May 14, 2007

Last week, we waited over an hour in a coffee shop for actor Sebastian Stan to show up to our scheduled interview. With a deadline to meet and a plane to catch, we came to the conclusion that we had been stood up, and made the obligatory uncomfortable phone call to the press office. We learned that Stan had in fact screwed up dates and that our only shot at an interview was to try and catch him at The Longacre Theatre, pre-performance. We suddenly began to get the feeling that we weren’t dealing with Stan, but, rather, the twitching stoner Kent that he’s playing in Eric Bogosian’s 1987 play Talk Radio, currently on Broadway.

The play’s premise is this: a young man, Kent, calls into a radio show hosted by his idol, a ranting Cleveland talk-show host played by Liev Schreiber. Kent claims that his girlfriend has overdosed and is turning blue in the face. “You hear all these people calling in with their problems. Everybody wants to talk. Everybody wants their five minutes of fame; my character is a summary of all that,” says Stan.

Before long, Kent calls back to reveal that there’s no girlfriend, and that his parents are on vacation in Fiji. To compound the situation, Kent claims to have been up for a few days smoking crack. “He is the best example of the kind of audience the radio show’s creating,” adds Stan. Kent is the alienated suburban kid trying on a punk attitude, wanting to belong, yet wanting to be out of it.

So what is Stan’s relationship to Kent? “I never really got into trouble with anything,” says Stan of his own high-school days in Rockland county. After graduating from Rutgers University in 2005, the Romanian-born actor landed a role in the 2006 film The Covenant. Stan then appeared in the smaller film, The Architect, and, most recently, in The Education of Charlie Banks, which just premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. “My stepdad was the headmaster of this small private school I went to. I didn’t even know what pot was. I was always a pretty good student; I never went out late or anything.”

Illegal substances aside, the difficulty of coming of age while surrounded by the oblivion of suburbia is one way in which Stan relates to his character in Talk Radio. And, it’s not the only one. “It’s very similar to when I met Liev,” says Stan of Kent’s eventual encounter with his own idol, Schreiber’s character in the play. “I can relate in terms of wanting to be an actor and wanting to have respect. And the hunger for that – for achievement and finally getting to be on Broadway.”

Stan is especially specific when discussing his relationship to his performance, as well as with Schreiber both in character and out. “I ask myself every time I go on stage: ‘What is he saying to himself? I’m gonna be on the radio. Everybody’s gonna hear me.’ The fame and the girl… it helps me to have this thing about teasing him. Like, ‘It must be great to be you.’” Yet, the rapport remains a lighthearted one. “It’s an endless search in trying to freak each other out every night,” adds Stan.

At times the budding actor feels he was born in the wrong period, longing instead for an age when actors took more risks, exploring methods and styles. “I love the 1950’s – the era of Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, Dean, Newman. I loved reading about the group theatre. I just find the whole period romantic … New York and the idea of being an actor. It was based on different principles. I’m not quite sure everybody knows why they wanna be an actor in the first place nowadays. I know I haven’t gotten it all figured out.”

As 8 o’clock approaches, Stan heads off to get ready for the evening’s performance. He talks again about finding the ground between himself and his character. “I know there’s an affinity there somewhere between us, but I haven’t quite placed it. At the same time, I’m all right with not knowing completely, because I feel like it helps it in some way… I don’t know.” In other words, not knowing is Stan’s perfect place to be.

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