Forward with Jeff Ward
We recently caught up with the young and talented Jeff Ward to speak on all his many projects and dig a bit deeper into his personal life. With an impressive resume, he gave us some good insights into his past, present, and future acting roles. From the very beginning, Jeff had the eye on the prize and was able to develop his craft by looking up to some of Hollywood’s major players and working alongside very talented castmates. Let’s dive right into Jeff’s world…
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How old were you when you started thinking about acting?
It's funny. I started doing it when I was pretty young. I got cast in a play in first grade that was an original play that I had to lead in. It was Tom's thumb. Tom Thumb in the Toy Room, and I was Tom Thumb. I don't want to start out by bragging, but yes I was Tom Thumb in Wayne Elementary's production of Tom Thumb. I did that and I liked it, and was so young that like it was irrelevant, I didn't think about it for years. But my grandmother, she found this acting summer camp that Robert Downey Jr. and Natalie Portman and these types of people went to, and she asked me if I wanted to go and I wasn't even that into acting at the time, but I was very obsessive about film, even as... I was 11. I remember my grandmother gave me a VCR that had stickers for stop, rewind and play because I couldn't read, so I could just use the VCR on my own. And I got very obsessed with movies and I remember she was like, "You should go, people like movies like you."
So I went and I really fell in love with acting. I did my first professional job when I was 14, I was in To Kill a Mockingbird, I played Jem at the Ford's Theater in Washington DC, and that was unfortunately cut short because it was in 2001 and 9/11 happened. So that was kind of crazy... I was in New York City on 9/11, rehearsing that play and then that obviously stopped and I ended up not acting for a while. When I was 16, I played Romeo in Romeo and Juliet and it was in an outdoor theater. And I remember during that performance, I was like, "Yeah, I think I want to do this. I think I want to make my life about this."
Is there somebody in film that you aspire to be like, or that you really admire their work?
So many. I mean, the people that jump out in my mind... I'm such a huge Sam Rockwell fan. I'm such a huge fan of Joaquin. Of course I'm particularly astonished with Al Pacino's career, considering his young work. I think Dog Day Afternoon is one of my favorite performances of all time and one of my favorite movies, and John Cazale is one of my favorite performances of all time in that movie. Watching Pacino do Shylock when he was in his late seventies, his dedication to the craft and to what he's doing. And this is such a funny and silly thing to say, but my friends and I always talk about the dude in a list of the greatest movies ever made. He also has that hilarious scene at the end of Jack and Jill, when he's doing Dunkaccino for Al Pacino. Pacino's always been someone that I think has one of the greatest careers an actor's ever had.
ISABEL MARANT sweater
Who would you like to work alongside with?
That's a great question. I would say Sam Rockwell's a really big one and I would also, just because I've been a fan forever, I mean, I would say Kate Winslet. Also, I really feel like between Catherine Keener and Jean Smart, I got to act with two of the people I've always wanted to act with this year.
If acting was not an option, what would you be doing today?
When I was a young, struggling actor, I worked as a manny for a while. I took care of these two boys who became like my little brothers for three or four years when I was just out of college. I grew to really love it and it was something I was good at, and I really enjoyed. So I kind of would like to be a teacher, I think, and it'd be really fun to teach something like film or acting, or something like that. I'd like to teach history too, or even English or literature or something like that. I think I'd really like to be a teacher. My sister is a third grade teacher and has been for awhile, so it's something I've always admired in her greatly, and I think something that I would enjoy doing.
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Regarding Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, what do you miss the most about your character, Deke?
Deke just became a singular version of, I think all of my personal insecurities personified, played with a tremendous amount of overconfidence. I've always found that to be a very funny and fun character to live within the walls of. He had very little shame, and there's not a lot of people that have no shame, and I really thoroughly enjoyed a character, especially for its comedic purposes, to be played with no shame. He's a good person who really cares about the people that he cares about and went on a journey with that, with all of those people.
I found him to be a nuanced character in that way and I really do miss it because he was so... Not self-effacing, but just unapologetically himself, and I actually really enjoyed that. Even though a lot of people would say he was a moron of sorts, or could act that way, it was really fun because he's actually categorically a genius so that made it just a really fun character. And getting to bounce off all of the other people like Clark Gregg and Elizabeth Henstridge and Iain De Caestecker, and Chloe Bennet in that world, was just a blast. That's what I miss.
Have you taken anything that you've learned through that role into any of your current or upcoming projects or roles?
It feels like Roy in Brand New Cherry Flavor is kind of the antithesis of Deke. I think that he is almost in a way very subconsciously run by shame in a weird way, because he's an actor and he's a movie star and I think that there's a great amount of subtle hubris to him that... In a lot of ways, I think that where Deke is someone that is unapologetically himself, I think Roy is someone that is pretty fairly calculated in the way that he comes across, the way people perceive him and who he is. It's a manicured and curated image, and purposely so because he's a movie star and successfully so. So I think in a lot of ways, he's the inverse of Deke, which made him a really fun thing to play right after.
LOUIS VUITTON full look
Have you kept in touch with any of your cast members from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I'm seeing a bunch of them in London in just a couple of weeks. I'm seeing Iain and Elizabeth and Clark and Chloe, and Ming I was just texting. The cool thing about a show like S.H.I.E.L.D. is that it was on for seven years. At a certain point you were spending more time with these people than even your own family, so it becomes a family in a literal sense, and so those are people that I'll know and love forever.
For Brand New Cherry Flavor, what can you share about this series?
I personally am a very big fan of David Lynch. I also really like David Cronenberg. I like those kinds of differences, and I think at times poetic and very mysterious, and unique stories. Mulholland Drive is one of my all time favorite movies and I think that echoes of that is kind of what you could hope to expect from Brand New Cherry Flavor, is a David Lynch, David Cronenberg kind of dark, mysterious... Not pure horror, I mean it's in the vein of a thriller and of a noir, and definitely has scary, eerie, Lynchian elements to it. But it's more weird than it is purely scary, but kind of dips in between. It is really cool because when it applies to a Hollywood landscape and an artist's landscape, and a young female filmmakers landscape in the nineties, which 30 years ago was a very different time to now, in terms of the entertainment business and in terms of just society in general.
So it kind of, I think, is commenting on a lot of cultural shifts and things that are happening through the lens of [inaudible 00:18:41] a story that took place 30 years ago. But I think it does so in a way, hopefully that you don't purely expect or see coming. Or it's not as obvious as it may seem, so it's got a nuanced and complicated story that starts to unravel. And hopefully one that really keeps you guessing, is something that I genuinely guarantee there are scenes in it that no one has ever seen anything like before.
How is it working with streaming companies?
Coming from... S.H.I.E.L.D. was obviously Marvel and ABC, which is one level of standards and practices, right? You're in that world, you're going to get a certain kind of story. What I really appreciate and excited me so much about working for Netflix and Hulu, PEN15 is, I think one of the most brilliant TV shows on air right now and I got to do a small thing in that. I watched that process from start to finish because they're such close friends of mine. And it's interesting because I think that on the streamers, you do have an opportunity to tell a bit more of an unrestrained story.
Aside from the obvious, you can get away with cursing and sex and violence, of course those things are true and of course those things are different for a show like Brand New Cherry Flavor versus a show like S.H.I.E.L.D. but they both have their strengths. I mean, something that was super exciting for me with Cherry Flavor or Hulu or any of those streamers, is they do feel like the creative answers are blazing the path, and there are less restrictions on what those answers can be. So it's a very exciting thing in terms of we Eric and I or Katherine and Rosa and I, or whomever, we can all kind of look at a scene and go, "This isn't quite working, let's do this and this and this," and we don't have to be as concerned about a plethora of people at a more standard TV network, being concerned with a more traditional story that's a little more straight forward.
Like in both PEN15 and in Brand New Cherry Flavor, and in Hacks which was HBO Max, all three of those we just were able to go where the story led us. And I felt like we got to be a little more nimble on our feet in terms of changing things and in terms of what was allowed. That made it very, very fun and made it made it exciting because it felt like, okay, what's the best, most interesting, most unique story that we can tell, that is maybe also funny, or maybe also sad or whatever? And between Hulu, HBO Max, Netflix, all of those guys really, I think, let us do our thing, which as an actor is so awesome.
They are given a bit more freedom and it's really fun because a guy like Nick Antosca or people like Paul Downs and Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky, all of those people are so smart and such good writers, that it's cool to watch everyone kind of, a little bit get out of their way and let them tell the story they want to tell.
What's something that you think people will appreciate about the show Hacks?
Paul and Lucia and Jen have talked about how so many of these insanely talented female comedians never quite got the same due as their male counterparts. And I think, using Joan Rivers as a template to start from, in terms of building Deborah Vance, which is Jean Smart's character, I think for them, it was really awesome to be able to depict this woman who's been doing it forever, who's a dope comedian, who's a really clearly trailblazing entertainer. She's kind of been cast to the side because she's an older woman, which the entertainment industry has never smiled very kindly on.
So it was so cool to see Jean, who also... I'm not telling any tales out of school, but Jean Smart is a national treasure, so to get to give her that platform of really... And exercising all of the muscles that she can where she's hilarious, and she's so sad and tortured, and very angry and embittered, but it all comes from a place of self-loathing. I mean, it just is such an interesting and wonderful portrait of this woman. And then I think Hannah Einbinder, who does such a great job as Ava, kind of being her millennial counterpart, I think the show is a delightful representation of that kind of buddy comedy. While also celebrating the women behind the scenes and literally in the spotlight, in a way that I can't think of another show that's quite done what Hacks did in that way.
Thinking about Hacks or PEN15, what's something that you've taken away from working in these years? Whether it's your actual role or just working alongside some of your castmates, what comes to mind?
Maya and Anna and I went to college together so we have been friends since we were 19. It's been 15 years of kind of grinding together and we all moved to California at the same time. And Anna started dating my best friend who is also a really brilliant writer and so we have all... When I was on the PEN15 set doing scenes with them, that was a really special moment. We have a couple of pictures that the three of us have kind of always dreamed of getting, the ability to work together in that way. And for them to be celebrated to the point they have been, where they've been nominated for an Emmy, and I think have genuinely created the best comedy on television. It's been so fun to watch not only my friends be so successful, but do the work that I always knew that they were capable of doing.
At the same level... They were that brilliant when they were 19, nothing changed, you know what I mean? So to then not only get to see it successful in the world and also that upper echelon of really getting recognized by their peers and by the industry in getting nominated, that is like, I'm so proud of them and being in that, it was so fantastic. To a degree, I haven't known them as long, but I'm also really good friends with Paul and Lucia and Jen, and watching everything that's happened with Hacks. I mean, both those shows, I've been cheering them on because I love the people involved, and I think that they're incredibly talented and incredibly funny, and really intelligent storytellers. So to watch both of those shows take over the comedy landscape over the last year has been thrilling because I got to be a little part of it. But also because I love them and most of all, because they deserve it.
This well-versed and experienced actor has all the right attributes to make him a bigger star than what he already is. With the diversity of his resume and his ability to morph into so many different characters, we cannot wait to see what his future holds for him.
Photography by Stephanie Diani
Grooming by Rheanne White
Fashion by Brit Elkin
Stylist Assistant Austen Turner
