Reid Scott plays the man in the good suit who is already working out how to use you. He has done it well enough, for long enough, that the type has become his; the question now is whether he wants out of it.
Fi1m perspective
Dan Egan walks into a room in Veep and you can see him price it. Reid Scott plays him with a smile that arrives a fraction before the reason for it, a jaw set for television and a habit of looking past whoever is talking to check whether someone more useful has come in. Our review called him ambition in a good suit, and that is the whole part, and Scott made it last seven seasons (2012–2019) without once asking us to forgive him.
The career before that was the ordinary kind: off-Broadway plays, commercials and a stint on All My Children after Syracuse, then a run in My Boys (2006–2010) and The Big C (2010–2011). Veep is where the profile was made, opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus, in a writers' room that encouraged improvisation and liked the scenes messy. After it he went the other way, into the final seasons of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2022–2023) as the late-night host Gordon Ford, where every line is set down to the syllable, and then into Law & Order from 2024 as Detective Vincent Riley, an ongoing drama rather than a comedy. Film has been steadier and smaller: Dr Dan Lewis in Venom (2018) and its sequels, and The Idea of You (2024).
What he does well is the hard part of playing a heel, which is refusing to wink. Dan is never softened, never given a speech, and Scott does not sneak one in with his eyes; he plays a man who knows exactly how far his talent will carry him and suspects it is not far enough, and the suspicion is where the comedy lives. Scott has said he was bullied as a child and is drawn to "the bully types, because I want to service them well", and you can see the care. We disliked Dan steadily for seven years and were pleased every time he came through the door, because Scott lets us watch him lose more often than he lets him win.
The caveat is the obvious one. He has been cast, over and over, as the charming, compromised, well-tailored professional, and the man who set the pattern in Veep has not often broken it since. Maisel gave him a different rhythm but the same species of man, and in a show where we found everyone talking at the same speed in the same voice, he did not stand apart; our review did not single him out. The detective is the first real departure, and a procedural is a slow place to find out whether there is another Reid Scott underneath the first one. We would like to know. Somebody should give him a part where the suit does not fit.
Biography
Reid Scott is an American actor. He was born Reid Scott Weiner on 19 November 1977 in Albany, New York, and studied at Syracuse University, where he earned a BFA.
Scott is best known for his television roles as Brendan 'Brando' Dorff in the TBS series My Boys (2006–2010) and Dan Egan in the HBO series Veep (2012–2019). He has also appeared as Gordon Ford in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2022–2023) and as NYPD Detective Vincent Riley in Law & Order (2024–present). His film credits include Dr. Dan Lewis in the Venom films (2018, 2021, 2024).
