Tate Donovan on Hostages, Argo and Being Honest About The O.C.
Joel Keller is one of the cofounders of the site Antenna Free TV and cohosts the weekly AFT Podcast.
Tate Donovan is one of those actors who's been around long enough to have different generations of fans know him for different roles. In the '90s, the soon-to-be-50 year old New Jersey native was probably best known as Rachel's boyfriend Joshua on Friends (who, it turns out, he was playing right as he and Jennifer Aniston broke up for real). In the 2000s, he was known as sniveling dad Jimmy Cooper on The O.C. More recently, he has supplemented his acting career with TV directing jobs, and had a small but significant role in last year's Best Picture Oscar winner, Argo.
Starting Monday, September 23, Donovan can be seen in the new CBS series Hostages; in the 15-episode thriller, he plays Brian Sanders, the not-so-virtuous husband of a surgeon (Toni Collette) whose whole family is taken hostage by a rogue FBI agent (Dylan McDermott) right before she operates on the president (James Naughton).
Donovan talked to PARADE about the show, the documentary short he directed for ESPN, growing up in New Jersey, shooting Argo in Turkey, and why he was so honest about how jaded the cast of The O.C. had gotten in the show's final years.
On his character on Hostages:
"Well, you sort of get a glimpse into the secrets that he has, for sure. He’s got a girlfriend, and he’s not the best husband on the planet. They use that against him to sort of blackmail him into doing what they want."
On the show's 15-episode "limited series" status:
"Well, it’s not your basic television show where things get wrapped up, and in the episode, the bad guy gets caught. Where does this go? How do you take an entire family hostage, and make it believable? Why is this guy doing this? What’s going on in his family? It’s just was intriguing. I read [the pilot] very quickly. I just went through it, and I was like, 'Wow, this is not your usual CBS show.'
"[Fifteen episodes is] an actor’s dream. You get to work for a couple of months, and then you can go on and do different things. That’s exciting. Normally, if you do a television show, it’s 25 episodes. Your year is kind of shot, you know what I mean? So this is ideal. Also it shoots in New York, which is really great. My mom is still in Jersey, and I love working in New York so that was definitely a lure to it as well."
On taking the role of Bob Anders in Argo:
"Like I said, it’s about the writing. Argo was a great script from day one. I don’t think we knew that it was going to be such a success. Ben Affleck is a great director, and George [Clooney] was a producer I’d worked with before, [along with producer] Grant Heslov in Good Night, and Good Luck, and had a great time. They were really fun to work with."
On shooting Argo in Istanbul:
"First of all, the being in a Muslim country, to hear the call to prayer five times a day starting at 5 AM is an extraordinary experience because when you’re an American, you've only heard the call to prayer at the beginning of documentaries on Islam and Jihadism. It sends fear into Americans ever since 9/11. To hear it, and to recognize how beautiful it is, and it’s just gorgeous to hear in the middle of the night or during the day, and you just see people in the middle of the street, or in the middle of the sidewalk, they’ll just lay down a prayer mat, and find out where Mecca is, and just pray towards it. It’s really exceptional. It’s a beautiful experience."
On what he learned about directing from Ben Affleck and Glenn Close (he co-starred with and directed her in Damages):
"Ben was very well prepared, and he trusted everybody. I think that’s just something as a director you have to, to not talk too much and not gild the lily, just let people do their jobs, just creative space where everyone does their job really well. That’s the most important thing as a director. The biggest teacher of all, to me, was Glenn Close, who really basically taught me everything I know about directing, which is basically you just shut up. She was tough, but she was great."
On when he first thought of being an actor:
"I went to the Bergen Theater in Tenafly, New Jersey when I was four years old. My parents took me to a movie, and I remember wanting to sit apart from them for some reason. I wanted to be a big boy or whatever. I remember looking up on that screen. It was a movie about medieval knights. All I remember is saying, 'I want to do that. I want to make movies.' I just thought, 'If I could get one line in one great movie, I would die a happy man.' At that point, I would have been like, an extra would have been fine. I didn’t really have huge, lofty goals. It seemed so far away from my existence, Hollywood."
On growing up in New Jersey:
"We never locked our doors. I literally never had a key ever. We went on vacation, and left our front door wide open for a week. Eventually, a neighbor was like, 'Well, we should probably close the doors.' I never locked my bike. I would just take off, and play with the kids. As long as I was back by dinner, nobody cared or was worried about me at all. You know what I mean?"
On the Garden State's bad reputation:
"When I was growing up, it was so embarrassing to be from Jersey. You know, like Saturday Night Live was like, 'Oh yeah, what exit?' They just talked about how the turnpike smelled, and the cancer capital of the world, and it was not cool to be from Jersey. That’s for sure. We had Bruce Springsteen, that was about it, and I guess Bon Jovi. It’s amazing to me how many actors are from Jersey. It’s like disproportionate, I think. Meryl Streep, Danny DeVito... Hope Davis and I went to high school together. Ed Harris went to Tenafly High. An extraordinary amount of actors from New Jersey."
On his ESPN documentary, Arthur and Johnnie:
"I’m a huge Arthur Ashe fan. I always have been. Nobody really knows this, but his brother did an extra tour in Vietnam so Arthur could stay, because they don’t want the only two brothers in the family to be in the country at the same time. He stayed and let Arthur play tennis, and that year was the year he won the US Open in 1968. It’s just a great little story about sacrifice and being your brother’s keeper. [Johnnie Ashe] is a great guy. He’s a classic marine. Tight lipped, and doesn’t think it’s a big deal. Us making a documentary about this story, he thinks is ridiculous, but it’s actually quite moving and beautiful."
On saying the kids from The O.C. had a "bad attitude" late in the show's run:
"It’s frustrating because the headline is awful. It’s just like 'Tate Donovan rips into the cast of The O.C.,' and I didn’t rip into them at all. The producer of The O.C. sent me all these articles. He was like, 'Loved it,' because I guess he wanted to say it, but he never felt as though he could. To me, it’s such ancient history. It’s over 10 years ago. I can’t imagine that it would be sort of risqué or something I shouldn’t talk about."
Hostages airs Mondays at 10 PM ET on CBS, starting Sept. 23.
