Bobby Cannavale on Taking the Lead, Disappointing Scorsese, and Asking Pacino for a Favor

Bobby Cannavale still sounds a little traumatized from 2016. He’d spent years developing HBO’s Vinyl with none other than Martin Scorsese, starring in the drama as a coked-out record executive circa 1973. Cannavale himself earned great reviews, and the show was well-received by critics overall. But it was treated as DOA by the network, poorly rated, and ultimately did not return for a second season. “All these things seemed to conspire against us,” the New Jersey native says now. “I was shocked, frankly, by the reaction to it. I did feel like we’d created something special. When something that has that much profile fails like that, I couldn’t help but feel like I let Marty down.”

It’s an unfamiliar feeling for Cannavale. The veteran actor has built an impressive list of credits on stage and screen, between Tony-nominated breakouts in Mauritius and The Motherfucker with the Hat and his explosive guest turns on everything from Will & Grace to Boardwalk Empire, both of which earned him Emmy awards. Nowadays, he’s mostly settled back into his character-actor sweet spot; he has a juicy supporting part, for instance, as Jennifer Lopez’s abusive partner in the upcoming sports drama Unstoppable.

But this year also marked Cannavale’s first-ever lead role in a movie: Ezra, a throwback indie helmed by Tony Goldwyn and co-starring Robert De Niro, Whoopi Goldberg, and Cannavale’s partner Rose Byrne. (It was released back in May and is now available on VOD.) As a struggling stand-up comedian raising an autistic son (played by newcomer William Fitzgerald), Cannavale shines in the kind of sensitive, emotional part he doesn’t often play. As with Vinyl, he spent years helping develop the project, and now feels passionately about keeping it in the conversation—giving us the chance to look both backward and forward at a career that keeps getting more interesting.

Vanity Fair: Ezra came out back in the spring. You’ve been bringing it back into the conversation recently, among noisier titles. What has that been like?

Bobby Cannavale: This is the first time I’ve been a lead in a movie. I’m peaking late. And I’ve never produced a film before. I don’t really keep my ear that close to the ground on business things, just because I’m just too busy with my family and my little kids. So on this one, I’ve been more attuned to that kind of thing. I really intimately understand the challenges facing a small movie anyway; I’ve been in a lot of independent films.

It is an uphill battle. I have this other movie, Unstoppable, that’s out at the same time, and I could really see it as a comp. Those guys are out every night just trying to sell this movie. They’re all over the place. Every night Jennifer [Lopez] is out there with Jharrel [Jerome] telling people about Unstoppable, and I get one night [for Ezra]. We’re really a little engine that could. I’m getting a real inside look at what it takes to push a tiny movie like this up the hill, and it’s really hard, man. I got Al Pacino to host a screening at CAA so that they’ll come, which he did last night, which was really nice. He and Sherry Lansing.