Corey Stoll leapt at the chance to work with director Lila Neugebauer on “Appropriate,” but admits that he wasn’t sold on his character Bo initially. “I think I was still judging the character,” suggests the actor, who recently scored his first ever Tony nomination for his performance. “And that’s of course the first thing you’re supposed to not do as an actor is judge your character,” he says, “And so it wasn’t really until we were it in rehearsal, seeing the hurricane of energy that was coming at me from Sarah Paulson and then seeing this incredibly wounded portrayal of Franz by Michael Esper, that I was like, okay, I am the classic middle child here and my job is to really just try to just keep things status quo.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.
In the play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Bo has returned to his family’s home to settle the estate of his recently deceased father. As he and his siblings Toni (Paulson) and Franz (Esper) unearth some potentially “reprehensible” family history, an angry schism forms within the family. Bo does his best to remain neutral, though his siblings push him to a breaking point.
Occupying the middle position became a “lodestar” for Stoll as he built the character. “It certainly opened up ideas about what the biography of this family was, the kind of peacemaking that I was forced to do, not just in this situation, but when it was the whole family,” he explains. “Families keep changing shape as people enter and exit life,” suggests the actor, “And every time that changes everybody’s power dynamic sort of shifts.”
Much of the power in the family is sucked up by Toni, and it’s a challenge for Stoll not to volley back at Paulson with the same fiery energy she’s giving out. Bo has “the desire to fight back and to respond, but without having the words to do it,” describes the actor, “everybody in the family is completely outgunned. Nobody is going to win a one-on-one fight with Toni.” Instead, Stoll exercises what he refers to as “the power of stillness” as Bo digests every family fight. “I’m going through this whole scene that’s sort of parallel to the scene, but without any words at all. And I think that was part of why I sort of underestimated the character when I read the script,” explains Stoll.
Thanks to a few key surprise moments in the play, Stoll can feel the audience’s allegiance to Bo shift as they discover new information about the character. “One of the great joys of performing this play,” reveals Stoll, “is to feel the audience be led down this one road thinking they’re going to have their preconceptions about a character met, and then feeling superior to that character, and then suddenly being forced to reckon with their humanity and a real sense of empathy for them.” Audiences are left with the feeling of having the rug pulled out from under them, and it’s something the cast relishes each night. “It’s really satisfying when it works,” admits Stoll, “when we really get them.”
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