Taking the Lead
A Personal Chat with The Visitor Star Richard Jenkins

You may not know the name, but for anyone who has watched their fair share of films over the past three decades you certainly know the face. The veteran of pictures as diverse as Siverado, The Witches of Eastwick, Sea of Love, Flirting with Disaster and The Kingdom, Richard Jenkins is the type of character actor to which all others should be judged.

Veteran character actor Richard Jenkins in Overture Films' The Visitor

That said, over the length of his highly successful career he’s never once been the lead in a motion picture. Not in a Hollywood production, not in an Independent. In other words: NEVER.

That changes with writer/director Thomas McCarthy’s (The Station Agent) latest feature The Visitor. Jenkins is closed off and slightly cantankerous economics professor and widower Walter Vale. On a trip to New York for a conference, a chance encounter with a pair of illegal immigrants Tarek and Zainab (beautifully played by Haaz Sleiman and Danai Gurira) leads him to find strengths and aspirations he never knew he possessed.

I recently sat down with the actor at downtown Seattle’s elegant Fairmont Olympic Hotel to discuss his role in the motion picture. Here are some of the highlights.

Sara Michelle Fetters: Tom McCarthy has been quoted as saying that when he was writing the script for The Visitor, you were the guy he always had in mind for the part. As an actor, what does a statement like that mean to you?

Richard Jenkins: Well it was amazing. It’s one of those things you hear about but you never think will happen. It’s like, oh yeah, right, that’s so Hollywood, that sort of thing. But he did it, wrote this for me, and I can’t tell you great gift that it.

Fetters: Did you know Tom before this happened?

Jenkins: We were staying in the same hotel doing movies, different movies, and I knew him casually – we have the same agent – and he asked if I wanted to go out and get something to eat. We talked for a few hours, not about [The Visitor], we just talked, and a year and a half later he called and said, “I wrote this part for you and I want you to do it.” So I read it, and I just flipped, I loved it so much, and that’s how it all began.

Fetters: Watching the film those feelings you have for the character a really apparent. It almost seems like you were able to slip right into Walter’s skin like the stereotypical glove.

Jenkins: I said to [Tom], if I can’t make this character work that you wrote for me then what do I do? Then I’m really screwed. [laughter] Really, though, it was interesting. Walter was a little more subdued then I am, and there is a stillness about him that I really don’t have. I understand it, but I don’t have that personally.

The older you get when you read parts you think I could really bring something to this or, on the other side, you think to yourself that there are so many other actors who could do this better then me. It’s usually you read something and you think if you have something to offer, and I immediately read this and knew I could do this. Knew that I wanted to do this.

Fetters: I like that you brought up the idea of “stillness.” Is that hard for an actor, to portray a person of such innate quiet, someone who is so still both internally and externally?

Jenkins: It’s not that hard, it’s just that it is the opposite of who I am. But, now they move the camera so much, and so people move and then the camera moves and it’s almost like they don’t trust [viewers] to just watch something up on the screen. So you do see it, stillness, less and less.

Fetters: One of the things I liked most about this film is just how intimately it dives right into the marrow of its characters, while at the same time still feeling so distinctly open and cinematic.

Jenkins: [Tom] really talked about the personal stories and that was what he was interested in, those relationships and how you [showcase] those with a camera. And it really has to do with the patience he shows as a director in the scenes, trusting the audience will connect and respond without beating them over the hard with something. I think he respects the audience’s intelligence so much in that way.

Richard Jenkins and Haaz Sleiman in Overture Films' The Visitor

Fetters: I completely agree. This is a movie that does leave a lot to the audience. The issues it brings up are so complex and McCarthy really goes out of his way to let the viewer make up his or her own mind.

Jenkins: Every Q&A after a screening people are always asking, “Do Mouna and Walter get together?” I’m always like, I don’t know, how am I supposed to know? I remember Tom saying how much he hoped people would ask just these very sorts of questions because then that would mean they were connected to these characters and they want to know what happens [next] because they’re invested in them. He said, “It’s not up to us. This is where the movie ends. What happens next is up to them.”

Fetters: Part of the reason this all works so well is the truly intimate nature of the chemistry between the four of you (Sleiman, Gurira and actress Hiam Abbass) here. Did you go through rehearsals to achieve this magic or was it just something you had the moment you walked on the set?

Jenkins: I think we had it, but we still had two weeks of rehearsals and, yes, that’s the reason it is there. Rehearsal is so intimate you can get to know somebody a lot quicker then you can in a months vacation with them and we really got to know one another. That was an important time and we all like each other so that led to a great time.

Tom was the ringleader. He used that time, not just to make the script better, but to, he used it to – gosh, let’s see, how can I say this? [pauses] Listen, every time you shoot a movie for the first week you wish you could re-shoot it because you don’t know how people work, you don’t know what they’re like, you don’t know if you’ve gotten everything you need. After about a week you suddenly realize, “Oh! That’s what they do.” But [Tom] took care of all of that in rehearsals so the first week nobody was thinking that they wished they could re-shoot any of [the film], not one second of it.

Fetters: And, for you, a veteran of so many large productions, having this rehearsal time must have been a blessing.

Jenkins: It was, and I don’t normally even like rehearsal where it comes to movies because I don’t think they’re used very well. I think they are always used to ‘solve’ the scene, used to assess very specific things. But once you get on the set with the camera everything changes because it is a camera and the room is a different room and the problems are different and sometimes I think rehearsal are confusing more than they are helpful in film.

But this movie, here it was really great. I take it all back. It was magnificent and I wish all rehearsals could be like they were on this one.

Fetters: Music plays a huge role in the picture. Did you spend a lot of time learning to play the African Drum before production began?

Jenkins: No. Not really. I actually didn’t work that hard. Walter wasn’t supposed to play particularly well, at least not at the beginning. Tom wanted us to find the emotional connection, the musical note between Tarek and Walter that went beyond the playing of the drum. There were only two moments I needed to really look like I knew what I was doing, in the Detention Center and in the subway. For those scenes I did practice quite a bit, but not nearly as much as Haaz did.

Fetters: He hadn’t played before? He really looks quite skilled in the film.

Jenkins: Doesn’t he? The kid just looks great. We had a wonderful teacher who drilled on us constantly and Haaz just picked it right up. He’s just marvelous in the picture in my opinion.

Jenkins, Sleiman and writer/director Thomas McCarthy on the set of Overture Films' The Visitor

Fetters: What is it about music, about any art for that matter, that makes it so vital to us as human beings? Why do we respond to it so intimately?

Jenkins: Let me answer your question with a question. Ever know anybody who took part in a school play, no matter what age or grade level, who didn’t have a fabulous time? Ever met anybody who hated those first awkward moments of learning to play a musical instrument? Or hated art class? And yet art and music are the first things we take out of schools, the very first things.

Art is the most elemental part of our being, the fiber of who we are. Art isn’t something that can be dismissed or taken for granted, it’s a connective tissue linking all of us all over the world. Take it out of schools because it is a luxury? Art isn’t a luxury. Art is a necessity.

Fetters: Looking back at it, do you, like those audience members we talked about before, wonder what is going on with these characters now that your film has come to an end?

Jenkins: Of course. Walter has never met anyone like Tarek. In fact, Tarek sort of becomes the teacher and the college professor his student, and in so doing now I think there are other tales that could definitely be spun about him. I often wonder if Walter tries new things now, goes to different countries, travels on adventures. And I think he does. I think this who story with Tarek, Zainab and Mouna is a real eye-opener for him.

Fetters: I had many of the same thoughts afterwards, imagining Walter heading overseas on trips to new places he’d only read about in some of the books in his campus’ library.

Jenkins: And he’d being going to corners of that country that tourists don’t go. He’d be trying to find the cultural life in these places, what it is really like for the people living in these countries. I imagine that, too. He’s just so taken with the world now, I just don’t see how this isn’t a possibility.

Jenkins and Hiam Abbass in Overture Films' The Visitor

Fetters: I can’t let you out of here without talking a little bit about your working relationship with Abbass. You have moments here that are just, well I hate to be a cliché but I can’t think of another way to say it, but you have moments here that are just plain magic, pure and simple.

Jenkins: Thank you. Thank you so much. She is just wonderful, isn’t she? So beautiful. But there is something about her that is so majestic. She’s a lot of fun, a really smart actress and a really grounded actress. She’s just great.

I was asked at a screening if I was nervous about any of the scenes [in the film], and the one I admitted to was the scene where Hiam comes into the bed with me. We didn’t know what we were going to do. It was originally written she was going to sit on the edge of the bed but that didn’t really seem right. We couldn’t figure it out, and finally we just decided to just shoot it and see what happens and she walked into the room and looked so alone and so frightened and so sad, that there was no question what I was going to do.

And it was something we really hadn’t solved until we shot it, and it was all because of her, because when [Hiam] opened that door and I saw her – there was no question what I had to do. None at all. It was just amazing. Truly amazing. It was like, oh my god. Incredible. That’s all I can say to describe it.

Fetters: I think at this point it kind of goes without saying, but you’ve had a long career working as an actor in Hollywood at this point, making your television debut in 1974 and appearing in your first film, Silverado, back in 1985. Do things still surprise you on the set when you come to work each day on all the various projects you’ve been a part of?

Jenkins: I’m constantly surprised. Everyday. Every movie. That’s the fun of it, isn’t it? There are many chores in life, many things that are difficult to do and really aren’t all that interesting, being a working actor shouldn’t be one of them. It is a gift that I get the opportunity to do what I do for a living, and the day it stops being surprising is the day I should probably retire. Thankfully, I don’t see that day coming anytime soon.

Additional Links:

-  The Visitor Theatrical Review by Sara Michelle Fetters
-  The Visitor Theatrical Trailer