Billy Magnussen is used to playing a beefcake. His first big job was on the soap opera As the World Turns. In Into the Woods, his version of Rapunzel’s Prince wore leather pants even when riding a horse. He served as the resident hunk among the ensembles in Game Night and The Big Short. These castings, flattering as they might be, haven’t always reflected the man himself, a classically trained actor who has a Tony nomination (for 2013’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike).
But in his latest role, Magnussen, 39, finally has found something a little more relatable, one that simultaneously fuels his character’s ego and leaves him plagued by self-doubt.
The satirical series The Franchise centers around the ill-fated production of a fictional superhero film whose big-budget snafus (an emergency pro-feminism rewrite, disputes over which actors get the biggest superpowers) poke fun at Hollywood’s IP obsession. Magnussen’s himbo Andy is the lead in Tecto, a position that makes the character simultaneously egotistical and consumed with self-doubt — he went to Yale Drama, and now he’s manning an invisible jackhammer? — leading to foibles like taking so much HGH that he believes he’s turning into a sheep.
“This fucking guy,” Magnussen says, laughing. “From the moment I read the audition sides, I knew exactly what he was about. He has this whole thing about being on the cusp. He wants to get his big break. I was like that for so long. It was the only priority in my life.”
Magnussen describes his two-decade-long career leading to The Franchise as a steady climb punctuated by minor reckonings, the first of which came early, when he was offered a job on a promising mid-2000s TV series but had to turn it down because of his contract on Turns. He watched the show — which he declines to name out of respect for the actor eventually cast — become a cultural phenomenon. “That was supposed to be my big break, but I did learn to be grateful for the experience I was having,” he says. He spent his 20s doing indie films and TV guest spots, often pining for what he didn’t have. “I kept saying, ‘Once my career starts,’ and now when I look back it’s like, ‘No, I had a career.’ ”
His 30s were marked by roles in studio tentpoles (Aladdin, No Time to Die) whose productions mimicked the scale of the HBO faux film and, at long last, paid the bills. He took pride in the success and his ability to share it with his family — an early splurge was buying his parents a house. But the period also brought a growing distaste for Hollywood, which eventually became too strong to ignore.
“This world is not real,” he says between sips of whiskey at a West Hollywood hotel bar on the day of Franchise’s red carpet premiere. “It’s a facade most of the time, and I was asking myself, ‘Why am I living in a place where I feel a little bit of my soul is sucked out of me?’ ”
He decamped for the greener pastures of his Georgia hometown, as well as Austin, where he lives near fellow L.A. escapee Glen Powell (wherever you go, there you are, etc.).
Now, he says he’s the happiest he’s ever been, but that doesn’t mean he’s solved the problem of Hollywood. “The thing I’m having to confront with The Franchise is insecurity,” he explains. “It lives within every actor. You’re always alone in this job — traveling, showing up to the first day of school. You have to worry constantly about whether you’re going to be accepted. Watching the show back, I’m like, ‘Oh, OK, I see things that I’ve hidden deep in myself.’ ”
Magnussen also admits that he’s spent years “chasing a superhero cape,” much like his onscreen counterpart. He got very close a few times (“It was down to me and someone else”), but for now, a Marvel gig remains elusive. He’s clear-eyed about the not-great things that come with a job like that — Franchise dedicates itself to those particular embarrassments, after all — but also about the benefits. “A lot of your value in this industry isn’t based on the craft of acting, but your popularity,” he says. He runs a production company, Happy Bad Bungalow (the irreverent 2023 class war comedy Coup!, starring Magnussen and Peter Sarsgaard, was the banner’s first release), which trades on that star power. “I have my little ladder that I’ve climbed up, that gets me access to rooms more and more, and I want to be able to bring other people with me.”
Here at the lobby bar, Magnussen is taking his last dregs of whiskey before meeting his glam team before the premiere. Afterward, he won’t be able to return to Georgia, or to Texas, because he’s due back in New York for rehearsals of his off-Broadway play SHIT. MEET. MAN. It’s a chaotic period for someone trying to unlearn the grind. “I’ve been thinking a lot about how when you’re trying to make it in L.A., you’re one in 50,000, and you can be going after it for years — then one thing pops and all of a sudden, you’re a fucking movie star,” he says before stopping to laugh. “I don’t even know the point I’m trying to make with this, besides that this is all so weird.” It may be weird, but it’s working.
This story appeared in the Oct. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
English (US) ·