A NOBRAINER
Geoffrey Rush talks about his ‘Genius’ role as Einstein
By ROBERT RORKE I F not now, when?
That’s what Geoffrey Rush says he asked himself when Ron Howard wanted him to play Albert Einstein in a new National Geographic Channel anthology series called “Genius.”
“It’s one of those roles where at first you went, ‘It’s too hard,’ ” Rush says. “Then I thought, ‘What am I saying? I’m 65.’ ’’
Rush has flown from his home in Melbourne, Australia to New York to celebrate the launch of “Genius,” Nat Geo’s first scripted series. Sitting in the lounge at the Mandarin Oriental, frizzy hair standing on end, the jovial actor reports that someone in the hotel lobby told him, “You’re looking like a quite sane Mick JJag-g ger.” He pauses. “I told my stylist, ‘I need more moisturizer.’ ”
A self-described “heterosexual show queen,” Rush says the first episode of “Genius” is “Really like the overture to ‘Gypsy.’ You get all the great tunes. They’re beautifully orchestrated. And you go, ‘Ah. This show’s going to be great.’ ”
“Genius” is the story of two Albert Einsteins. British actor and musician Johnny Flynn plays the young misfit who alternately awed and drove instructors up the wall with his uncanny ability to solve the most abstruse equations and his indifference to traditional learning.
“He did all of his big stuff when he was 26,” Rush says, referring to the Theory of Relativity. “I asked Johnny, ‘As a musician, would yyou say he did ‘Sgt. Pepper’ and then? ....”
Rush plays Einstein as the “bourgeois Berliner” who reluctantly fled Germany shortly before Hitler was elected Chancellor in 1933. In one powerful scene, a very young Nazi Brownshirt runs after Einstein on the street to ask him for his autograph — and then gives him a swastika to sign. For the academically inclined physicist, the moment is a reality check.
“Einstein had become very comfortable bourgeois because [his wife] Elsa cocooned him in this comfort zone because she knew he loved his solitude to think, and he loved his pipe and all of those things,” he says.
What both Einsteins have in common is a surprisingly lusty nature. In real life, Einstein was married twice but there were always ladies-in-waiting for afternoon delights. “I must find out the German [word] for stud muffin ,” muffin” Rush says says, hands moving all around him, as if he’s conducting music. “That could have been an alternative title for the show.”
Rush has won every major acting award. The Oscar for “Shine.” The Emmy for “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.” The Tony for Ionesco’s “Exit the King.” Two Golden Globes. As you might expect, retirement is not even a possibility. “Your career has no end point if you so choose,” he says.
Playing roles like Einstein inspire him because the man never stopped working. “He wanted to find the most exquisite equation that defined all of physical reality on a micro and macro, subatomic and cosmological level,” he says. “He didn’t believe that God played dice with the universe.”
Without missing a beat, he makes fun of Einstein’ s famous quote: “It’s aT shirt. It’s a bumper sticker.”