Jesse Plemons likes playing weird
Game Night star is arresting as a neighbor cop.
Jesse Plemons is a long way from earnest Friday Night Lights football player Landry Clarke.
Plemons, 29, is breaking seriously creepy for laughs as Gary the weird neighbor cop in Game Night (in theaters now). The actor went even darker as troubled virtual-reality game creator Robert Daly in the “USS Callister” episode of Netflix’s Black Mirror.
Plemons says his disturbing character Todd from Breaking Bad influenced the type of roles coming his way.
“It’s funny. It seems to work out that following anything you do, you are pretty much approached with versions of the last thing people saw you in,” Plemons says.
“And I guess I can play creepy. I can put that on my résumé.”
Game Night directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein did notice his Breaking Bad character.
“Jesse is pretty creepy in that,” Goldstein says. “And he can rise to whatever challenge you give him. He’s so convincing here. He had a blast.”
Here’s Plemons’ creepy character arc:
Todd started it in ‘Breaking Bad’
Todd Alquist appeared to be a normal kid, but was definitely unbalanced in Season 5 of Breaking Bad.
Working with meth dealers Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), Todd showed his disturbing side when he casually shot a bike-riding kid who happened upon the group’s train heist in the desert.
Says Plemons, “Todd is definitely not well.”
Robert Daly commanded the ‘USS Callister’ episode of ‘Black Mirror’
Daly only seems like the overlooked, underappreciated brains of a virtual reality game company in Black Mirror (released in December).
But Daly has a secret: He replicates co-workers who frustrate him in his immersive video-game world, forcing them to serve him for eternity as Captain Daly of the USS Callister spaceship. Plemons binge-watched the original
Star Trek to prepare for the role and added some of William Shatner’s Captain Kirk swagger to his Captain Daly.
“When we were rehearsing, it was like, ‘ Nope, this needs some Shatner,’ ” Plemons says.
“They took it seriously on Star Trek, treating the words like Shakespeare. But it’s also like childhood make-believe,” he says. “Somehow, both of those things are able to exist as one. So it was kind of like playing dress-up like a kid.”
Things weren’t so innocent when Captain Daly didn’t get his way. “Then the real Daly would sneak into the scene,” Plemons says.
Gary the cop is that eerie neighbor in ‘Game Night’
Plemons’ Gary is the oddball neighbor who doesn’t take off his police uniform or his attitude, but who’s dying to impose himself on the festivities of Game Night.
Plemons steals scenes in the comedy as the brooding, socially awkward Gary, who’s nursing a broken heart after his wife had the good sense to leave.
“Gary is the culmination of a couple of people I’ve known throughout my life, who I obviously cannot name,” Plemons says. “He’s a very unique type of creep. He just cannot help but to come across that way.”
Gary shows his cop skills are legit by the end. But Plemons insists it’s the last of this kind of weirdness for a while:
“I’ll definitely take a hiatus from creeps after this.”