Prolific actor and director Adam Arkin was uniquely suited to direct episode four of “The Offer,” about the making of 1972’s “The Godfather.” In that hour, streaming now on Paramount+, filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (Dan Fogler) and producer Albert S. Ruddy (Miles Teller) finally meet with Marlon Brando (Justin Chambers), who auditions to play Don Corleone on the spot – and leaves the filmmakers almost speechless. It fell to Arkin to recreate that iconic and oft-discussed moment, but he knew where to start. After all, the three-time Emmy nominee as an actor who has directed episodes of some of the most acclaimed television shows in the last decade, including “Fargo” and “Succession,” had heard stories about what “The Godfather” star was like from his father Alan Arkin.
“Brando asked my father if he would come over and have dinner, just before he was going to do the film ‘The Freshman’ because he knew that my father had worked with the director of ‘The Freshman’ [Andrew Bergman] and I think wanted to ask about him and feel my dad out about comedy,” Arkin tells Gold Derby. “He respected my father’s comedic chops and I think wanted to pick his brain.” Watch the exclusive video interview above.
The stories of that dinner stuck with Arkin. “Brando was somebody that was not a slave to other people’s expectations of him and actually seemed to be someone that liked to almost play with those expectations, turn them on their head,” he says of the late actor. “He’s a guy that lived in his senses, and it was part of what made him so great as a performer.”
So when it came time to direct Chambers in “The Offer” as Brando, Arkin provided the former “Grey’s Anatomy” star with a bit of that context. “Justin and I talked about that if he takes a bite of something, and he’s in conversation, he’s not just motoring through the bite. He’s taking time. And if that peach tastes a certain way, it’s like, ‘What does it taste like? What am I feeling?’ All of a sudden, you start feeling like a guy who lived in his own world and made his own rules. And it was very exciting to see Justin start incorporating all of that, because it was a wonderful transformation. He went through a double transformation, because we got to see him transform into Brando, and then watch Brando himself transform into the character he ended up playing in the movie.”
That kind of balancing act happens throughout “The Offer,” which details the behind-the-scenes battles and struggles that went into making “The Godfather.” Chambers is but one of a number of actors who play real-life figures, and in each case, the series avoids outright impersonation in favor of something more authentic and true to the performer. As Arkin explains, a key to directing the performances in his episodes – three, four, and the final two episodes, which debut in June – was focusing on the entire acting troupe. For instance, Chambers isn’t playing Brando in a vacuum, Arkin says, but with a room full of collaborators reacting to him as if he really were the enigmatic star.
“I know from experience that it’s very empowering as an actor, that if you’re playing a character that has to embody certain elements if you’re surrounded by people that are behaving as if you own those elements, it empowers you,” he says. “If you’re playing a king, and you’re in your bathroom, looking at yourself in the mirror, and working on the material, it’s like, ‘How am I going to do this?’ But when you walk into a room of 30 other people and everybody’s going like, ‘Your Majesty,’ you suddenly feel some aspect of that.”
Arkin’s ties to the era and the “Godfather” films run deep. A family friend was the late Alex Rocco, who played Moe Greene in “The Godfather.” Arkin was also close friends with Bruno Kirby, the late actor who played a young version of Clemenza in “The Godfather Part II.” In the 1970s, Arkin starred in a television show called “Busting Loose” which shot on the Paramount lot, where much of “The Offer” takes place.
“Anytime I’m ever back on the Paramount lot, it is very evocative of almost exactly that time, it was just a couple of years after ‘The Godfather’ that I had come out to L.A. and started embarking on my own career,” he says. “I think all of that unconsciously informs a lot of decisions – your spidey sense of what feels accurate and evocative of that time.”
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