How The Offer Star Matthew Goode Figured Out Robert Evans
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In the new Paramount+ limited series The Offer, which follows the making of The Godfather, Matthew Goode plays the late, legendary movie producer Robert Evans—one of the most colorful characters in a story chock full of them, but it wasn’t a part he was expecting to land.
Here, the actor, a veteran of Downton Abbey and The Crown, tells T&C what brought him to the project, which is airing now, and how he managed to embody a singular Hollywood executive in a bygone era without resorting to imitation—possible trespassing and all.
When you took this part, what do you already know about Robert Evans, and what makes you want to play him?
I'll give you the truth, which I haven't given to anybody yet. I got sent the scripts, and I read them, and it was for a completely different part. And then I didn't hear anything for a month, and I just assumed, well, of course it's probably gone to someone who's incredibly famous, but I can't wait to watch it. Then, I was on the golf course at Walton Heath—which is a wonderful golf course—and I was about to go to the range, but it started raining, and I thought, oh, I don't really want to warm up in the rain, so I'll just sit in the car for a bit. And then my mobile went off, and it was all my agents. I was like, oh my God, something horrible has gone wrong. And they said, "You've been offered the role of Robert Evans."
I was completely blindsided. I couldn't really understand it, and that kept going for at least two months. Luckily, I had that amount of time to try to prepare, because if it had happened a week before, I would've been utterly terrified, and I probably wouldn't have had the time to do the homework.
What kind of homework did you do to play Evans, who’s a legendary character?
Because I'd seen The Kid Stays in the Picture, I knew that he was an icon and a real maverick, and I knew that there was a lot of stuff that I could mine. Normally if something comes out like that, I can be my own worst enemy, and I can self-sabotage; I'll go, "There's no way I'll be able to do that. Use someone else. They're much better." But on this occasion, I didn't scupper it.
There’s a lot out there about him—documentaries, books, a few years ago there was even a big auction of his estate, down to things like the playing cards. What was most useful?
You can never do enough homework. You're talking about a man's life, so you have to look at the entire thing, even though you're only doing a couple of years of it. So, you do the gamut, and it's funny you should mention the auction, because there's detail in everything. [My costar] Juno Temple's friend bought a couple of pairs of spectacles [from the auction,] and she offered to let me see them. There's always this weird thing, like it being a horcrux from Harry Potter, these things that you hope just by touching will impart some sort of magical power.
I also walked up to Woodlands, his house, one day. I thought I should probably go there and see if I can get in, maybe I'll be able to go and look at the pool. It's all that wonderful history! They wouldn't let me in. I think if I'd have been Brad Pitt I might have gotten a glimpse, but I'm not unfortunately. So, at least I got to see the entrance to his house, and I saw a bit of the garden, and I said a few words, and I felt a bit stupid, but I felt like it would be a nice thing to honor him.
But anyway, back to the glasses. When I was introduced to the glasses, there were bite marks all up and down the arms, all over them. That gives me a bit of detail; he always had a pair on his head or a pair in his mouth and like two phone calls going on at one time. It shows there's a sort of nervousness, or he listens a lot. That's just a little detail that gives you something to play with.
Was there anything—sets or costumes—that made things click and made you feel like you were fully in character?
First, you have the words in the scripts—and the script was written by Michael Tolkin, who wrote The Player, and I’ve never read a better script. For me, anything I do is an interpretation, it's not a documentary. Evans had such a famous voice, and that's why I didn't listen too much to The Kid Stays in the Picture, even though I love that. I listened to a lot of stuff that's on YouTube, several interviews from the 1970s. I didn't have the luxury of knowing him personally, so I hope that I've done him proud.
What’s it like to be an actor working in Hollywood today portraying this other, perhaps more swashbuckling, era of your industry?
Let's say I was to be involved in a production of Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh. It was the Roaring Twenties, and we will never know how bombastic that era really was, but we have an idea from what was written about it. The 1970s for me, although I was born in '78, are a complete time capsule for me, I have no experience of what that was like. And I'm pretty sure there are still some fairly bombastic people working within the film industry, but we are just playing the time.
Whenever I was in L.A., people would come up and tell me old stories about him, and they were always the most positive stories. I think there's some dark and light with Bob, and he was not necessarily a great businessman as far as making money for himself, but there was so much love for what he did. And there's still a huge amount of love for him within the industry. I've been sort of slightly sucker punched in a restaurant by a complete stranger coming up to me and saying, "I hear you're playing Robert Evans." I was always there going, "Oh God. Please don't let it be a bad story." But I didn't hear one bad story, and I think that's a testament to him.
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