It’s been a good year for Christopher Abbott.
In February, he was nominated for his first Tony Award for playing Biff Loman in the revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of Salesman. In late July, he welcomed his first child, a daughter, with partner and fellow
actor Aubrey Plaza. Weeks later, Marvel announced one of its most closely guarded secrets yet: Abbott will take on the famous role of Charles Xavier (Professor X) in the highly anticipated X-Men reboot due in 2028. And most recently, audiences got to see him tackle Adam Trask the Netflix miniseries East of Eden, Zoe Kazan’s eight-episode adaptation of the classic John Steinbeck novel about original sin, generational trauma, and forgiveness. One on its own would be a feat. Together, they represent a banner 10 months — and there’s more excitement to come. Abbott stopped by the Rolling Stone Studio to discuss it all.
“It’s not lost on me that being able to do these sort of American canon projects, one on TV and one in theater, I’m lucky,” he says. “It’s pretty cool. They’re both classics. And I like that feeling.”
Steinbeck’s sprawling family epic sees Adam marry the dark and emotionally manipulative Cathy Ames, played in a tour-de-force performance by Florence Pugh in the new series. Abbott calls the English phenom a “joy” to work with.
“My litmus test for any actor is, ‘Are they there in the room with you?’ I love when actors are just present, when [they] want to play tennis and really be in the room with you,” Abbott says. “Florence does that to the nth degree.”
Abbott digs deep into the process of making the drama over a long shoot in New Zealand — including how he tuned in to Knicks games on his lunch breaks to lighten the mood from the heavy material they were filming. And luckily, he says he won’t be taking any lessons about fatherhood from its story of family cycles of violence, rage, and betrayal.
“I think East of Eden is a little too dramatic and biblical and crazy for me. I’m not drawing from the show for this part of my life,” he says with a laugh. “[Fatherhood], it’s still quite new. Sleeping is a thing that I was never really good at anyway, so I’m par for the course at this point. I don’t like to talk too much about personal family stuff, but it’s just amazing. It’s like the best movie ever.”
Abbott also goes retrospective in the interview, talking about his early days sneaking into theater auditions, his time on the hit series Girls, and how he’s thinking about career and his place in Hollywood following his 40th birthday earlier this year. “I don’t feel like I’m particularly famous now,” he says. “My life is pretty simple. I just sort of walk around and do errands. I don’t know what’s going on out there.”
But there’s one thing he’s explicit about: He is not in any immediately upcoming Marvel movies, although he’s incredibly excited to play Professor X. “I’m not in [Doomsday]. I’ve got to do the X-Men movie first before any of that stuff,” he says, smiling. “No coyness.”
You can watch the full Rolling Stone Studio interview with Christopher Abbott at Rolling Stone’s official YouTube channel — or hit the play button above.
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