Leave it to Amy Poehler to ask a hard-hitting question in the funniest of ways. The “Good Hang” host welcomed Andrew Garfield on Tuesday’s episode of the podcast and had the “Amazing Spider-Man” actor answer once and for all whether he considers himself a method actor — but not before he sheepishly tried to dodge the question.
“Do you consider yourself a method actor?” Poehler asked. “So the method…” Garfield answered before she cut him off. “And if so, who am I speaking to?” the host quipped back before pressing on. “Because you do go pretty deep in.”
“You do you got that trickster look in your eye,” the “Uprising actor responded coyly. “You’re looking for the clickbait head. You’re like, ‘Is he going to give me the juice?’”
But Poehler wasn’t deterred and called the actor on some of the training tools he studied during past performances saying, “Babe, you lost all this weight. You studied for a year being a monk! You you go for it. Are you method?!”
At that Garfield responded mimicking her: “Are you method? Answer the question. Are you method? It’s a yes or no question.” “I mean, are you though?” she pressed on through fits of laughter.
Finally, after telling the “SNL” alum “don’t try and get cute with it,” he relented.
“Um, in a way, yes. But I think I think the term has been massively mischaracterized, misunderstood, and co-opted by people that don’t know. A method is basically having a method,” he said. “So I feel like yes, but I think there’s a way of doing it that’s generous. I think there’s a way of accessing that work and that style of working that doesn’t f–k with the rest of the cast. That doesn’t f–k with the rest of the crew that you don’t have to lose a bunch of weight.”
“That’s playful,” Poehler added.
Garfield’s comments echo a point he made several years ago when discussing method acting with Marc Maron. In a 2022 appearance on the “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast, Garfield pushed back on the idea that method acting gives performers an excuse to behave badly on set.
“It’s not about being an a–hole to everyone on set. It’s actually just about living truthfully under imagined circumstances, and being really nice to the crew simultaneously, and being a normal human being, and being able to drop it when you need to, and staying in it when you want to stay in it,” he said at the time.
Method acting came out of the Actors’ Studio in the 1950s, with stars like Marlon Brando burning up stages and screens with the technique. Decades later, several actors still practice it, most notably Daniel Day-Lewis, who learned how to track and skin animals to prepare for “The Last of the Mohicans,” while, more recently, Lady Gaga said she had psychological issues after staying in character for her role as a murderous Italian wife for the entire shoot of “House of Gucci.”
Garfield’s latest film, “The Uprising,” is written and directed Paul Greengrass and stars Garfield as a peasant who becomes a leader of a rebellion against King Richard II during the 1381 English uprising. Jamie Bell, Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander, Cosmo Jarvis, Thomasin McKenzie, Jonny Lee Miller, Woody Norman and Katherine Waterston also star.
You can watch Garfield’s full “Good Hang” episode in the video above.
The post Amy Poehler Hilariously Presses Andrew Garfield on Whether He’s Actually a Method Actor: ‘I Mean, Are You Though?’ appeared first on TheWrap.
