In his 16 seasons on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, a few things may have been forgotten about Glenn Howerton. He’s a Juilliard graduate who, when first breaking into the business, struggled to get taken seriously as a comic actor. He’s a performer of great range and depth, true even within the ever absurd Sunny context, as his character Dennis Reynolds is taken in bizarre new directions with each passing year. And he’s a guy eager to show what he can do, beyond the sitcom he co-created and that made his name in Hollywood. The better known you are for something, the harder it gets to become known for anything else.
Enter BlackBerry, an energetic little indie that’s already lived a long life since its May theatrical release, and that has subtly, brilliantly reintroduced Howerton onscreen. The thriller-comedy biopic written by Matt Johnson and Matthew Miller, and directed by the former, explores the rapid rise and spectacular fall of the smart-ish phone, and the handheld phenomenon it helped usher in. Opposite Jay Baruchel, who plays BlackBerry’s founder Mike Lazaridis, Howerton brilliantly embodies investor and eventual co-CEO Jim Balsillie, a hot-tempered businessman whose volatility keeps the film’s energy level at an 11 from the moment he’s introduced onscreen. The intensity that Howerton has honed so playfully on Always Sunny seamlessly fits the role—but it’s backed by a dramatic heft and a bracing authority that helps explain why it’s one of the year’s best performances so far.
Accordingly, some quiet but persistent Oscar chatter is beginning to hover around Howerton. It’s a very new experience. But, as he explains on this week’s Little Gold Men (listen or read below), it’s one he’s been waiting for.
Vanity Fair: This movie has lived a great life already, and it was made for not a lot of money. How have you experienced the rollout since it was released?
Glenn Howerton: The truth is, I haven’t done a lot of movies, which is partially a byproduct of the fact that I’ve been just mostly unavailable and busy most of the time. There were always ways to carve out that time, but I only wanted to do it if it was for something that I was really excited about. I didn’t want to work in film just for the sake of working in film, I wanted to work on good things. A lot of the stuff that I’ve done, honestly, has been with friends too, which I also love doing because it’s just fun. So I’ve never done a movie even this size, where I was the lead.
We did a lot of premieres, I’m not used to going to so many premieres. We did the world premiere in Berlin, which was really exciting, because it’s such an incredible festival—the fact that we even got in, that just blew my mind. Then we did the US premiere at South by Southwest, and then we did the Canadian premiere in Toronto. We even did an LA premiere, although that was a little bit smaller, it was a friends and family and industry people thing. So I’ve now seen the movie with an audience three or four times.
Because you haven’t done a lot of film, and this is such a great role that you really run away with, what is your reaction when it comes your way? What does it feel like to see that on the page, and to feel like you have the opportunity to get to do it?
I was honestly pretty blown away. The script was so good, and the role was so incredible, that sadly my first thought was, “Why aren’t they offering this to a bigger name in film?” I hold some sway in the world of television, but I just felt like this is the kind of role that they could get a huge star to do. That’s just not what Matt Johnson, the director, wanted. He saw something in me as an actor, he’s familiar with my work, mostly in comedy—on It’s Always Sunny and A.P. Bio and stuff like that—and he just saw what he wanted for that guy. I can see the lineage between some of the characters that I’ve played and Jim in BlackBerry, but it’s slightly circuitous. It’s nice when you feel like somebody sees what you’re capable of outside of what you’ve actually done.