‘Tom Hanks would be boring if he was just nice’: the podcaster interviewing the star – after being fired by him
Connor Ratliff has told the story a thousand times. About when, as a young upand-coming actor, he auditioned for a small role on the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. About how he initially got the part, only to be fired before filming began because one of the show’s executive producers thought Ratliff had “dead eyes”. About how, and here’s the real kicker, the executive producer in question was Tom Hanks.
The sting of the rejection was tangible and long-lasting, partly because the criticism centred on an unfixable part of Ratliff’s appearance, and partly because it came from a man with a reputation for being the world’s dad. His confidence knocked, Ratliff abandoned a promising acting career in favour of a life of improv comedy. For the past couple of years, he has leveraged the Hanks incident into his excellent podcast Dead Eyes where, with a ranging degree of sincerity, he interrogates the effects of being rejected by the nicest man in Hollywood.
Ratliff most recently told the story on Late Night With Seth Meyers. But this time there was a twist. Looking out nervously at the crowd, Ratliff announced that, in his next episode of Dead Eyes, he would finally sit down and talk to Tom Hanks. The announcement was met with loud gasps from the studio audience.
“I did watch it back, specifically because I wanted to hear whether the audience reactions were as audible as they felt in the room,” Ratliff tells me over Zoom from New York two days later (as he must be sick of being told by now, his eyes don’t look dead). “When I told the story, it was the first time in a long time where people had this emotional reaction of ‘Oh no.’ I don’t know how much of that was feeling sorry for me and how much of that was like: ‘We don’t want to hear a story that makes us
feel differently about Tom Hanks.’ But 30 seconds later they were like: ‘Oh, you got him!’ They got the experience that listeners have had, but condensed into 60 seconds.”
For Ratliff to interview Hanks, the author of his downfall, is a big deal. This sort of territory has been well trodden on podcasts – Marc Maron spent years wailing about his failed Saturday Night Live audition before finally getting to hash it out with Lorne Michaels – but Dead Eyes is different, in that the whole thing is specifically about the time Hanks was unfathomably rude about him. As such, Hanks is the white whale that Ratliff has been chasing for ever. Just a couple of months ago when he interviewed Tom’s son Colin Hanks, Dead Eyes listeners reacted with breathless excitement. There was a moment when Colin seemed to indicate that this was probably as far up the totem pole as Ratliff would get. What changed?
“At the time, I genuinely was like: ‘I wonder if Colin is the person who’s taking the bullet for the entire family,’” Ratliff recalls during one of his endearingly rangy answers. “But it seems like my conversation with Colin going well was what ultimately led to Tom being on the show. When I was talking to Colin, it was such an easy conversation. We talked for three and a half hours. I just had such a great hang. And it wasn’t really until with hindsight that I was like: ‘I wonder if …’”
Despite its unique premise, the beauty of Dead Eyes is its universality. Even though not everyone has had their career torpedoed by the most beloved man in Hollywood, we have all experienced some form of rejection in our lives. That the podcast has caught on so strongly in professions where rejection is an everyday part of the job, such as acting and writing, shows what ripe material this is.
This bears fruit with the calibre of guests Ratliff can book. My favourite episode so far is the one where Damon Lindelof, the creator of Lost, The Leftovers and HBO’s Watchmen, draws a straight line between Ratliff losing out on Band of Brothers and his own complicated feelings about the final episode of Lost. But there are also episodes where he talks to the Band of Brothers writer about the character he wanted to play, and to other well-known actors who tried and failed to be cast on the show. Although it’s overwhelmingly played for laughs – “I’m doing fine; I am a happy person overall,” Ratliff insists – the construction of the podcast, excavating an old wound from every conceivable angle, gives it the feel of an investigative true-crime show. It’s beautifully done.
However, Ratliff knows that the world is now paying him so much attention because of the Hanks interview. While he’s keen to keep all the good stuff for his podcast, a preview clip seems to show Hanks more defensive than usual, asking Ratliff: “Do you wanna trip me or hug me? You wanna punch me or kiss me?” Without giving anything away, I ask Connor to tell me how he thought the interview went. Was he nervous to finally see Hanks again?
“I’m 46 years old,” he replies. “It’s a thrill to meet Tom Hanks, but also I’ve met enough famous people to have a clearer understanding that the mythology of a person is different than the flesh and blood human being you’re going to sit in a room and talk with.”
And Hanks? Did you get the sense that you were being charmed as a form of damage limitation? “Nobody I’ve met in my entire life is better at putting the room at ease than Tom Hanks,” Ratliff replies. “But while there’s truth to the whole nicest guy in showbusiness thing, it’s actually a more complicated truth, because he’s also sly and sarcastic and funny. He’s not just nice. He’d be boring if he was just the nicest guy.
“I don’t think I’m kidding myself, although I’m aware that’s the possibility, but I think I can recognise the difference between a press-trained interview and a genuine conversation,” he goes on. “I think Tom is savvy enough to know that a press-trained version would not play as well as one where he is completely honest and forthcoming and his reactions are in the moment. I didn’t get the sense that he came with a bag of tricks.”
Professionally, Ratliff is doing OK. Born in Missouri, he came to the UK and studied at Paul McCartney’s Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, and has subsequently scored recurring roles on shows such as Search Party and The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. His name recognition grew thanks to the success of the podcast, but news of the Hanks interview has made him more high profile than ever.
“I saw that Questlove tweeted about it. How did that happen?” he asks with a note of genuine bewilderment. “I’ve been very happily operating at a very low level for a very long time, where you draw this small but appreciative audience for your work. But the second you elevate over a certain level, you start getting people who are just wandering in and being like: ‘What’s this? I don’t like it.’ I knew yesterday that something had changed, when I got a lot more people who were like: ‘So you got fired, it’s time to get over it.’ I’m like: ‘Yeah, I said that in about 25 of the episodes.’ Then it got to a point where I was getting tagged in tweets where Pizzagate [conspiracy theory] people were arguing with each other about crypto. The doors are fully open at this point.”
The big question, of course, is what happens to Dead Eyes next. Ratliff has finally caught his white whale, and lots of listeners (me included) were worried that this would bring the podcast to a swift end. Luckily, Ratliff is keen to press on. Before the news of the Hanks interview hit, Dead Eyes was already starting to become what he describes as a series about “unimportant but deeply felt disappointments and failures, and how we reckon with them”, and those don’t stop just because you’ve spoken to Forrest Gump.
A case in point. After Dead Eyes started to blow up, Ratliff auditioned for a Netflix movie. He didn’t get the part but, as fans of the podcast, the producers invited him to help with the table read at his regular day rate. “But there was a point where someone in the room shouted: ‘All right, everybody! We’re going to make a movie!’” he recalls. “And everyone’s clapping. And I was there thinking, ‘Well, I’m not going to make a movie.’”
There’s your first post-Hanks episode, I say. “I realised that as I was telling you,” Ratliff smiles. “What a great way to promote this Netflix original film.” Congratulations on becoming a tool of the system, I say. “Oh exactly. Please, I’ll happily be a tool of the system,” he says. “As long as I can still be me and say what I want, I’m more than happy to fight the system from within.”
While there’s truth to the whole nicest guy in showbusiness thing, Tom Hanks is also sly and sarcastic and funny
Connor Ratliff