Exit Interview: Mark Duplass Is Happy to Play "The Husband"

Mark Duplass is in full dad-joke mode right now.

He’s just wrapped a series of meetings at Duplass Brothers Productions, the TV and film company he founded with his brother, Jay, and he’s reclining at his house before heading to the grocery store to shop for the pasta dinner he’s making his family tonight. “I took you home and now you’re in bed with me,” he quips over the phone one afternoon as he munches on some chips and salsa.

Duplass, who has two daughters with fellow actor Katie Aselton, says he radiates “extreme dad energy and extreme husband energy” at all times. It shapes his work life, too. Over the past few years, as he’s read story after story about Hollywood’s lopsided power structures, he’s thought a lot about what he can do to lift up other people around him, particularly those who aren’t straight white men. “It’s what my life is about in so many ways,” he says. “I really like to be in this support mode.”

His latest pair of roles allowed him to do just that—and spoke to that exact conversation about power and privilege currently unfolding in the worlds of media and entertainment. In Bombshell, out now, he plays Megyn Kelly’s husband, Doug Brunt, who stands by the anchor (played by Charlize Theron) as she finds herself in the middle of the 2016 sexual harassment scandal that took down Fox News head Roger Ailes—and in Donald Trump’s crosshairs. In the Apple TV+ drama The Morning Show, he stars as Chip Black, the producer of a Today-like program who starts to grapple with his own complicity in a sexual harassment scandal that leads to the firing of a star anchor. They’re juicy, challenging projects about the limits of empathy and nuance in stories that often feel black and white—and they also give him a chance to, as he puts it, “shut the fuck up and listen to people tell you how they have been made to feel.” Here, Duplass looks back on his year and walks GQ through how he’s trying to use his influence for good.

This interview contains spoilers for the finale of The Morning Show.

GQ: These two projects are obviously very different, but they’re still both about #MeToo scandals hitting the news business, premiering around the same time. How do you find yourself in that position?

Mark Duplass: Serendipity is a big part of it, but obviously these types of stories are in the zeitgeist. And then in terms of my interest in both of these projects, they were pretty clear “yeses” based upon the creators. Having Charlize [Theron] as a producer [of Bombshell] was really important to me—it’s obviously important to have a female voice at the helm of these kinds of stories as much as possible, and I just fucking love Charlize. We really got along when we did Tully together. For The Morning Show, it honestly wasn't that dissimilar, having Jennifer [Aniston] and Reese [Witherspoon, who both play anchors on the titular program] producing. They’re at a place in their careers where they should just be fucking cashing checks as actors, but they're working their asses off to tell a story that's deeply personal to them.

There’s something interesting happening right now where the traditional supporting wife role—which used to be made fun of in Hollywood, like, "Oh, the boring wife role"—is moving over to the husband role, and that happened in Bombshell for me. My job was to support Charlize, who's got prosthetics inside of her nose and on her cheeks and has to put in a vulnerable, nuanced performance as someone who could not be more politically different from her. She needed a scene partner who was just there for her and giving her what she needed. And that's really what that was about for me.

You have played a fair amount of dutiful husbands over the years—your role in Togetherness comes to mind—and Chip also fits the pattern in a way: He isn’t married to Aniston’s character, but it’s very clear that he will go to any length to protect her and support her in an almost husband-like way. Do you see it like that?

These characters are mostly written that way, but there is no doubt that the energy I’m bringing to it is, let’s face it, extreme dad energy and extreme husband energy. Ever since I became a dad to two daughters and ever since I got married 14 years ago, there’s this thing that has happened to me, which is just a fierce loyalty to and uplifting of women. My company is all run by women. I’m trying to hire at least half women directors on my TV shows. You look at the roles I’m taking, and it’s Charlize being like, “Mark, will you come support me in this difficult performance?” It’s Reese and Jen saying, “Will you come portray this character as we have known him?”

I just feel like if we’re talking about a white male in the industry, there are a lot of things that can move the conversation forward, and I’m trying to do as many of them as I can. But beyond that, there’s a very basic thing you can do, which is just shut the fuck up and listen to people tell you how they have been made to feel. And it seems so simple, but it really makes the “just the husband” role so much greater than that.

You were shouting out a bunch of women directors on Twitter the other day, and you’ve also done things like writing an open letter urging Academy voters to see Moonlight, noting that “films like this don’t get made anymore.” When did using your industry clout in this way become a priority?

It was slow for me. If you look at my early films, I think the female characters are kind of underwritten. When I was younger, I was so scared of making a bad piece of art that I was only willing to do things that were focused on myself and reflective of myself—that’s all I knew how to do.

But once I found myself in a position of power—even though it’s a relatively small independent film and TV sphere—I realized something. If you’re in Hollywood, and it’s time for you to hire someone, if you just reach out to the people who have the best resumes, it’s probably going to be a white male, because that’s just the nature of what the system has been.

Now I take moments to dig deeper and look for people who might not have had the credits because the system didn’t necessarily support them. I take that meeting and give them a shot. [HBO anthology series] Room 104 is a perfect example of a show where I can bring in new directors and have a whole career blossom for them. But if I’m being totally honest with myself, I was late to the game in realizing that stuff.

There were a lot of moments in Bombshell when I found myself really rooting for or empathizing with Megyn Kelly, and there were also a lot of moments when I was reminded that she’s said or done things I really don’t agree with. Is having viewers sit with that discomfort one of the goals of the project?

When I read the script, I had all those same feelings you had. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel. I wasn't sure how Charles [Randolph, the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind Bombshell and The Big Short] was asking me to feel about Megyn, and I thought that was really interesting. I had conflicted feelings about it all through shooting, and I had conflicting feelings about it sitting there and watching it at the premiere with an audience last night.

One thing I feel confident in is that, because the story is so strong and because some of the things that are happening to the women in this movie are so elementally human, it erases a little bit of the political nature of your feelings from the conversation. The movie has a nice touch of nonpartisan aisle-crossing that makes someone who is maybe a woke liberal such as yourself feel deep sympathy for Megyn Kelly, and I think the movie has power in that regard.

The Morning Show explores the limits of empathy in a different way, in that we follow Mitch Kessler, the disgraced news anchor played by Steve Carell, through the aftermath of his firing. At a time when there’s a lot of discussion about what we do with men accused of bad behavior, why is it important to see that side of the story?

I can speak to that a little bit from the perspective of Chip, who I think is a good examination of “nuance” in the #MeToo era. There are a lot of people who could make an argument that is basically, “I don’t give a shit about Mitch Kessler, fuck all these people, it’s not time for nuance, put him away.” And I’d have a hard time arguing with that. But I think Chip is an interesting character, because a lot of [what the show is reckoning with] is: What did he directly know and turn a blind eye too? What did he probably know but decide not to ask about so he wouldn’t have to have it on his consciousness? I think there are a lot more people like Chip out there. And as for Mitch, I probably would have felt more conflicted about how much screen time you give a character like that if the story didn’t land itself so well in episode 10.

The finale does take a clear stance on some of those questions hanging over the first season.

I don’t want to say too much, but objectively speaking, Mitch is not one of those horrific predators who has 35 victims. So does that mean we should give him time? The show flirts with that and gives it some credence, and then it picks him up and fucking slam dunks his ass.

Part of what makes Chip entertaining to watch is that you don’t know how many skeletons are in his closet. He seems like a good guy, but there are suggestions in early episodes that he openly tolerated or participated in the dark sides of that office culture. Did you play him knowing his arc could go either way?

I knew where Chip's moral center stood, and it was pretty easy for me to play two very clear things: One, I'm definitely in love with [Aniston’s character] Alex Levy, and two, I'll do fucking anything to save her—including blowing up the entire ecosystem to do it.

Now, Chip says some things that I find extremely morally questionable. I remember in episode two, he tells Mitch, “The whole #MeToo movement is probably an overcorrection for centuries of bad behavior that more enlightened men like you and me had nothing to do with.” I don't think Chip believes that. I think Chip is a “good producer” because he says what he has to say to the disparate personalities in order to get them to do what he needs to keep the show moving forward without exploding. That has been fine for a long time in the workplace, and I think we're starting to realize that those words have power. If you do things like that, you're also complicit.

I want to ask you about acting with Jennifer Aniston, not just because you’ve tweeted about how much fun she is to work with, but also because for people like me—a late-twenties millennial who missed Friends growing up—she’s always been Jennifer Aniston, The Extremely Famous Person first and foremost. I came away from The Morning Show with an extra appreciation for Jennifer Aniston, The Actor.

Part of what I love about Jen in particular is that she is one of our biggest stars, and she has every right in the world to be guarded and only give what she needs to give, because the world wants everything from her. She should have major boundaries and guards up at this point, but she doesn't.

I also think that there's some excitement because she's getting to do a role like this, which she's been wanting for a while. When you're acting opposite Jen and she’s saying some things as her character that you can tell Jen herself has wanted to say for a long time to some of the men in charge, that's really fun. I think even people who are older and did catch the Friends generation are feeling similar things to what you're feeling.

What’s on your wishlist for 2020?

I'm getting to the place in my life where I'm realizing that if I make any more money, it's not going to matter to my family in any big way. So I'm trying to figure out the best way to democratize as many things as I possibly can with my little corner of the kingdom. I'm spending a lot of time talking to smart people and thinkers, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to give legs up to those who didn’t have all the legs that I had: I was a middle class white male with parents who loved and supported me, and I graduated college without debt. Not everybody's like me, so it's time to do something.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

One of the most divisive actors in history is back this week with Uncut Gems, prompting us to revisit his deep, deep filmography.

Originally Appeared on GQ