Jake Lacy (The Office, I’m Dying Up Here), the actor for Troy Delany in Peacock’s Apples Never Fall, discussed his acting career on Vareity’s Awards Circuit Podcast. Lacy’s most well-known role is perhaps as Pete Miller in the final season of The Office.
According to Variety, Lacy stressed how his unique position in the industry prevents him from being typecast. “I’ve never been a star,” he said. “Most people don’t know who I am or recognize me… Now it feels like there’s a little wider scope there as to what people will see me for or think of me as.”
Variety reports that Lacy considers his character Troy to lie in an uneasy position between good and bad. “In his worst moments, he sees himself maybe worse than he is and has higher expectations for himself than what he’s living up to,” Lacy says. “I think [he] maybe doesn’t have a great barometer for what is it what it is to just be human, what it is to be flawed and trying to be better.”
Along with Apples Never Fall, Lacy starred as Lieutenant Maryk in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial. According to Variety, working with the now-late William Friedkin (Sorcerer, The Exorcist) on this second project greatly impacted Lacy, describing his first meeting with the cast at Friedkin’s house. “Everybody’s got their pencils and their script and everybody’s a good little student,” he said. “[Friedkin was] like, ‘Well, we’re not going to read it, that’s for sure.’ Everybody kind of cracks up and he’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re not going to read it, we’re not going to rehearse. I’ve doing this for 70 years and the thing in all that time that I have found to be the most important is spontaneity. I want to be able to film you hearing these things for the first time and saying them for the first time.’”
The full interview can be read here.