he says, in his unhurried and naturally innocuous speech, can seem funny. You might get the impression that he just has an unearthly propensity to get into awkward comedic situations.
These reactions could also be the result of an automatic tendency to associate the 33-year-old actor with his role as cousin Greg in HBO’s “Succession”, who could have turned into an unfortunate second-tier character if Braun hadn’t helped him. . Raise him into a top tier buffoon on this fierce comedy drama. In just two seasons, Braun has seamlessly and subconsciously slipped into the awkward rhythms of Greg’s fish out of water, whether he’s apologizing for the mispronunciation of his own name or stammering at a hearing in the US Senate.
But the real Braun is by no means cousin Greg. He’s a guy with regular problems and plausible ambitions, who is upset by leaky pipes in his apartment, hopes for a long-term romantic relationship and considers himself lucky, after more than 20 years as an actor in work, to end up with a popular part on a hit show.
He’s also sympathetic to Greg’s highly entertaining flaws and optimistic that the character may one day transcend his limits – perhaps at some point during the upcoming third season of “Succession,” which begins next Sunday.
“I think there’s an intellect under it all, but it’s buried by all the other stuff – being afraid to speak in a room full of important people,” Braun said. “But when he gets the chance, I think he has a great idea to put forward.”
If there’s a time when Braun completely syncs with Greg, it’s telling the story of someone who suddenly and surprisingly finds himself exactly where he always wanted to be, and is determined to make the most of it. of opportunity.
“There’s an essay for Greg that’s really endearing and fun for me to play,” Braun said. “A try and usually a failure – but sometimes not, and it continues to work, slowly, for him.”
Braun had recently finished filming the new season “Succession” in Tuscany, then spent the next few days traveling around Europe with some acquaintances. (As Braun explained, “These two guys were on a trip and I was like, can I join you in your little Yaris?”)
He relaxed in an old hotel in Genoa and played in Monte Carlo, where plastic barriers separated him from other revelers, much to his slight disappointment. “I find blackjack best when you talk to each other and belittle each other for losing money together,” Braun said.
A certain chance played an essential role in his career. Braun grew up in New York and Connecticut, and he was five when his parents divorced. After his father began taking acting classes that were given to him as a gift, he encouraged the reluctant young Nicholas to take him into the trade.
“I would see him every other weekend, he would put me on a chair and we would do those Meisner repetitions together,” Braun said. “They were so frustrating. I hated them. A father and son in a repeated battle – it’s actually crazy to think of that.
“Barack Obama only spent two years there,” Braun said with a smile. “Worked for him.”
When a copy of the pilot script for “Succession” reached him a few years ago, Braun found himself slightly baffled by some of the intense repartee started by Logan Roy, the fictional media mogul played by Brian Cox, and his quarrelsome scions.
“There are all these things about ‘boosting the offering’ that I didn’t understand how it fit in,” recalls Braun. “Is this a commercial show? But when he read one of his first scenes as the under-skilled and intrusive Gregory Hirsch that made him wear a dog costume at a theme park and vomit through his eyeholes, Braun said, “I got my part.”
The character was “the guy in the room who doesn’t understand, who wants to get it and wants to be there, ”he said. “It was pretty easy to get into Greg’s thought patterns, you know. “
When Braun arrived to audition with “Estate” creator Jesse Armstrong and Adam McKay, an executive producer who directed the pilot episode, he immediately stood out.
“His size is immediately disarming,” said McKay, the Oscar-winning writer and director. “I’m six-foot-five, so usually when I meet people taller than me they’re athletes. To meet someone who was six feet seven inches tall and had that kind of comedic neurosis was really unusual. “
After Braun read pages of script and riffed on a few improvised interactions, the “Succession” team were convinced she had her Greg.
Armstrong said the character was meant to be someone who would share the audience’s disorientation in the world of Roys – a family member who didn’t fit in easily, however – but that in Braun’s portrayal he has become something more.
“There is a selfish impulse that you have as a writer, which is that you are going to save me,” Armstrong said. “And Nick does that. You’re going to take things that are going to stay there, inert, and you’re going to make them funny. Every once in a while you think, oh, he’s going to eat this – I want to serve that to him on a silver platter because he’s going to love it.
Braun feasted on scenes like Greg’s inarticulate testimony in the Senate, for which the actor was given several pages of dialogue the day before filming. “Jesse was like, instead of coming back in a few weeks, would you be ready to do this tomorrow?” Braun called back. “I was like, put me in – if I even get 80% of that scene, it’ll work. “
Macfadyen explained that Tom, who is married to Logan Roy’s daughter Shiv (Sarah Snook), has even less claim to legitimacy than Greg, who is at least blood related to the family. Therefore, Macfadyen said: “Tom is one of the few people who finds Greg very threatening.”
There is no obvious secret to his chemistry with Braun, Macfadyen said. “Sometimes we think a lot, we talk and we have ideas,” he said. “And sometimes it just comes out on Take 1 and that’s the one they use.”
Braun said that of course a part of his real self is present in Greg, but maybe not as much as viewers might think. “I pick a bunch of traits that make me try too hard or feel uncomfortable in a room, or want to talk but I don’t quite get permission, so it comes out in a way. strange, ”he said.
“Maybe I’m drawn to roles that seem therapeutic,” he continued. “I can look at these parts of myself and ask: Why am I doing this? How can I amplify this in a fun way? “
Referring to a scene where Greg is preparing for a potential act of corporate espionage, Braun said cheerfully, “I haven’t been in a bathroom talking into a tape recorder, check it because I’m going to take it out on someone. I do not have did that, but I saw myself doing it in the right situation.
While there seems to be a very reasonable cap on how far Greg can go on “Succession,” Armstrong hasn’t entirely ruled out the possibility that the character may one day end up in Logan Roy’s seat.
“I would not want to destroy the pleasure of considering all the candidates,” he said. “Greg has a long way to go. He often gets what he wants, through a mixture of cunning and naivety. I leave it to others to judge whether he is a real candidate for succession or not.
In the meantime, Braun is still acclimating to the odd celebrity status his character has bestowed upon him. He can’t completely avoid the following fan Greg has cultivated, but he tries not to let adulation and memes infiltrate his performance.
“You don’t want to think, is this a moment to remember? ” he said.
He’s stretched his legs in other projects, like the comedian “Zola,” which features him as the hopelessly devoted boyfriend of an impulsive stripper played by Riley Keough, and he’s let himself be pushed around. beard to play the older suitor in an upcoming movie. adaptation of Kristen Roupenian’s short story “Cat Person”. (“I didn’t even know I could,” he said of his new facial hair. “I was like,“ I can do this. ”“)
Braun said he was also working on his own writing, including a “pretty personal” project that he described as “relationship trauma.” If he seems “fascinated by romance and wooing another human,” he said it’s because “I’ve never really been in a long-term relationship.”
“I aspire to it and yet I am incapable of it,” he said. “I go over to her and then I hit a wall where I’m like, I can’t go any further. I must leave.
Before you start to feel too bad for the big single star of a popular TV series, Braun said more spiritedly, “I think it will come at the right time with the right person. Until then, it’s fun to meet people and see what works.
Looking at his own family history, Braun said it was too early for him to throw in the towel. “My father had me at 48,” he said. He added that they came to a better understanding of each other when they finally got to have an adult conversation together. “It was only last year, just eight months ago,” he said.
Perhaps reacting to the questioning expression on his interviewer’s face, Braun quickly changed his response. “No, no, no, no, just kidding,” he said.
Life had once again shown that, under the right circumstances and with the right inflection, he could get anyone to buy into anything he said. “I’m in a good deadpan zone,” he said.
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