Ireland has a rich history of artistic greats, many of whom lived tragic lives and suffered painful deaths. Domhnall Gleeson, the Dubliner who plays lead protagonist Ned Sampson on The Paper<\/a><\/em>\u2014a mockumentary-style sitcom from The Office<\/a><\/em> creators Greg Daniels and Michael Koman about the travails of a downsized local print publication\u2014seems to have avoided this fate. He might have easily succumbed to any number of ways the lives of gifted children with famous parents can go awry\u2014his dad is the Oscar-nominated actor Brendan Gleeson\u2014but here, too, Gleeson has managed to escape virtually all of them.<\/p>\n Gleeson and I met in New York in the early fall, when he was in town making promotional rounds for The Paper<\/a><\/em>. The show was due to stream in its entirety on Peacock on September 4, followed by a November 10 broadcast premiere on NBC. He had slept for only an hour the night before\u2014owing to the nonstop bender that is a press junket\u2014and just finished crying. During a photoshoot, he\u2019d watched clips of his work with Bill Nighy from their movie About Time<\/a><\/em>. Gleeson is not usually a crier, he says, but he \u201creally, really loves Bill,\u201d and their closing scene together packed a punch. The paternal bond, a significant feature of Gleeson\u2019s real life, is also transmuted into his work on The Paper<\/em>. Ned spends an episode in dawning realization of how a thready relationship with his own father is affecting him in the workplace. \u201cI love you,\u201d he tells an older male boss, in front of the entire staff. It is ripe material for his colleagues to rib him, and for viewers to want to give him a hug. <\/p>\n In person, Ned\u2019s clean-cut lines had faded slightly. Gleeson\u2019s hair was longer, and curled, and he had the early makings of a beard. He has alabaster skin and burnt-sienna eyebrows, but when he\u2019s performing his appearance is almost fluid, absorbing the contours of his characters\u2019 expressions so thoroughly that he sometimes appears reconfigured.<\/p>\n Jacket, shirt, tie, and jeans, Givenchy by Sarah Burton.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n Throughout his career, Gleeson\u2019s performances have received critical praise\u2014even as he has somehow remained critically underrated. His comedic chops are on full display on The Paper<\/em>, but he is not generally considered to be a comedic actor. He has appeared in billion-dollar franchises (Harry Potter<\/em>, Star Wars<\/a><\/em>) and under-sung indie gems (Frank<\/em>, Shadow Dancer<\/em>). In the early 2010s, he went on a twisted tear of performances as characters grappling with the knotty implications of artificial intelligence. Several were the product of working with the British screenwriter and director Alex Garland, whose style has always been genre bending. Their oeuvre was a crucible, melding horror and science fiction and the study of consciousness into singular viewing experiences: Never Let Me Go<\/em>, Dredd<\/em>, and Ex Machina<\/em>.<\/p>\n At the 88th Academy Awards ceremony, in 2016, four of the films Gleeson appeared in the previous year received various nominations, including Ex<\/em> Machina<\/em>, along with Brooklyn<\/em>, The Revenant<\/em>, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens<\/em>. Gleeson is a rarity: an actor\u2019s actor and an unconventional leading man who has thrived with both his sanity and reputation intact, one whose talents are plentiful but whose persona has never occupied the larger cultural space those talents might warrant. Gleeson also has the kind of disposition to suggest none of that would be the stuff to keep him up at night.<\/p>\n Jacket, shirt, tie, and trousers, Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n In theatric fashion, Gleeson has an uncanny ability to shape-shift: to disappear into whomever he\u2019s playing. Onscreen, he\u2019s inhabited the pathologies and charms of predators and magnates, the wickedness of cannibals and killers. He melts into characters and then simply reemerges in full\u2014unpretentious, kindhearted, just a normal dude from Dublin, one who doesn\u2019t own a yacht or post thirst traps to Instagram, one who has worked assiduously to shovel out an artistic path, to handle both work and life with earthbound care. His process has always been the thing. \u201cIt\u2019s your job to give it your all,\u201d he told me. \u201cYou know what I mean? You have to care about what you do.\u201d<\/p>\n Friends and colleagues of Gleeson describe his approach to acting as \u201cimmersive,\u201d which in Hollywood can occasionally function as a euphemism for \u201cannoying.\u201d Not so, in Gleeson\u2019s case.<\/p>\n He approached the role of Ned with forensic enthusiasm. His costar, actress Chelsea Frei, who plays the Toledo Truth Teller<\/em>\u2019s compositor (and soon-to-be volunteer shoe-leather reporter) Mare, recounts a group exercise with the writers to talk through sample story ideas their characters might have pitched in an actual editorial meeting.<\/p>\n
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