Jake Lacy is good at playing men who cannot see how badly they are behaving. His unshowy manner makes their entitlement harder to dismiss, though we would not want his move beyond supportive boyfriends to settle into another routine.
Fi1m perspective
In All Her Fault (2025), Jake Lacy’s Peter Irvine corrects his wife in front of the detectives investigating their missing child. We found him hard to watch because he keeps treating the crisis as an affront to himself. Lacy makes this behaviour seem ordinary to Peter, which is what makes the performance so unpleasant in the right way. He does not need to make the man conspicuously monstrous; taking charge of the wrong things is enough. It is strong acting in a series whose plotting becomes weaker the longer it runs.
His early casting made different use of that unshowy manner. Pete Miller in the final season of The Office (2012–2013) brought him wider recognition; roles opposite Jenny Slate in Obvious Child (2014) and as Richard Semco in Carol (2015) followed. Those early roles frequently made him a supportive boyfriend or a foil for the female protagonist. That is a useful job, though it can leave little for an actor to decide. We would not want to lose the gentler performer just because the unpleasant men give him more to do.
The White Lotus (2021), with Lacy as the entitled newlywed Shane Patton, made the change of direction plain. The darker lead role of Robert Berchtold in A Friend of the Family (2022) took him further from the reliable love interest. His understated manner is useful in such parts: the character need not look exceptional to cause trouble. The risk is repetition. We want him to have more to do than demonstrate, once again, that an apparently reasonable man can behave appallingly.
That reservation does not diminish what he does opposite Sarah Snook in All Her Fault. Her frightened, level-voiced mother gives Peter’s corrections a painful context: she has enough to contend with before he starts asserting himself. Their performances sustain interest when the series begins asking us to accept too many coincidences. His film work continues with a literary-agent role in Late Fame (2026), a gentle drama whose main pleasure is Willem Dafoe as a rediscovered poet. Try All Her Fault for Lacy, but do not expect the mystery to be as convincing as the man making it about himself.
Biography
Jake Lacy is an American actor. He was born on 14 February 1986 in Greenfield, Massachusetts, and grew up in Vermont. He graduated from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in 2008.
Lacy's early television work included the lead role of Casey Marion Davenport in the ABC sitcom Better with You (2010–2011). He gained wider recognition playing Pete Miller in the ninth and final season of The Office (2012–2013). Film roles followed, including Richard Semco in Carol (2015).
He received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for his performance as Shane Patton in the first season of The White Lotus (2021). Lacy played Peter Irvine in the 2025 Peacock miniseries All Her Fault.
