The actor opens up about getting closure with ‚No Way Home‘ and why he’s drawn to spiritually conflicted characters.
Andrew Garfield has never seemed concerned with being famous. He is, of course. You can’t put on a superhero suit as iconic as the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man’s (or date Emma Stone) without becoming a pop culture icon. But fame always felt like a side-effect of his career choices, not the underlying cause. He’s been happy to spend a year meditating in prayer for a role in a Martin Scorsese passion project or banging out a Los Angeles-set indie with Gia Coppola while his peers angle for big-budget franchise fare and multi-movie streaming deals. This is what makes his recent slate of work so interesting. From a comically tight-lipped cameo in Spider-Man: No Way Home to his biopic with Jessica Chastain to his Oscar-nominated turn as Jonathan Larson in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tick Tick… BOOM!, Andrew Garfield is everywhere right now. And honestly, it seems exhausting. He’s just finished up a grueling awards season run when I grab some time with him for his latest project, FX’s gritty true-crime series Under The Banner of Heaven. The show, inspired by a bestseller from Jon Krakauer, recounts the events that led to the 1984 murder of Brenda Lafferty and her newborn baby, killings that shocked the close-knit Mormon community she belonged to. Created by Dustin Lance Black, the series follows a Mormon detective named Jeb Pyre (Garfield) who begins to question his faith after learning about the murder’s insidious ties to fundamentalism and the beginnings of the LDS church as he hunts one of its most prominent families. The show see-saws between the past – the creation of Mormonism in the 1800s – and the present, weaving timelines together to tell a cautionary tale about the dark side of religious zealotry. It’s the kind of prestige drama that will likely net Garfield (who’s terrific in it, by the way) an Emmy nod, which means he’ll be doing more of this in just a few months’ time. Like I said, exhausting. Uproxx chatted with Garfield about his fascination with spiritually conflicted characters on screen, why asking tough questions is important, and if he finally got closure with his surprise Spider-Man role. You’ve been doing a lot of press lately. How are you holding up? No comment. No, I’m very happy because I get to talk about things that I care about. All these projects, from Tick, Tick… BOOM! through to Spider-Man to Under the Banner of Heaven, I really believe in these stories as healing vessels.
