The basic distinction would be that Nucky would get the label of being corrupt before the label of being a thug/gangster.
Now if yall don't think Buscemi is capable of pulling that off, I'd disagree. Maybe yall too use to his supporting and bit roles where at most he's the stranger called in to do something, or odd right hand man, loser struggling to his goal, etc. To me he's pulling this off really good given what the actual Nucky Johnson looks like. He's completely warping the character and made it in to something of his own
Wait, but all you did was describe the role, not the actor.
I mean first off...whoever says he's doing a bad job is ridiculous.
Dude is a very nuanced, particular actor. Some people overdo it and think 'miscast' means 'bad.' It doesn't. Bad is if they would've casted David Caruso or something. :x But Buscemi
is a character actor trying to play a straight lead role. His affect, his demeanor, his presence. He's the type of actor that builds something quietly on their own. Something strange and subtly jarring. Then slides in for a time, captures all the attention as you try and understand what it is you're looking at, then leaves. He's the perfect character actor.
In this role Buscemi just isn't
that guy to me, though. If this was a movie, I'd think he was a really interesting and clever departure from expectations, but it isn't. It's not even TV, it's HBO. There's a history there. Not a formula, but an understanding of what it takes. He's not that type of actor. They've pushed the role some to accommodate him and a decent amount of the time it works fine. (especially the scenes with him and Ms. Schroder) But it doesn't change that fact.
I mean obviously with the writers have looked at what they've got and over time tried to tailor their writing and characters to what they're actors are doing, but you can see it from the beginning with Nucky. They keep asking Buscemi to be something he's not. There'll be scenes of tension, scenes of power, where real presence is needed. They'll set him up to leave a stamp on the episode on all the other characters. They'll ask for bravado and intimidation...power...they'll ask him to rip all of the air out of the room, and more times than not, for me, it'll just be alright. It'll just be actors acting out their roles. You'll watch everyone around act as if they've been floored or that he's risen to the occasion and stolen the moment perfectly, but
you know he didn't. That's when you wonder what someone different could've done in the role. It's when you realize that he's not necessarily the end all be all of the show, because of that.
HBO's got a long history of these kind of anti-heroes, and Buscemi doesn't elevate Nucky to that level to me. This show tries to build him up like a Tony Soprano or Al Swearengen. You can even look to the HBO-esque shows with Walter White and Don Draper and Vic Mackey and Dexter. But he's not that. He is not. And he's done a good job, but he's playing this left handed. And before you call that a "type," look at the roles those actors played before and since. When have they been leading men again after that?
I remember an interview with Tom Hiddleston where talked about how he had tried out for the role of Thor and just lost out to Chris Hemsworth. But they liked him so much that they gave him the role of Loki. I can imagine that he would've bulked up and dyed his hair if he woulda gotten the role. But think about that. Now I think Tom Hiddleston's a better actor than Chris Hemsworth. Loki's more nuanced and layered. It's a more interesting acting performance. But I get it. You could put Hiddleston in the Thor role all you want, but he doesn't have that quality. And it's not a looks thing, plenty of wooden actors try and fail to get over with that. But Hemsworth has a leading man quality that Hiddleston doesn't and it makes the role. It's magnetic. It's a certain presence. Of course Steve Buscemi can play the role of Nucky, but there's a quality that he as an actor just doesn't have. He brings a higher level of acting to TV than most actors can, but in this role..
And, for me, since he can't be that, this has emotionally turned into an ensemble show in response. Sopranos, Deadwood, The Shield, Big Love...all those shows have a lot of characters, but at their heart, they begin and end with one person. But when you can't exactly rely on your marquee actor to hold the dramatic weight of the narrative, it pushes it in that direction. That's why the strongest the show has been, for me, is when it devotes equal parts to other people. Whether that's Chalky or Darmody or Michael Shannon. It's why so many of the show's fans
were lowkey hoping that Michael Pitt would take over. This is a show that could've honestly killed off Nucky in say the third season and had Darmody take his place and people would've accepted that after a few episodes.
I'm not saying he isn't up to doing this role. He is. It's just he has a different set of things he brings to his roles. And this is a longform HBO series. It's not just asking that he be good and believable and nuanced. It's asking that he be the best and strongest actor on the show most of the time, and for him to dominate a scene on command. He's supposed to be the measuring stick. He's the proof for when a new big bad shows up, that that guy is about it.
You don't need to be loud to do that. You don't need to be physically bigger than everyone else. It just has to be honest and impactful. Buscemi is so amazingly set up to do that in this show, but for me...most of the time, it doesn't rise above and lands kinda flat. And parts of the show just ring false to me, because of it. It feels more like a show just methodically going through the motions, when it talks a bigger game than we're seeing. And it's because that center...that core...that reason for being is just...not all it's built up to be. When the show plays to his strengths, it's great, but those strengths aren't what the meat of the show needs from him.
And before you get on him being casted, because he looks like Nucky, didn't someone post that the real Nucky was over 6'+ and 220+?
And how in the hell did he win an Emmy up against Heisenberg? or am I just misremembering things.
