{"id":326163,"date":"2025-08-07T21:10:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T21:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/326163\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T21:10:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T21:10:11","slug":"were-drawn-to-complicated-people-not-heroes-ashley-zukerman-on-succession-silo-and-playing-punchable-men-australian-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/326163\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We\u2019re drawn to complicated people, not heroes\u2019: Ashley Zukerman on Succession, Silo and playing \u2018punchable men\u2019 | Australian film"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ashley Zukerman is that guy: you\u2019ll know him from something and you\u2019ll have enjoyed him in it. It might be Nate Sofrelli from Succession<\/a>, the political strategist who begs for an affair with Sarah Snook\u2019s Shiv Roy \u2013 a stalemate that ends in a parked car when Shiv grabs Nate\u2019s hand and shoves it down the front of her jeans. (\u201cA memorable day at work,\u201d Zukerman says.) Or maybe you saw Apple Cider Vinegar<\/a>, where he played Belle Gibson\u2019s deeply awful and codependent partner. Or in the delightfully daft Dan Brown show The Lost Symbol as the dashing know-it-all symbology expert Robert Langdon. He was also a sinister US politician in Netflix\u2019s Designated Survivor<\/a>, and is now playing a promising US politician in Apple\u2019s dystopian drama Silo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zukerman has noticed the pattern too. \u201cI seem to get cast as American politicians or what I am going to call \u2026 morally marginalised nice guys,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

I thought something much meaner, I admit. \u201cPlease be meaner,\u201d he says, smiling.<\/p>\n

\u201cSlightly wet men,\u201d I say and he bursts out laughing. I\u2019m sure it has nothing to do with what you are like as a person, I hastily add. \u201cWell, I do have access to it,\u201d he says, still laughing.<\/p>\n

I leave it an hour before telling him Vulture once called him \u201ca bit of an expert in punchable men\u201d<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m honoured,\u201d he replies.<\/p>\n

Zukerman, centre, as Robert Langdon in The Lost Symbol. Photograph: Peacock\/Rafy<\/p>\n

With his angular face and big eyes, the 41-year-old Australian looks not unlike a young Hugh Laurie. He is one of our many secret Australians, armed with such a good American accent it must either be effortless or incredibly hard work. It is the latter, he confirms. \u201cWhen I\u2019m in America, or even London, I\u2019m in accent all the time, to try to keep that muscle going.\u201d It\u2019s got to the point now that, after a long stint in the US, he sometimes can\u2019t remember what his natural voice sounds like any more.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhich is so embarrassing,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause as Australians I know we hate it when people go overseas and develop a strange transpacific accent. I try to be compassionate to myself when it happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zukerman doesn\u2019t often do interviews. \u201cPerhaps there\u2019s been some reticence in the past to talk about myself. Maybe I\u2019m different now. We\u2019ll see.\u201d This seems down to a deep anxiety that he\u2019s not expressing himself clearly, though he speaks with great thoughtfulness: \u201cThere\u2019s a clarity I have when I disappear \u2013 when I work \u2013 that sometimes leaves me after the fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

We meet in Melbourne while he\u2019s briefly back in his home city to visit family, before returning to London to film the fourth season of Silo. This month, Melbourne international film festival-goers will be able to see him in One More Shot, a time-loop comedy which sees actor Emily Browning rewind time <\/a>using a magical bottle of tequila at a New Year\u2019s Eve party in 1999; Zukerman plays her seemingly benign friend Rodney. \u201cA super creep,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Every role Zukerman chooses has a reason \u201cthat gets me up in the morning\u201d. On One More Shot, it was his love for \u201cdomestic fantasy\u201d flicks, like his childhood favourites Back to the Future and Big: \u201cWe rarely make them in Australia \u2013 we tend to do horror instead.\u201d As for Silo, he signed on because it was \u201cabout living in a dark time and how we keep the light on\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know how to live in this world right now,\u201d he says. \u201cI find it very difficult to comprehend what\u2019s happening around the world and how to handle it and my role to play in it. I don\u2019t think any of us do. But Silo presents a really gentle argument for trying to keep whatever light is inside us alive. Keeping even a small sense of hope or rebellion alive is a lot of work. Look after that, and that might be enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zukerman was born in America but came to Australia when he was two; his Israeli father and Peruvian mother were academics who moved their young family from Santa Monica to Melbourne for a better life. It was at high school that Zukerman discovered acting gave him an inner clarity he had never known before. \u201cAs a kid, at home, I had a hard time knowing what to feel,\u201d he says. \u201cOn stage, as a character, I knew how they felt. It was an opportunity to experience something clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Right out of drama school, Zukerman was cast in HBO\u2019s war epic The Pacific, \u201calong with 100 other young white Australian graduates\u201d. It was an \u201cincredibly strange experience\u201d, as a green actor on a huge show produced by Steven Spielberg, but it gave him a new confidence. Afterwards Zukerman flew to Los Angeles to audition for a pilot season \u2013 for two months a year, for five years in a row. He had little luck \u201cbut I really loved it. I would do 10 auditions a week and that built a muscle. It was a real high. You\u2019d land and just try to keep your head on straight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zukerman and Sarah Snook in Succession. Photograph: HBO<\/p>\n

Like most of the cast of Succession<\/a>, the show changed his career for ever. Even though Nate was a small role, he was compelling; how he both loved and hated being in Shiv\u2019s orbit, how he bristled at any mention of her husband, Tom, \u201ca corn-fed basic from Hockey Town\u201d. By the end of the show, Nate lost Shiv, a US presidential campaign and perhaps democracy itself to that corn-fed basic.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved how Nate presented as optimistic and egalitarian but there was something about that family he was so drawn to,\u201d Zukerman says. \u201cHe hated them but he wanted to be a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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From the first script, he knew Succession was special, an experience he\u2019d only had once before: on Manhattan, the excellent and under-appreciated drama in which he played a physicist working on the atomic bomb in Los Alamos. \u201cThe Succession scripts were like reading poetry,\u201d he recalls. \u201cIt was a wonderful time but I also had a hard time on it. The work was so pure and perfect as it was that I learned very quickly that I actually shouldn\u2019t bring anything to it, which is harder.\u201d<\/p>\n

For years Zukerman would immerse himself in homework for each role \u2013 sometimes too much. During Manhattan, he enrolled in a physics course: \u201cIt was insane \u2013 I realised very quickly I wasn\u2019t gonna be able to finish so I went back to high school maths.\u201d For The Lost Symbol, he studied the Freemasons and learned Hebrew. But he\u2019s since learned that \u201cjust because something looks like work doesn\u2019t mean it helps\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike on Silo, my character is an engineer who becomes a congressperson \u2013 how much do I need to know about tunnels?\u201d he says. \u201cI come at things intellectually first, and I find great freedom once I\u2019ve understood it. But I\u2019m drawn to actors who seem to have an extraordinary ability to throw themselves in with very little preparation. I\u2019m fascinated by that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zukerman stepped into Tom Hanks\u2019 shoes to play the young Robert Langdon in The Lost Symbol, which was incredibly fun nonsense. Did he enjoy being the leading man? \u201cI did \u2013 but I didn\u2019t like being an archetypal hero. That\u2019s such a strange definition of a human being. We\u2019re drawn to complicated people, not heroes. So I found that difficult. I actually thought he was an odder character than it ended up being, but there was not much room for anything more in a show like that \u2013 you\u2019ve got to just solve puzzles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zukerman, second from right, in One More Shot, with, from left, Hamish Michael, Emily Browning and Pallavi Sharda. Photograph: Ben King\/Supplied by Melbourne international film festival<\/p>\n

It was only a decade ago that Zukerman realised he could probably make a living from acting: \u201cI knew that I wouldn\u2019t have to pivot, and that was an incredible luxury.\u201d He cringes when talking about success but does admit: \u201cI am proud of my work in the last few years, in a way that I wasn\u2019t before.\u201d<\/p>\n

What changed? \u201cThere were periods on some of the shows we\u2019ve talked about where I hated the experience of doing it,\u201d he says, carefully. \u201cOr I hated the experience of watching it later. There wasn\u2019t much joy around it. But in the last few years, I\u2019d say that there\u2019s some pride.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he is technically American and he loves New York, \u201cwhen I get to Australia, my shoulders just drop. I understand the people. I have memories of every corner in Melbourne. It is home.\u201d<\/p>\n

We farewell on one of Melbourne\u2019s many corners. \u201cI am now remembering why I don\u2019t do interviews very often,\u201d he says. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve just talked about myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was kind of the point, I say, and he just laughs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ashley Zukerman is that guy: you\u2019ll know him from something and you\u2019ll have enjoyed him in it. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3935],"tags":[77,3943,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-326163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114989539264658789","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}