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IS READY TO TEAR SONY’S SPIDER-VERSE A NEW ONE…
In AppleTV+’s sci-fi mind-bender Severance, Adam Scott played ‘innie’ and ‘outie’ Mark, the corporate employee whose private and professional lives are split apart. With his commitment to the role, Scott certainly didn’t bifurcate by halves. “I felt like I exposed myself a bit,” he told Vanity Fair, adding: “I had to take everything that I’ve gathered over the years and put it into this.”
But he clearly has much more to give. In an undisclosed role, Scott will join Dakota Johnson in Madame Web, director S.J. Clarkson’s Sony Spiderverse variant. Will he play an alterna-verse webflinger? Such details are beyond Teasers’ powers of clairvoyancy, but we know he will also front a revival of Party Down, the Starz caterers comedy that closed in 2010 after two seasons.
For Scott, Severance was “exactly the show” he had toiled for since he hit Hollywood in 1993. Even so, he’s notched up plenty of killer comic character work since meeting a messy end in Pinhead-in-space Hellraiser movie Bloodline.
Support roles in shows such as Party Of Five, Boy Meets World and Six Feet Under followed, strong showcases all. He left behind Party Down’s pink bow ties to nail a breakthrough role as Parks And Recreation’s Ben Wyatt, the nerdy state auditor who banked meme-level fame tearing his Avatar-ish (well…) claymation video a new one.
Other comic turns beckoned, from The Greatest Event In Television History to The Good Place’s taunting demon trickster Trevor and Loot’s toxic tech nerd. On film, he nailed Step Brothers’ corporate blow-hard Derek and Sleeping With Other People’s charm-starved doctor; in dramatic roles, he played it steady as Big Little Lies’ Eddie and landed a lacerating lead in underrated 2009 indie drama The Vicious Kind.
In other words, he’s got prodigious comic chops and range. “As a viewer, I love it all,” he told GQ. “I love action and adventure and suspense, all that.” As Madame Web opens newly expanded universes for Scott, he looks ready for it. As Ben Wyatt might say, “Just hang on to your hat, OK?”
MADAME WEB OPENS ON 6 OCTOBER 2023. PARTY DOWN IS TBC.