Michael Shannon has one of the most recognizable frowns in America. He’s sneered at Leonardo DiCaprio as an American dream skeptic in Revolutionary Road. He’s grimaced as pious maniac Prohibition Agent Nelson Van Alden on Boardwalk Empire. He’s menaced a mute woman and her amphibious love interest as Colonel Richard Strickland in The Shape of Water. And on Wednesdays at 10pm on the brand-new Paramount Network, you can watch Shannon make a kinder face of unhappiness, as doomed hostage negotiator Gary Noesner. In the six-part miniseries Waco, Shannon’s character is tasked with talking down law enforcement so they’ll let him talk down Branch Davidian leader David Koresh (a never-been-better Taylor Kitsch). It ends in disaster. GQ talked to Shannon about the impossible task of negotiating with a doomsday prophet, Harvey Weinstein, and the time he yelled at Ethan Coen.
GQ: Taylor Kitsch told me you never once looked at your script during the entire production of Waco. You knew every line.
Michael Shannon: Well, that’s the least you can do.
I think Kitsch talked more as Koresh than he has in everything else he’s done combined.
As far as I could tell, he took the whole damn thing very seriously. He would seclude himself in this little compound he had—it seemed like all he did was study his script and come to work. The other guys would stay in hotels in Santa Fe and have dinner at night and shoot the shit. But he always went back to his place in the mountains.
[Ambient noise that sounds like it’s being made by children.]
Jesus Christ. Yeah, I am on the telephone, people! Yeah. Okay. I’ll go in the other room.
Who all was at the dinners?
Me and Shea Whigham and Paul Sparks, who’s one of my best friends, usually had dinner a couple times a week. And Gary [Noesner, the hostage negotiator played by Shannon on Waco], honestly. Gary was there a lot. We all got pretty close to him.
Gary was on set as an adviser?
Yeah. It was very helpful to have Gary around. And for Taylor, I’m sure it was helpful to have [Branch Davidian acolyte] David Thibodeau around.
Apparently Thibodeau saw Taylor in character performing with the band and freaked out. Like, “Oh, my God. Koresh is back.”
Well, Thibodeau was the drummer in that band, so that had to be crazy. I know the scene you’re talking about because I shot a scene that same day with me and Shea Whigham. I remember driving up to the bar and seeing Taylor—it was the first time I had seen him in costume all done up. He was finished with work and just walking down the side of the road.
That sounds…spooky.
I was like, “Holy moly. He looks just like him.”
It was interesting to see you play someone who’s so, like, pure of motive.
It was funny—I actually got mad at Ethan Coen. I was on an airplane and Ethan was sitting behind me. He said, “What are you doing here?” And I said, “I’m shooting Waco.” And he’s like, “And playing Koresh?” I’m like, “Damn! Why does everybody always ask me if I’m playing Koresh?” I forgot for a second I was talking to Ethan Coen. I really kind of regretted it afterwards. I should have stifled my irritation.
Do you remember the Waco siege happening in real life?
I didn’t get super intrigued by it, to be honest—it was just kind of this upsetting thing that was happening in the background. But they didn’t really tell you much about it on the news. Certainly not the amount of detail that you’ll see in our project.
I’m sure the F.B.I. didn’t want people to know what was going on.
Well, there was a lot of complexities to it. I mean, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is as culpable as anybody in the whole scenario. The F.B.I. went in and tried to clean up their mess.
But Gary was always finding himself in situations that were kind of impossible. It’s pretty rare that somebody’s able to be effective at [hostage negotiation]. It takes a huge amount of empathy, and cunning, and compassion, and resiliency, and patience. All five of those things are in pretty short supply nowadays.
It’s kind of crazy to have a hostage negotiator going against a doomsday sect leader. One guy who convinced people it was the end of the world and the other trying to convince him not to end it.
Exactly. At the end of the day, people can say what they want, but I don’t think anybody really wants to die or get set on fire. I think part of Koresh really probably wanted to get out of there alive, and Gary knew that was in there somewhere.
Waco is launching the Paramount Network. Do you care about stuff like that?
Yes. I hope to launch several networks before I die. Look what it did for Rupert Murdoch.
The Chinese are throwing him off of boats now.
Oh, yeah?
No.
[The Paramount Network] is kind of a weird thing. I hope people catch on. I mean it’s hard to explain to people. They’re like, “So what is Waco on?” I’m like, “Okay, so you know Spike TV?”
“Kinda.”
“Well, it’s not gonna be Spike TV anymore. Now it’s gonna be Paramount TV.”
And then they just look at you like, “Oh.”
Did you ever watch Spike TV?
Not really. But I don’t watch TV at all.
You never saw Boardwalk Empire?
Uh, I watched a little bit of Boardwalk. They sent me a bunch of DVDs, but they just kind of sit around the house. I give ‘em away. They’re good presents.
Jeremy Piven famously tipped a waitress with a signed Entourage DVD. Maybe you can steal that move.
Oh my God. They don’t want that. Isn’t [Piven] in trouble now? Isn’t he on the shit list?
Everyone’s on the shit list, Michael.
I’m not on the shit list. My conscience is clean. But there’s a lot of people on the shit list.
Have you started any projects since all this stuff started coming out?
You know, [Waco] was a Harvey [Weinstein] project. And I had a movie I made for Harvey that’s basically disappeared off the face of the earth.
Which one?
The Current War.
Oh, yeah!
They showed it in Toronto and then shortly after that the allegations about Harvey came out. The movie was supposed to be out by now. It’s a shame, because it’s really good.
Great cast. Benedict Cumberbatch, Nicholas Hoult…
I think somebody will buy it eventually. And distribute it. But the Waco thing, they held it together ‘cause Paramount’s like, “No, we didn’t put all this money into this shit to see it go up in flames.” So they just took over the whole thing.
Apparently the Weinstein Company’s still profiting from it, they just took their name off of everything.
They’re gonna rename, and rebrand, and re-staff [the company]. Somebody’ll buy it.
“The Not-Harvey Company”?
I guess so.