The Politician And Hollywood Star David Corenswet Has A Beautiful Imagination

By Crystal Bell


No one is brilliant, although David Corenswet comes close. Naturally, the 26-year-old balks at such an advice (he's humble, also) however the facts speak for themselves. Once he was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia-born actor auditioned for the drama division at Juilliard; he graduated from the famous performing arts conservatory in 2016. ("We're 98 percent sure that I did case in point go and graduate from Juilliard," he jokes.) He's also a self-proclaimed Star Wars nerd who began his own a cappella order in high school with his three best companions. "We were briefly called Three Card Monte, and then we added a fourth [member], and thus that ruined the entire thing," he adds. And now he's making pesto. The recipe was passed down from his aunt, who he only recently noticed out is a complete imposter.


"We just discovered over Passover that her special recipe for matzo balls, which are the greatest matzo balls you've ever had in your life, is actually just the recipe on the back of the Manischewitz matzo ball mix box," he tells MTV News. "So she's been revealed as a fraud. I don't know which back of what box she got this astonishing pesto recipe from."


It's this charisma that makes him such a standout on Ryan Murphy's Hollywood, a revisionist take on Tinseltown's Golden Age in the late 1940s. Corenswet plays Jack Costello, a tall, dreamy young actor whose sincerity and crystal-blue eyes pierce by means of the screen, with or without Technicolor. Hollywood is Corenswet's second Murphy project immediately after appearing in The Politician last year. His breakthrough efficiency landed him a recurring role in Season 2, which recently premiered on the streamer. Nevertheless Hollywood is more personalized for the actor. It's his first major executive producer credit — a testament to Murphy's faith in him not only as an actor nevertheless also a storyteller — and it also depicts a time period that Corenswet immersed himself in as a child whose only real sources of entertainment were screen legends of the 1930s and 1940s.


Speaking with MTV News, Corenswet opens up about his childhood imagination, his own Hollywood dreams, and how he'll never mention that he's made it.


MTV News: Jack has a dream of being an actor. Was it easy to be able to see yourself in a dreamer like him? 


David Corenswet: Certainly parts of him — his dream of being an actor, his experience growing up watching movies on the big screen, and the way movies made him feel like there was meaning out there in the world that he had not noticed nevertheless. That's really central to him. And I don't think I have quite the same connection to films as he does. However it's hard to have the same connection to films that he does nowadays because it's such a different experience.


For somebody in Jack's position in the 1940s, the one movie theater in their small town was their only access to movie stars and these good stories. For me, it's a mixture of two things. On the one hand, my mom and dad raised us watching a bunch of old movies. So we grew up watching the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, and Singin' in the Rain dozens of times. We admired comedies. That was all we watched. We did not have cable, we weren't allowed to watch television, yet we might watch those movies just about as much as we wanted to. It really narrowed the pool of other eight- and nine-year-olds who I might relate to on that level, because how several eight- or nine-year-olds were watching the Marx Brothers?


MTV News: Once did you discover Star Wars? 


Corenswet: I have a memory of renting the VHS tapes at Blockbuster. It was rent one, get one free for a week, and I rented Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. I would watch them successive, and then Whenever I got to the end, I would feel so emotionally connected to the characters and the world, and I would have such a feeling of wanting to reside in that world, that I would go back and begin the movies over again right then. And that really associated with my imaginary use of play, especially as a young kid. I spent a lot of time by myself in my basement pretending to be a Jedi. That really drew me. I began acting orthogonally to that.


MTV News: and you didn't grow up with the dream of wanting to be an actor. It was more that you just loved immersing yourself in stories. 


Corenswet: I did not have a dream of being an actor, although my dad was a theater actor for several years. Any time While I auditioned for my first play in Philadelphia Whenever I was nine, he knew the territory a little. He understood the culture and the logistics of it. Nevertheless the meeting of these two things was this very practical thing. I wanted to spend as much time around the world of Star Wars, or other worlds that I loved — James Bond, Indiana Jones. I wanted to be as close to that as much of the time as I would be. So I began putting all these hours in as a young actor in Philadelphia, and then doing musicals at my school. It all eventually merged into this thing of, I guess I should keep pursuing this because I have some experience in it, and I've built up some momentum in it, and I also really love movies and love watching them. Plus it turns out — I didn't discover this up until I was maybe a freshman in college — I love making movies, every aspect of it.


I love the cinematography aspect, I love sound recording, I love the art director who's in charge of everything, making sure everything runs on time. It all converged on this eccentric path of being an actor and, hopefully, at some point, a director. I did get to be an executive producer on Hollywood, however hopefully at some point, [I] will be playing a bigger role than just an actor in fun, big worlds, like the ones that Ryan Murphy creates.


MTV News: I saw that you recently directed a music video. 


Corenswet: That's been super fun, because that's very easy to do without any help. It's hard to create a narrative film without other people doing other jobs, although music videos can be sort of catch-as-catch-can. I have several companions who make music that I really, really like, and thus I get to practice with my camera and practice my editing, and so they get a music video out of it.


MTV News: A lot of filmmakers cut their teeth directing music videos. Paul Thomas Anderson is still directing Haim videos. 


Corenswet: Right, yeah. All you've got to do is do it with an eye towards story. And there really are so several parallels and thus several skills that translate to the big screen.


MTV News: Every character on this show wants to create it in Hollywood. That doesn't sound so much like your dream, or that was never really your dream to start with. Yet you are booking notable roles, and your career is on the ascent. So what is your dream? What do you hope to do with this career you're making for yourself? 


Corenswet: The dream is to prepare movies and tell stories with the myriad of interesting and talented people who I have crossed paths with while doing so. One of the reasons I love making movies  — and it's true in the theater as well, although I think it's truer of film and television — there really are so several people who are so good at their one job, however the other thing they have to be really good at is interfacing with the other people who are really good at their jobs.


On a film set, you have somewhere between 50 and 75 people who are all oriented toward the same objective yet have completely separate, individual jobs to do. And even just watching that network of skill and vision come with each other and intersect at the single point of roll cameras, action, there's just something totally magical and very human about that.


So my dream is to do that with my companions. Most of my companions are not prominent, and I feel like I have discovered an awesome little secret in the fact that I think they're all genius. And I think the ideas that they have, and the stories they tell, could be different and wonderful and key. A lot of these people I met at Julliard. Spending four years, hours and hours and hours and hours and hours with the same people, you really get to know them. You really get to know all the crazy, dumb, and astonishing thoughts they have as artists and as storytellers. There's no substitute for shared history once it comes to collaborative art and creative pursuits, have the ability to go deeper and farther in assignments like that.


MTV News: And that's so much a piece of Hollywood, and what the show is about. Jack finds a support system in people like Archie and Avis, nevertheless also a creative, collaborative team. How crucial is having a support system for you? 


Corenswet: It's the ultimate thing. It's more essential than having any one success. Certainly more crucial than awards or perhaps acclaim. Of course, there's the desire for the people at large to appreciate your work, however that's very tough to control. And I'm weird enough to have no confidence that anybody else thinks that my ideas are interesting or cool. So what's really key is finding the people who you could work with and working towards making stuff that they get and appreciate and hope to be a segment of, because that is sustainable after awhile. That's an achievable objective. Whereas, creating a perfect film that thousands, millions of people love, I just don't know how you do that.


MTV News: Ryan Murphy is pretty wonderful at fostering creative partnerships. Your breakout role was in The Politician. For someone who isn't so interested in the idea of fame, what made you hope to jump into not one nevertheless two Ryan Murphy universes? 


Corenswet: I mean, as soon as you're a unemployed actor, and somebody like Ryan wants to work with you, you don't mention no. I auditioned for The Politician out of nowhere. I auditioned with the casting director, Alexa Fogel, who I had gone in for several times before. Actually, I auditioned for two different roles in The Politician, and River had several things about him, or the role required a few things — specifically, a certain stillness and quietness — that happened to be acting challenges for me. Any time As soon as I was in school, I had a moment where I was doing a play, and I realized that I didn't know how to stand still. I habitually felt awkward not doing something, or I felt like I required to put my hands in my pockets or something. I had spent a couple of many years attempting to identify how to not do that.


So to arrive at a role like River, which really required that, and to work with Ryan… and then whenever he brought me into Hollywood and mentioned, "I aspire to take the next step and have you as a bigger part, and begin with you and then build the cast around this central order It's pretty incredible to have somebody, as an actor who's habitually, for the most part, hired based on your look and your skill, to have somebody mention, "I like how you work as well." That's habitually the ideal reason to get hired.


MTV News: plus it was a global you were already familiar with. 


Corenswet: Yes, and the fact that he wanted me to do this particular time period and world, which was the time period, the context, the clothes and, and flare that was central to the only movies I watched growing up. The way a male handles his hat is very crucial to me because I've seen so several males in the '40s stage name their hats, that I know the variation between somebody who actually is doing it and an actor who has been handed a hat for the initial time in their whole life. So to get the possibility to put that to use, it was pretty incredible that he saw through me and saw that in me.


MTV News: Why was it so key for you to be an executive producer as well? 


Corenswet: One of the things that's unique and great about Ryan is his belief in actors, and his aspire to empower them as well as to let them loose and bring what they have to bring to their roles. So it was critical to me, because I wanted to be of as much use as I would be. And actors, even any time they're perfect, are only made use of in a small little sliver of that huge process that I was describing earlier. Yet I love getting to be involved in all the things that lead up to that moment of roll cameras, action, and what occurs afterwards to create this little novella. And on set and in the development of it, have the ability to be an added set of eyes, looking out for things, was nice. I feel they made good use of me.


MTV News: Jack goes to good lengths to prepare his dreams a reality. What lengths have you gone to in your career to create stuff happen? 


Corenswet: The most that I have done is bother, nevertheless you can mention bully, people into either helping me with my assignments or letting me help them with theirs. Most of the work that I've done since I graduated school was independent stuff with my companions and colleagues — little shorts and web series on YouTube that are peculiar and watchable. And the big thing there really is, everybody is very busy and, at this level, nobody's getting bought what they're doing. So to convince your companions to show up on their day off and sit with you as you yell at each other about whether this is funny or that is funny, or whether we're going have the ability to shoot in this companions apartment or that companions apartment, that, surprisingly, takes a lot, both from the people who are ready to do it and the people who have to convince the other people to do it. I certainly strained a couple friendships and formed some really strong ones in that method of holding people to account and demanding that other people hold me to account.


MTV News: The show depicts this expectation versus reality of what Hollywood is like or what making it means. As a young actor having a breakthrough moment of his own, has the expectation of it matched your reality, or is it something that you never put much thought into?


Corenswet: I picture it a lot, yet I don't form expectations also much. I attempt to keep my expectations more of myself. I have expectations of myself for how I'm going to work, and why I'm going to comport myself, and why I'm going to show up for the people who take a chance on me and mention that they wish to work with me. And my expectations of everybody else is to deliver on what they mention they're going to deliver on most of the time, nevertheless not all of the time, because shit happens. And thus for now, I've done a pretty good job of meeting my own expectations. Everybody can routinely get better, and I'm planning on it. I feel no sense of having damaged through or having made it. I don't think there really is such a thing as feeling like you've made it or damaged through. So it's excellent to just feel I have all of those excellent models of how to be in the world that I'm, hopefully, going to be in for a little bit while.


MTV News: What do you hope people take away from the revisionist fantasy of Hollywood? 


Corenswet: There's a Buddhist practice called metta. It's a loving-kindness practice. And also you basically just imagine sending good vibes. You expand the feeling that you have indoor of you, of compassion and wishing well for the people that you love and for yourself — and especially for the people who you don't love so much. The point of that is that the world is the way it is, and there really problems, and there really are problems that need to be fixed. However it is a useful and enjoyable thing to just experience the feeling of wishing somebody well, and hoping that things go well for them, even in case you can't solve their problems or fix their situation.


a tiny segment of living a full life is to just feel empathy and compassion and hope for people. So that's what I'm hoping this show does: fill people with that feeling, so that they can then go back to their lives, solving the critical problems that they're solving, and dealing with the loss that they're dealing with. Whichever their experience, they can come at it with a stomach full of compassion hope along with a little more energy.