Justin Kirk plays men who are good company and not to be relied on, and lets you enjoy them a beat before you see the catch. Television uses him best beside someone else's lead; a series built around him did not last.
Fi1m perspective
Watch Andy Botwin arrive in Weeds (2005). He is the widow's brother-in-law, he has nowhere else to be, and he has decided before anyone has agreed that he is staying. Justin Kirk plays the sponging as a kind of good manners: he is quick, he is pleasant, he is good company, and he is going to eat your food. Our review said Andy took a few episodes to settle, and he does. By the end of the first season we had gone from wanting him out of the house to minding whenever the show cut away from him, and Kirk earns the change by making the sponging and the helping the same impulse, a man with nothing to do who would rather do it near people.
That is the Kirk part, and it took him a while to get it. He trained at Circle in the Square in New York and began on the stage, with a Broadway debut in Any Given Day (1993) and a stage role, Bobby Brahms, that he carried over to film in 1997. The breakthrough was Prior Walter in Angels in America (2003), and for years afterwards he was cast as the sweet one, the one to be worried over. He has said since that he is "finally getting to play closer to my real life as a horrible person", and the later parts bear him out.
Since Weeds ended in 2012 he has mostly been the recurring face in someone else's series: Modern Family, Kidding, Succession (2021–2023) as Jeryd Mencken, and Perry Mason (2020–2023) as Hamilton Burger, the district attorney. Burger shows what he can do with a small part. Our review found the series slow and about three episodes too long, and put Kirk's Burger and Eric Lange's Detective Holcomb together as the two faces of a city that would rather the case went away. Kirk's is the presentable face. He is not the villain; he is the man who would prefer not to have to know one.
What works is the charm with the catch in it, and the timing, which is a stage actor's: he listens, and the line arrives when the other actor has finished rather than when the scene expects it. Mary-Louise Parker, with whom he has worked twice, gets the best of him, because her widow will not laugh at Andy and so we have to. What has not worked is the network lead. Animal Practice (2012) did not last, and the work since has been guest, recurring and voice.
If you want the measure of him, start with Weeds and stop, as our review did, when the show changes shape after its third season. Then go to Perry Mason and watch what the same manners look like on a man whose job is to make a case go away.
Biography
Justin Kirk is an American actor. Born in Salem, Oregon, he trained at the Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York after earlier studies at the Children's Theatre Company in Minneapolis. He made his Broadway debut in Any Given Day and appeared in the stage and film versions of Love! Valour! Compassion!, winning an Obie Award for the ensemble.
Kirk is best known for playing Prior Walter in the 2003 HBO miniseries Angels in America, for which he received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie, and as Andy Botwin in the Showtime series Weeds (2005–2012). He later portrayed Hamilton Burger in the HBO series Perry Mason (2020–2023). Other television roles include Charlie Bingham in Modern Family and Jeryd Mencken in Succession.
