Cory Michael Smith was disappointed. “I’m a big fan of pepperoni with a little more constitution,” he said, looking down at the slice of pizza on his plate. “These are tired. They’re tired cups.”
This was the day after the premiere party for “Mountainhead,” the Jesse Armstrong movie that premieres Saturday on HBO. A Vantablack comedy of wealth, power and moral negligence, it evokes Armstrong’s earlier fable of the megarich, “Succession,” but is more explicitly attuned to current anxieties about Silicon Valley oligarchs.
Smith stars as a social media mogul named Venis (rhymes with menace), a pampered edgelord holed up in a cartoonishly swank chalet (the Mountainhead of the title) with other tech machers, played by Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman and Ramy Youssef. Venis’s content creation tools have destabilized much of the global South, but he remains mostly unbothered.
“Nothing means anything, and everything is funny and cool,” he tells his fellow founders, as they swipe past scenes of chaos.
In person, Smith, 38, was not quite so nihilistic, though he had dressed the part, a man in black on black on black — pants, coat, shirt, tie, shoes. Offscreen, Smith is abidingly polite, with a wide smile that narrows his eyes to slits.
He lives in the West Village, though increasingly work keeps him away. He had flown in for the premiere and soon he would fly out again, to Alaska where he is shooting a film that he was forbidden to discuss. Smith (“Gotham,” “Carol,” “May December”) is suddenly so in demand that he had to miss Cannes, at which “Sentimental Value,” a movie in which he co-stars, was awarded the Grand Prix.
Before the plane, he wanted to hit up a few of the neighborhood pizza spots. This wasn’t hangover relief (Smith had stayed sober during the work event), but he’d been up late and pizza — as any New Yorker knows, even an Ohio transplant like Smith — is a restorative. “It’s our best food,” he said.
Smith grew up near Columbus and began acting in childhood, when a teacher told his parents that he should audition for amateur theater. Later he studied musical theater at Otterbein University, a nearby school that offered him a scholarship. A few times he considered changing his major. He was interested in psychology and philosophy; he thought he might go pre-law. But then he’d have an epiphany in class or in rehearsal. He stayed the course.
“I became addicted,” is how he put it.
This Friday’s pizza crawl started out at Joe’s, a neighborhood staple on Carmine Street. Smith blotted the slice with several napkins. “As long as my skin is part of the job, I blot,” he said. “Joe’s is particularly greasy.” Smith took a few bites, then gave up. “I want a pepperoni that when it feels the heat, it comes alive,” he said. This was not that. Smith went on to the next place, chatting about his early career on the way.
Right out of school, he was hired for a job in regional theater, which gave him his Equity card. But further jobs were few, so he spent several years working mostly as a nanny. (He and other actor friends formed a babysitters club.)
In 2013, after a few stage successes, he was hired to star in a Broadway production of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” The show was a disappointment, critically, commercially and personally, but Smith was on his way. He was cast in the Batman origin show “Gotham,” in the mini-series “Olive Kittredge” and in Todd Haynes’s “Carol.” His first feature, “Camp X-Ray,” opposite Kristen Stewart, was released in 2014.
Already, Smith, who has angular features that can skew handsome (as a smarmy Chevy Chase in the recent “Saturday Night”) or geeky (as the Riddler in “Gotham”), was developing a type: a weirdo, a sicko, a man who walks on the shady side of intense. Smith doesn’t know exactly where this comes from, but he has some good guesses. He grew up in a relatively strict Catholic household, which limited his self-expression.
“It was a very tight life, and I had a lot of expression inside of me,” he said. That gives him an edge when it comes to secretive characters, alienated characters, characters who don’t quite know how to behave.
He likes this. “There’s a larger menu of behavioral options, a Greek diner menu,” he said. “You can do whatever you want. It’s just fun.”
Smith had arrived at the second spot, Bleecker Street Pizza. The toppings were piled more heavily here and some of the slices square cut, which reminded him of the Midwestern pizzerias of his youth. “Everything here is decadent,” he said approvingly. The slice could have been saucier, but like Smith, it had plenty of personality. And it was notably less greasy.
“The crust has a stronger bite,” he said. After a few more nibbles, he was ready to head to L’Industrie, the see-and-be-seen pizzeria of the moment.
As always, there was a long line outside the Christopher Street location, and Smith’s fame has not yet reached the line-jumping level. (And even if it had, he is probably too polite and Midwestern to accept that.)
That may change, at least a bit, after “Mountainhead,” arguably Smith’s most prominent showcase to date. His Venis is the richest man in the world, an avatar of entitlement in a zip-up sweater who is happy enough to let the world burn as long as his stock price keeps climbing.
Is he a sociopath? Well, Smith is reluctant to diagnose anyone, though he did mention narcissism and the possibility of borderline personality disorder. Certainly, Venis is one more character who doesn’t know how to behave. Venis rolls a melon down a bowling lane. He fights a pine tree. (“I lost,” Smith confirmed.) Venis says things like, “I just want to get us transhuman!”
Smith enjoyed the arrogance, the hubris, though the shoot, he will admit, was exhausting. Still, the cast was unimprovable. (His colleagues were “wild and generous, kind and lovely,” he said.) And though Armstrong was a first-time director, Smith felt that he was in excellent, occasionally profane hands. “It just was actually the dreamiest experience,” he said.
The line had finally advanced. Smith had to leave for his flight soon, but he put in an order for a third pepperoni slice. While he waited, he speculated about what he might like to do next.
“I haven’t played a lot of romantic leads,” he said. “I’d like to welcome some love into my life. Into my personal life and my professional life.”
Then he posed for a selfie with a “Gotham” fan who was also from Ohio. Smith checked the time on his phone and checked again. He had to get back to Alaska, without his slice.
“It’s a wonderful problem,” he said as he left.
Alexis Soloski has written for The Times since 2006. As a culture reporter, she covers television, theater, movies, podcasts and new media.
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