‘May December’ Breakout Cory Michael Smith Talks About Turning The Tables on Natalie Portman

François Duhamel / Courtesy of Netflix

“Todd Haynes could ask me to play a fucking rock and I would say yes,” Cory Michael Smith tells me. In Haynes’ latest film, May December, he kind of does— although his character, Georgie, is more like a meteorite. Haynes’ sultry, campy psychodrama unspools around a TV star, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), who is researching her upcoming role as Gracie (Julianne Moore), a character loosely based on schoolteacher turned tabloid mainstay Mary Kay Letourneau. Letourneau went to jail in 1997 after leaving her husband and children for her sixth-grade student, Vili Fualaau, reimagined here as Joe, played by Charles Melton. Gracie and Joe have gone on to form a new family; Smith plays one of Gracie’s kids from her first marriage, who’s now in his mid-30s, much like Joe.

Until Georgie shows up, Elizabeth has been lulled into the sense that all has been largely forgiven and Gracie is beloved by those around her. But about 40 minutes into the film, that spell is broken. Elizabeth is meeting with Gracie’s lawyer at a tiki-style restaurant; there’s a young man onstage reedily performing Peter Frampton’s “Baby, I Love Your Way.” He looks like a full-on ‘90s boy-band member– bottle-blond hair, chipped black nail polish, an array of adolescent necklaces and bracelets. “Jesus Christ,” he chides the band, “can you play this any slower?” This electrified man-child then catches sight of Elizabeth, jumps off the stage and bounds to her table, slapping her (and us) in the face with his manic intensity. It’s Georgie, who proceeds to introduce himself to Elizabeth with a query: “How much are they paying you?”

A grown man frozen as a self-centered 15-year-old (“We’re in the back, with the old families,” he says when his family bumps into Gracie’s new one at a graduation dinner), Georgie personifies the fallout from Gracie’s actions, wearing his mortification on his sleeve. Smith is perfect for it. Best known for playing the frenetic Riddler in Gotham, he's is a master at the quicksilver turn, from penetrating (“Why don’t you look me in the eye and tell me how selfish I am, and I’ll tell you if it’s a match,” he says to Elizabeth) to wistful (“I gave him a hand job and he never spoke to me again,” he recalls in the same sitting) all at once.

Part of the reason Smith can pivot adeptly from Frampton’s schmaltzy 1975 hit to the cabaret-y 1972 Leon Russell single “Tight Rope”—“I’m up on the tight wire/Flanked by life and the funeral pyre/Putting on a show for you to see”—is because he majored in musical theater in college and has studied jazz piano. He first appeared on Broadway in Breakfast at Tiffany's in 2013, before landing “Gotham” on Fox a year later; he’s also starred in the sci-fi Amazon Prime drama “Utopia,” the WWII Netflix miniseries “Transatlantic” and, on the big screen, as a closeted gay man dying of AIDS who returns home in Yen Tan’s film 1985.

Smith has worked with Haynes three times—first in Carol as a private investigator, then in Wonderstruck, and now in May December. We spoke on Zoom; his hair was back to normal, and the vibrant carnivalesque paintings behind him evoked the theme of contrasts May December and Georgie both touch on.

You’ve done three projects with Todd Haynes. How did you guys first get in touch?
It was just a regular old audition. I had just filmed Olive Kittredge, which Laura Rosenthal cast, and it had gone really well, so she brought me in for Carol. In my memory, I was the first person that read for the role. Todd offered me the job from the first audition and then I went in and had a meeting with him. He very famously has these very detailed lookbooks so I sat on a couch with him, and he showed me all of this extensive imagery and research. He immediately invited me in to give my thoughts and opinions about what kind of trench coat and what kind of glasses and where would the part on his head be with the hair, and I’m like, “What?” From the first meeting, I was not prepared for this immediate inundation of creative partnership, especially because when you’re young and the roles are supporting – like, very supporting – you never know how much attention you’re going to get, or how much creative authority. Todd gives it to you immediately and it’s the most beautiful thing. He empowers everybody to really show up. I think [because of] the way that we were able to work together on that and the way I showed up, he invited me on to Wonderstruck and then he invited me on to [May December].

Was Georgie entirely invented? I actually don’t know anything about Mary Kay Letourneau’s family, outside of the new one.
There is a son from the former marriage that Mary Kay Letourneau had. I don’t know all the details—to me, it didn’t necessarily matter in the creation of Georgie. I was more interested in the feelings of abandonment, and not having that kind of relationship. That's the reason he's abrasive and says things to get attention, because he stopped getting any attention from his mother at 13.

I was going to ask you about the styling too, because he’s in his 30s, but he looks like he’s 15.
We want him to feel like he’s suspended in youth. The event would have happened in the ‘90s. And the kind of music that he’s playing, and maybe that he listens to—I made a Spotify playlist that was all this music from the ‘80s. I just wanted him to feel like he’s suspended in this teenage angst and rage.

What’s on your Spotify playlist?
I make a playlist for all my characters, and I usually keep it to myself, but this one, it’s not music that I really listen to, so I’m not so precious about it. Well, Aerosmith I appreciate. Billy Squier. There’s a song by Danzig called “Mother” I listened to a lot, just because it’s appropriate. Poison, Ratt, Vice Squad, some Peter Frampton because I had to sing it. Leon Russell, I sang. Eddie Money, Nazareth, Steve Miller, ZZ Top, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon. I was trying to listen to the harder stuff, but he’s a sensitive guy, so music should have a little bit of a melody. I like to think that he would have been a really capable, interesting, sound, compassionate person, but someone stopped watering him and he didn’t grow.

There’s a feeling of atonality between you and Natalie Portman in your first scene. I was wondering how you found the rhythm of it.
My sole job in that first scene is to fuck with her. [The objective] for me as an actor designing a performance was to disrupt and jostle her and confuse her and shock her. So all the choices, having the corn bread so that my mouth would be dry so I would take her water to drink—it’s not intentionally fucking with her, but it’s invasive of her space and her property in such a way that it would put her off. Staring right at her and pausing before I answer questions, like it’s a dumb question. I watched a couple of scenes of [Georgie's] parents, because I wanted to see their sensibility, and it was two scenes with Natalie. I knew that she was going to behave a similar way —calm, cool investigative reporter—so I could figure out what I needed to do.

I think I surprised her a couple times. Sometimes it was accidental. There’s one take where I said “blow job” instead of “hand job.” It just came out. I turned to Todd and said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to up the ante here.” People aren’t directly confrontational with [Elizabeth]. She has a lot of power, so it was important for me to give her a run for her money.

How much of that was actually on the page?
It’s present on the page for sure. Leading up to it, I remember talking to Todd. I wanted to know what would be on the table in the restaurant, because I needed to figure out ways to be disruptive without being too much. The first thing [Georgie] says is, “How much are they paying you?” That’s the first line. So it’s full allowance to be unapologetic. And the most shocking thing in the script really is the hand job line, which is at the end, so it does its work for you. You don’t need to push that, or else it feels cheap. So that’s just him being lost in his memories.

The Peter Frampton song and the Leon Russell song– were they already there from the start?
I think Todd was involved in choosing those songs. Todd didn’t know I sang when he asked me to do this. He was like, By the way, can you sing? And I was like, Yes, Todd-- also, I’m a pianist. I picked the key. I recorded myself playing [the songs] for tempo to give to the band that they locally found in Savannah. So I took over the music stuff, which I think was helpful because there’s so many things going on that I was able to take that concern away from Todd. The music was recorded, but the singing was live because it felt more raw and weird. It sounded tinny.

I laughed really hard when you say, “Jesus Christ, can you play this any slower?”
That was an improv. Todd was like, Can you just say something? It was scripted that there’s some sort of kerfuffle happening with the band and he throws water in the drummer’s face. I just gave him a bunch of options.

I’m curious about your approach to your last scene with Elizabeth, where Georgie claims his mother was sexually abused by her brothers, and then asks for a job on her film.
It’s a reveal of how nasty he is, how willing he is to hurt people, which really is just a sign of how badly he’s been hurt—his lack of alliance to anybody. I think it’s more sad when someone is that casually willing to say something terrible about somebody close to them, so I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. Also, it’s important that the audience does not know whether that’s true or not. It’s almost like he’s said it to people before. He wants to feel like he has something to offer to her. It’s like a teaser: Look how helpful I can be – I know all of this other stuff that you don’t know. It’s very naive.

In 2013, when you were doing Breakfast at Tiffany’s, you said in an interview: “In college and even after, I questioned the kind of career and life I wanted to pursue, and whether acting was the best path for me.” I wanted to know what you meant by that.
The thing that I really struggled with as a young person was, What is my impact, and does it matter? Some of the work that I’ve been able to do, I feel really proud of, like it’s a contribution, either because it matters socio-politically, or it matters emotionally, and that it will meet someone at a time when they need to see it. I was very prepared, when I came to New York, that if I didn’t feel like I was moving up in this business, I would turn around and do something else. I really thought about being a lawyer and working in public interest. In fact, in 2020, during the pandemic, I started studying for the LSAT. I was one year into a four-year contract on a TV show that we didn’t know if it was going to be renewed. It’s called “Utopia” on Amazon Prime and we made it in 2019. And then when the show got canceled, I was, like, Actually, I don’t want to be off the market for three years going to law school, I want to be an actor, which answered a lot of questions for me. I just have struggled about feeling like my contribution is worth my time here.

I almost changed my major, a couple times. But every time that I would think about changing my degree, I would have some epiphany in rehearsal, or in class, and feel closer to what I was trying to get to, which is to trick the body so much that you’re having an authentic experience as another character. And that is an insane thing. It’s almost like being addicted to drugs in some way. I would have this experience and something would feel so real and it was magical and mystical. I just kept choosing that over my cerebral inclinations. I kept trusting it, so I stuck with it. But I do think I would have abandoned it if good fortune had not found my path. And it really has. This is a really tough business and I’ve been very lucky to have people like Todd, who have invited me back, who have given me chances. I’m really grateful for that, because that’s the thing that has sustained my interest in this.

Originally Appeared on GQ