Jeremy Strong

Across a club table in Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice (2024), Jeremy Strong’s Roy Cohn explains how to win without raising his voice. His eyes are lidded and his body is still; he makes aggression sound like ordinary good manners. We laughed, then felt uneasy, because Strong made this man’s company so enjoyable. There is no need for him to signal the threat with a growl or a flourish. Abbasi gets a performance precise enough to make the scenes without Strong feel underpowered.

Before Kendall Roy, there were supporting parts in Lincoln (2012) and The Big Short (2015). Strong plays Vinny Daniel in Adam McKay’s angry financial comedy, which we recommend despite its distracting interruptions. Succession (2018–2023) then gave him a lead role built around ambition, pain and self-doubt. Kendall made his ability to expose a man’s neediness widely visible. Cohn’s composure is a useful reminder that he need not keep playing Kendall.

His reputation for immersive preparation can make the work sound more solemn than it is. Cohn’s flat delivery is funny because he treats appalling advice as perfectly reasonable, and Strong lets us hear that without nudging us. Our reservation about The Apprentice is with Abbasi’s film: once the lessons have been taught, it struggles to find anything further to do. His scenes remain worth watching, but he cannot give the second half a direction it lacks.

Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025) offers a welcome change. As Jon Landau, opposite Jeremy Allen White, Strong plays someone whose attention is largely on protecting his friend. Their conversations in cars and on the phone feel lived in, and make the film’s caution elsewhere more frustrating. The biopic remains too careful with its subject to recommend without reservations, even with Strong doing some of its most persuasive work. We would happily watch him do more of this, preferably in a film less anxious about offending its subject.