BILLY CRUDUP
The Morning Show and Almost Famous star, 54, returns for his second streaming TV series with Hello Tomorrow!
(Feb. 1' on Apple TV+), a new 10episode, half-hour dramedy. Crudup stars as Jack, a talented salesman, whose product just happens to be lunar timeshares. As he sells these trips to the moon, Jack’s faith in a brighter tomorrow inspires his coworkers and rejuvenates his desperate clientele, while threatening to leave him dangerously lost in the very dream that sustains him.
The look and feel of Hello Tomorrow! is very ‘50s—as is the music—but it has robots. How does that retro-future combo work for the story? Amit [Bhalla] and Lucas [Jansen, both executive producers] set out to create a classic American fable drawing on some of the themes that were of interest to them: what it means to be a salesman; what it means to try to sell hope to people; what it means to be a preacher and an evangelical for capitalism—all of those things. This is a question that could be asked at any time during the history of this country [so] a setting that alludes to all of them was the most interesting and provocative. I think they really leaned into the retro-future part of it as a way of describing the central problem that they’re trying to solve with the character of Jack, which is can you feel successful about your life as an American if you’ve inherited this idea that you have to be financially successful in order to be worthwhile?
Would it be fair to compare Jack to Harold Hill from The Music Man?I see him as a preacher in that way. I do. He wants to spread the good word, and the good word is buy. It’s the notion that our lives cannot just be filled with the mundane quality of day-to-day living, but with magical hope that there is a better future around the corner. That’s a kind of preaching that gives us places like heaven, or imagination, where you know that we will live forever in the most beautiful, beatific space seated next to God or closely thereby. That’s an existential theological belief system that brings enormous comfort and engagement to millions of people.
In the same way, there are people who are indoctrinated in capitalism, and Jack’s one of them, so he’s just out there spreading the good word, and there is no such thing as false hope if it doesn’t cost you too much and brings a smile to your face for the day.
Did you learn anything from your salesman father that you were able to use to create Jack?
Most definitely. My dad was a wonderful salesman but terrible with success. He did not know how to manage something for very long, and he had the attention span of a gnat and the blood of a gambler running through him. So, he was dying for that big hit, but he was ready to move on and turn the page as soon as he could. But the quality that most applied to Jack is that my dad loved meeting people wherever they were, and that’s one of the things that does make a great salesman. You encounter somebody where they are in their life and then you help them figure out what’s going to make a minor improvement. Maybe that’s a new piece of cutlery for the kitchen, or maybe it’s a timeshare on the moon. You can be sure that Jack—out of his curiosity and his love and his interest in humanity—is going to find somebody’s vulnerability and, certainly to his way of thinking, help provide a salve.
Sending people to the moon to start their life over—wouldn’t they just be taking their same problems with them? There’s no question of that. In fact, I think
Jack says that to Joey (Nicholas Podany) at one point, “Hey, you know your problems could be waiting for you up there, too.” But I think what Jack really feels he’s selling, in addition to the potential of having an interstellar vacation home, or inner solarsystem vacation home, is the idea of it.
I think when we all— certainly when we’re younger—think about our birthdays and about Christmas, the lead-up to those events is one of the most thrilling aspects. And rarely does the Christmas present-opening meet the expectation of the 7-year-old, who stayed awake, eyes wide open all night, imagining what Santa is going to bestow upon him.
So, one of the things that Jack knows that he can sell and provide is the idea, which might give somebody enough space in their life to get through a bad relationship, to get over mourning the loss of a loved one, to navigate solitude. All of these things he sees when he opens the door time and time again.
What can you share about your character, fast-talking network executive Cory Ellison, in the upcoming season three of The Morning Show on Apple+? He has softened up a little bit, as feelings will do for you sometimes. One thing I absolutely adore about Cory is initially he really was invested in winning the corporate game with nothing more at stake than the wind. There’s a kind of joy that comes with not taking anything else too seriously that I really revel in. I can assure you that that will be the first thing I miss at the point where we have to give Cory up. It has been gleeful and truly liberating to play somebody who thinks as fast as he does and cares as little about the conventional things that we all care about.
The only thing that’s slightly harrowing, or sometimes more than slightly harrowing, is he still speaks as fast as he did in the beginning and that’s still a problem for me. I still have to work overtime to get those diatribes or monologues in my head and out as fast as the team requests.
It’s such a great cast with Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston— and Jon Hamm is joining. Does it keep you on your toes to be working with actors of that quality?
No question about it. It has been a total privilege to get to explore this material with these guys because they are top-drawer, not just collaborators, but content providers for a long time, and when you work with veterans of this caliber, it definitely changes your approach and attack on the material. Keeping up with them is not so easy.