Joshua Malina talks fast and makes it sound like thinking rather than reciting. It has kept him in work for thirty years, nearly always in the middle of someone else's ensemble, and the shows that use him best let the talk run.
Fi1m perspective
Watch the control room in Sports Night (1998). Jeremy Goodwin arrives in the pilot as a nervous new researcher, and Malina does not play the nerves; he plays the talking. The sentences come out whole, quick and over-informed, and you learn how frightened Jeremy is from how much he says rather than from how he says it. That is the Malina method and it has not changed in thirty years. He came up through Aaron Sorkin's A Few Good Men, first on Broadway and then as Tom in the 1992 film, and Sorkin has used him five times, because few actors can make his dialogue sound like a person who thinks fast rather than a person who has learned a paragraph.
Sports Night (1998–2000) was his first regular part and it is still the best place to start. We were fonder of Jeremy than the pilot seemed to expect, because Malina lets the character's knowledge be both the thing he is proud of and the thing he hides behind, and that is a real person, not a type. In 2002 he joined The West Wing as Will Bailey, recurring at first and then a regular until 2006. Coming into a settled ensemble three years in is thankless work. He did it by doing what he had always done, talking quickly and not asking to be liked, and he fitted so cleanly that he is easy to miss, which is either a compliment or the whole problem.
The later career sorts itself into two kinds of part. The early ones were neurotic and comic; the later ones are lawyers, executives and officials, played straight. David Rosen in Shonda Rhimes's Scandal (2012–2018) is a Sorkin performance moved into another writer's rhythm, and it takes without much scarring. President Siebert in The Big Bang Theory (2011–2019) is the authority-figure version, a man who runs a building and is slightly tired of the people in it. The persistent complaint is that he is typecast, a supporting player in other people's shows who has rarely been offered the lead. It is a fair description. Whether it is a criticism depends on whether you think a lead is what he is for.
He has said, "I’m one of those actors who feel like the words are the stars, and if I can just stay out of the way of this incredible writing then it will make me look better and I’ll have done my job." The stage has lately taken him at his word: Hermann Merz in Tom Stoppard's Leopoldstadt on Broadway in 2023, then London in 2024 for What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. We have not seen either and will not judge them. A career built on serving the writer works when the writers are Sorkin and Stoppard. Start with the control room, and notice how rarely he stops to breathe.
Biography
Joshua Malina is an American actor. He was born in New York City on 17 January 1966 and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in theatre.
Malina made his professional stage debut in the Broadway production of A Few Good Men. He later appeared in the film adaptation and in Aaron Sorkin’s television series Sports Night as Jeremy Goodwin. He joined the cast of The West Wing in its fourth season as Will Bailey.
His other television roles include David Rosen in Scandal and President Siebert in The Big Bang Theory. He has also appeared in Shameless and various stage productions, including the Broadway cast of Leopoldstadt.
