Throughout his roles as Prince Philip in The Crown, Edmure Tully in Game of Thrones, and Jonathan "Black Jack" Randall in Outlander, Tobias Menzies has been nothing but charming. Still, the 49-year-old British actor considers himself an "inherently publicity-adverse person." And for good reason. Publicity in the United Kingdom is a different animal than what we see stateside. When the real Prince Philip passed away in 2021, reporters were knocking down doors for comments.
"It was an interesting position to be in, having been the most recent person to have played him," Menzies tells me over a recent Zoom call. "In some ways, I'm in people's imagination when they think about him. That weird blurring that can happen with these shows. Bu, I was initially wary to give forth about it. I was asked by a few news agencies to comment and talk about him, but I didn't feel very comfortable about it. I never met him, and I was fairly sure that the one thing he wouldn't want is an actor to be chatting about his life."
But Menzies is much happier to open up about his new role opposite Julia Louis-Dreyfus in A24's brilliant You Hurt My Feelings, which debuted in theaters this past weekend. Menzies plays Don, a therapist who is going through a bit of a rough patch. His bad spell is only escalated when his wife Beth (Louis-Dreyfus), a novelist, finds out that he doesn't really enjoy her new book. The revelation shocks Beth—and sends both of them spiraling in their respective creative pursuits. It's a tale of honesty and betrayal that asks: Is there any situation where a little lie maybe isn't so bad?
Just before the film's premiere, Menzies spoke to Esquire about working with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, looking back at his time on Game of Thrones, and the first time he's had to use an American accent on screen.
ESQUIRE: The chemistry between you and Julia Louis-Dreyfus felt so natural—I imagine it didn't take too long for you two to reach that together.
TOBIAS MENZIES: It really was. Sometimes, you just don't know how those things are going to roll out. We hit it off from the beginning. She's such a brilliant actor. So, she makes it pretty easy. And [director] Nicole [Holofcener]'s writing flows. She has such a clear idea of what the relationships are. So, between the two of them, it made for quite light lifting.
Obviously, you can't exactly shadow a therapist. Was there something else you had to do to get into the role?
The honest answer to that is that I've done so many years of therapy myself that I didn't need to do any extra research, really. [Laughs.] I had a pretty good sense of what those rooms were like.
Certain sessions between you and your clients are clearly played for laughs throughout the film, but did you find any real-world world truths hidden in those scenes?
Yeah, I was really keen to make sure they didn't feel too comedic. I wanted them to feel realistic. Nicole felt the same. Her tone of humor is not too performative—it's in how people navigate stuff and the kind of strange things that occur in both life and therapy sessions. Life is stranger than fiction often, as they say. But the theme of the film is: How honest can you be in your life? And that's also a fundamental plank of therapy practice. What's true for you? So, I think therapy was an easy way of reflecting some of the themes in the film.
Would you rather be lied to in a similar situation as your character in You Hurt My Feelings, or would you rather have the truth revealed?
That's a really hard question to answer, and that's what interesting about the film. You have Don, who is less straight about how he feels, and then you have Beth's mother, who is just relentlessly honest but pretty unhelpful and tough to be around. Honesty and intimacy are not always easy bedfellows. If I'm honest, I would err on the side of not being exposed to the brutal truth. The odd fig leaf is very welcome in life.
The world of Game of Thrones has really expanded since your time playing Edmure Tully. Have you kept up with House of the Dragon and are you at all surprised by how popular it has become?
It doesn't massively surprise me. The novels are highly realized, and Game of Thrones really carried that on—and more, you could argue. The attention to detail is why I think it's been such a success and why the world feels so complete. I haven't sat down to watch House of the Dragon, but there's so many ingredients planted down in that world. It doesn't surprise me that it still attracts people.
You're going back to TV next for an Apple TV+ miniseries called Manhunt, which is about the search for Abraham Lincoln's killer back in the late 1800s. Was that a tough period of time to dive into?
Yeah, I play Edwin Stanton—Lincoln's Minister of War, who runs this manhunt for John Wilkes Booth. It's sort of a noir thriller, set against a pretty amazing moment in American history. It's historical, and Stanton was a real person—another American—so it took a lot of research to get into their world. It's also a very rich political moment. To do all those ingredients justice took a lot of attention.
What does it take to get yourself into the American accent? Do you have any little tricks to make the switch?
Just a lot of work, really. You Hurt My Feelings was the first time I had committed to do an American accent on screen, so it was a new departure for me. I grew up on New York films of the '70s, and the voices are a big part of that. I was very keen to make sure I didn't blow it—and I think I get away with it. [Laughs.]
