A Shea Whigham performance is not one you’re likely to soon forget.
Most television audiences know him as Elias “Eli” Thompson on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, but his celebrated roles on film and television prove the vastly complex range of this incredibly talented actor. Add his role as G. Gordon Liddy in Starz’s Gaslit to the list of his very best performances. I, for certain, would argue his turn as Liddy to be his greatest work to date.
Directed by Matt Ross (Silicon Valley) and created by Robbie Pickering from the podcast Slow Burn, Gaslit focuses on some of the lesser-known stories from the infamous Watergate scandal that effectively ended President Richard M. Nixon’s political career. Liddy, a figurehead in the burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters, eventually received prison time on charges of conspiracy, burglary, and illegal wiretapping.
But Whigham’s Liddy is unlike any interpretation you’ve seen before.
Intense. A buffoon. A doting father. Borderline insane. These are but a few of the words and phrases I would use to describe Whigham’s Liddy, and as you watch the series, you understand that few actors could have pulled off that mixture of comedy and terror the way Whigham so convincingly does. His is one of the very best performances of the 2022 Emmy season.
Here, in an interview with Awards Daily, Whigham talks about the process he followed in finding his own G. Gordon Liddy. He talks about specific scenes — including the infamous rat scene — that proved emotionally draining to film. Finally, he talks about his close collaboration with Ross and when he needed to lean on the director because he was running on fumes.
Awards Daily: We’ve seen interpretations of G. Gordon Liddy before. What was it about Gaslit‘s interpretation that interested you as an actor?
Shea Whigham: I’ve worked with [executive producer] Sam Esmail and Julia [Roberts] on Homecoming previously. That was such a positive experience for me, and then Matt Ross called me. I was a big fan of Captain Fantastic and also his work as an actor. We talked about it. Initially, it was the people involved, and then I read it. It’s something that made me nervous, scared me, you know, which I liked. I felt that with Liddy, and so those were the initial things that grabbed me.
AD: I talked to Matt actually, and he was talking about some of the research that you guys did into G. Gordon Liddy, outside of the script like reading Will. What did you find most useful in interpreting this character?
SW: I had about three months to start approaching him, and it starts always, for me, very broad. I tried to forget or almost approach it from almost a naive place where I don’t know anything. I said to Matt, ‘If I’m gonna take him on, I’m going to lean on you heavily at times, but I want to give him a fair shake. I want to make sure that it’s all encompassing.’ I didn’t look at anyone else’s Liddy. It started there, and it was tons of stuff that I looked at both footage wise. To be honest with you, Will was the thing that was kind of the Bible, the template for me that I kept coming back to. We would reference that quite a bit. I had it right there in the dressing room with me. It came from a place of deep insecurity, which he talks about in Will, the early days of being afraid of lightning and being afraid of the rat of being afraid of just about everything as a four year old on. Everything stems from that, so all that was very interesting for me.
AD: The series begins with a 2-minute scene that’s created a lot of buzz with Liddy holding his hand over the burning candle flame. Talk to me about filming the intensity of that scene and what that infers about the character of Liddy.
SW: It’s interesting. We shot that at the very, very end. I was coming off of episode seven where I’m in prison. That was about a 10-day, intense as it gets shoot and then into the flame. We had to figure out how we wanted to shoot it, and we wanted it to be nondescript. Liddy’s actually talking to the five Cubans at the time to address them and to try to get them to come onboard. But we didn’t want it to be literal. I really leaned on Matt, at that point, because I was running on fumes. He and I were working pretty simpatico at that point, really very simpatico to be honest with you. So, we, myself and Larkin [Seiple, director of photography] had a really good idea of what we wanted in that scene. It was kind of a three headed monster there to put that together.
AD: It’s an incredible way to start the series. Then, as the first episode progresses, we see a bit more of a bumbling side, a bit more of a comic approach, to Liddy. Was it a challenge to you as an actor? Or was it something you were interested in doing to play with the tone of that character?
SW: Oh, yeah. I don’t get a chance at a lot of comedy to be honest. To me, comedy grounded in truth is the funniest. For me, you basically have to play Liddy’s truth there, which is he wants to be seen by Nixon. He wants to be seen by Haldeman and Ehrlichman and be told that he’s a genius. You can’t make that stuff up. How wrong it went with his 14 point plan. He doesn’t even get to the third one in the scene before Mitchell laughs him out of there. I love that, being laughed out of the room. It’s this petulance that’s in him, really throughout the scene. I love when Liddy says to Dean [Dan Stevens], ‘What was your favorite part about it?’ He says, ‘I don’t know. Maybe the font.’ Liddy say, ‘That was my idea, the font.’ I love that sequence.
AD: I want to talk about episode seven, “The Year of the Rat.” In the start of that episode, Liddy walks into prison with his head held high, but very, very quickly he devolves into starting fights, biting somebody’s ear off, and purposely having himself sent to solitary. Did you develop a backstory for what happens on his journey? Did you figure out how did he deteriorate so quickly?
SW: I knew, when I read seven, that was going to be the place that I really had to go. It wasn’t just me. The whole crew had my back because we all knew it was going to be a big undertaking. We did have to fill in. That, to me, encompasses one of two things that Liddy truly seeks in life, and that is to test his will. He gets to do that, but it ultimately breaks him. That was just an important sequence to try to get right but a difficult one because I had to be 100 percent in there. But I leaned on the crew a lot on that one over that 10-day span.
AD: With the battle against the rat, how do you as an actor tend to go to places like that? You talked about relying on the crew, but when in your own headspace, there has to be something that goes on there for you to be able to play that moment so perfectly.
SW: Thank you, man. For me, I have to go in there without giving too much away of the process because you want people to just experience it. By the time I get there on the day, I’m in there with Liddy, you know what I mean? I’m in there and don’t don’t come out of it too much, just kind of always staying in there with him. Matt appreciates that. Larkin and the crew knew that. Then, you have, oddly enough, the relaxation and concentration that it takes to go through the intensity of it, if that if that makes sense.
AD: No, it does. I am always very interested when actors have to go through extreme scenes like this. It seems every actor has a different method on how they do that. Whatever it was to take you there really came across so brilliantly on screen because it’s just a harrowing episode.
SW: Thank you, man. Matt did a brilliant job, and, like I said, you don’t do this by yourself. I’m very appreciative. He let me build my own Liddy. He let me bring myself to this.
