Greg Kinnear in the Apple TV+ series Smoke. All photography courtesy of Apple.
Greg Kinnear’s personal library would be right at home in the Upper West Side apartment of Frank Navasky, the slightly rumpled, tech-averse intellectual he plays in Nora Ephron’s 1998 romcom You’ve Got Mail. Kinnear’s bookshelf is stacked with nonfiction deep dives into the future of tech and biographies of some of America’s most polarizing figures. But lose Navasky’s leather armchair: For Kinnear, there’s “nothing better in the evening hours than reading in the beanbag chair.”
These days, you’re likely to catch Kinnear as a beleaguered fire chief in the new Apple TV+ series Smoke, or, in a rare villainous turn, as a sinister suit sent to hunt down an AWOL researcher in the recently released action flick Off the Grid. Maybe all that true crime is rubbing off on him—he’s recently taken to high-octane thrillers and real-life tales of Y2K art heists. And then there’s the cult classic fly fishing manifesto—but that one’s all Kinnear.
You have two big projects coming out this summer, kind of different vibes: Off the Grid, the action film starring Josh Duhamel, and Smoke, a crime series with Apple TV+, which sees you cast alongside Taron Egerton for the second time.
Very different projects! I think I worked seven or eight days on the Josh movie. I hadn’t worked with him before, and I kind of knew the director, Johnny Martin. He basically pitched it like this: “It’s called Off the Grid, and Josh has gone ‘off the grid’ and somebody’s got to find him.” I was like, “In!” I remember watching an interview with Sam Jackson one time talking about Snakes on a Plane and saying the moment he heard the concept, he was like, ‘Oh yeah, that makes sense. They’re snakes, and they’re on a plane.’ Josh is just kind of this all-star quarterback dude who is a physical force, and I hadn’t worked with him. The idea of him running around in the backwoods as a bad guy trying to track him down seemed like it could be fun. And for Smoke, I had already worked with Dennis Lehane on Black Bird, and at the time he was kind of tooling around with something and I figured as an actor the fact that he mentioned it to me was a good sign. So Smoke is another stunning true crime story, this time based on a podcast, which takes place in the world of arson—a bit of an exotic crime.
Were you a true crime head before Smoke and Black Bird?
No. l’ve done true stories in film over my career for sure, but Dennis is such a great novelist first and foremost that when you enter one of his projects, it really is like entering a book. The characters are very well drawn; they enter and exit at just the right time. He knows which stories to stay focused on. Taron, who leads both of these projects, is a wonderful actor and he’s really got a high wire act that he does in Smoke. The relationship between my character Harvey Engelhart and Taron, who plays Dave Gudsen, is kind of a lived-in friendship. I will say that some hearts get broken in this show. Dennis said that he’s intrigued by characters that are drawn to things that hurt them, which ultimately plays out in fabulous detail in Smoke.
And Off the Grid sees you in a sort of rare turn as a villain. What did that role and playing Harvey on Smoke bring out of you that you weren’t expecting? And what did the other cast members bring out of you?
With good actors, it’s like sports. If you’re hitting a tennis ball with somebody who’s better, it will elevate your ability to hit the tennis ball back. I’m not a good tennis player, full disclosure, so it’s probably a bad analogy to use, but being surrounded by people who elevate your game—John Leguizamo, Jurnee Smollett, Rafe Spall—is wonderful as an actor. What it brings out in you is fear. You want to do your best, and it’s funny because being your best in acting quite often isn’t being the showiest person. It’s actually the reverse.
Harvey is a very reserved, careful character who needs to show power. And he’s in a position of power as the chief of fire, and it’s very much a case of less is more. Off the Grid is a pulpy, 90-minute where the bad guys are tracking down the good guy. I’m trying to think how many bad guys l’ve played. I played the bad guy in Sam Raimi’s The Gift years ago where I think I might have killed Katie Holmes. I was more of an asshole than a bad guy in Mystery Men. But the bad guy? Not that often. But if I’m being fair about Off the Grid, there are worse people in the show, like Peter Stormare.
You mentioned that you’ve played a lot of real-world figures over your career, from Presidents Joe Biden and John F. Kennedy to the inventor of the windshield wiper. How much do you invest in reading about who they are?
I always think of the Bob Kearns-Bob Crane dichotomy. Bob Kearns invented the intermittent windshield wiper—fairly low bar in terms of people’s awareness of this person and [the] stress of trying to get anything particularly authentic about that. I could have done him a billion ways.
It’s very helpful for an actor to have a real person to look at, to study, to grab hold of. YouTube offers no shortage of footage. I did this movie with Willem Dafoe for Paul Schrader called Auto Focus, and [I played] Bob Crane, the star of a massive television show that I was a huge fan of when I was a kid called Hogan’s Heroes. I remember being in high school in Greece—long other story—and I had a friend come up to me and say, “You hear what happened to that guy from Hogan’s Heroes?” l was like, “What?” And he was like, “He was bludgeoned to death with a camera tripod.” And I remember sitting in science class and just staring off in the distance and thinking, “Wow, this guy went down.” I had such a clear image of who he was.
Whether the people know him or not, you’re not going to recreate the person. It’s impossible. It’s going to be you. But having touchstones and pieces of an actual person that you can hang on to study are invaluable. They give you a good chorus to the song.
Greg Kinnear in the Apple TV+ series Smoke.
I’m gonna ask you a few rapid-fire questions about your reading habits and predilections and—
Oh boy, here we go folks! Sit back and buckle up. Mad Magazine, that’s my first answer. Go ahead.
Oh really?
No, I’m just kidding.
Who are you as a reader in three words?
Disappointing.
That’s one word.
Can I just qualify that? I live in a family of voracious readers. Voracious. So there’s no way I’m ever going to match up to that. It leaves me with a sense of woeful disappointment and self-loathing when it comes to reading. That’s my three words: I do read.
Where’s your favorite place and time to read?
It changes. I can’t read on the beach. l’m too distracted. l read at home, and I will either read in my office or I will take a beanbag chair that sits in my office outside and read outdoors. Nothing better in the evening hours than being in the beanbag chair.
Who’s a Hollywood legend you feel deserves a biography but doesn’t have one yet?
I worked with him: Jack Nicholson. I’m sure there’s some sort of unauthorized BS out there, but I would only be fascinated to read that if Jack wanted to tell that story. I can’t think of anybody who captures that kind of stardom. I’m not sure that even exists anymore.
What’s a book that you would recommend to any actor?
When I was starting out, somebody recommended William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade, and honestly, it’d be fascinating to read it again. I don’t know if it’s relevant anymore, if the messages in it and stories are all from a bygone era, but I really love that book. Even if they don’t read it, they should read this one quote from him: “Nobody knows anything when it comes to show business.”
Is there a book that’s helped you understand the world in which we live now?
There was a book I read by Nicholas G. Carr a few years ago called The Shallows. I don’t even know when it was written, but it was basically about the oncoming Internet and how it was all going to soften all of our brains.
It’s not the happy, joyful, summer read you were hoping for, but it’s really interesting. They say that the Internet affects the plasticity of the brain. It actually was going to soften our ability to remember things because we were going to just always refer to the Internet. And that was back when you had to type your question. Now you can talk to your AI on your phone.
My favorite is the British cab drivers used to have a thing called The Knowledge. The Knowledge was a very elaborate test that they would have to pass in order to become a cab driver in London, one of the most difficult places to drive. It’s just a strange, vast landscape of crossroads and bridges. They would have to learn all of this.
Eventually, of course, they started to rely on Google Maps, and they scanned the brains of the guys who used to use The Knowledge versus the guys who started to use the Internet. They could see these considerable changes in activity and I just think, My God, how is that affecting everything, for all of us? Forget mapping or getting yourself around. l think it must be affecting us all in so many ways. So it’s good you’re talking about books, but I don’t know who’s reading them.
Maybe we’re just reading them differently. Do you listen to audiobooks?
I do. I listened to the Musk book recently [by Walter Isaacson]. The problem is you always have the podcast coming in and elbowing out the books on tape. The podcast is closer to a magazine than it is a book.
What’s the last book you stopped reading in the middle and never finished?
My wife gave me l Am Pilgrim, which is supposed to be an excellent book. The sheer tonnage of the book is so overwhelming that it broke my wrist. I made it through chapter two. She told me to get to chapter three and it really starts cooking, and I just was like, “This is too many words. I don’t know how to do it.” There’s a part of me that thinks that I should go pick that book back up, but I haven’t.
If you were to write a children’s book, what would you write it about?
I actually wrote one years ago. l still have it. It was a kind of Dr. Seussian thing back when my kids were really little. It was about a cat and a dog getting into a fight, and the cat dares the dog to slip into the cargo bay of a spaceship that’s going to the moon. The rights of that are currently pending as they have been for the last 15 years.
Did your kids like it, at least?
Meh. That’s a pretty tough audience.
What’s the trashy book you’re going to wedge in your travel bag this summer?
Well, it’s not trashy, but I have to put in a plug for my buddy Dennis Lehane who has Small Mercies, which is a fantastic book that came out this spring. I recommend it highly. Very intense, dark thriller that takes place in the Boston area.
But that’s not really what you’re talking about. You’re talking about just the fun, kick-your-feet-up kind. It’s The Art Thief by Michael Finkel. It’s about a young German couple who live at their mom’s house just about the time I arrived in showbiz. They were out stealing art and stole the largest financial collection of all time, something like a billion dollars. In fact, I’m going to be bummed when it’s over because I probably have to pick up I Am Pilgrim next.
What’s a book that you would want to adapt to the screen?
The Curtis Creek Manifesto. I’m going fly fishing this summer. It’s one of my favorite things to do. There’s this guy who used to live in the basement of his mom. His name was Sheridan Andreas Mulholland Anderson, and he was a cartoonist and an outdoorsman. He wrote this manifesto which fly fishermen all know about. It’s a bible of maneuvers of the fly fisher. It’s very intensely written, and he did not suffer fools. I always like the spirit of the book, which is still in print, by the way.
I love it. Would you play the fly fisher at the center of it?
Absolutely. Please put it out there.
I’m going to put it out there.
If somebody makes this, and I get cast, you will be a producer, okay?
l can’t wait. I don’t know anything about fly-fishing, but I cannot wait.
Welcome to show business, kid.
For more bookshelf reveals, check out another installment of “Required Reading,” with the art dealer Larry Gagosian.