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Film director James Gray: Why I cast Anthony Hopkins as my zeida

Filmmaker discusses his new film — and why he’s got no time for accusations of ‘Jewface’ casting

November 17, 2022 15:17
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(L to R) Michael Banks Repeta as "Paul Graff" and Anthony Hopkins as "Grandpa Aaron Rabinowitz" in director James Gray's ARMAGEDDON TIME, a Focus Features release. Courtesy of Anne Joyce / Focus Features
6 min read

Ever since the release of his debut feature Little Odessa in 1994, Jewish writer-director James Gray has been amassing quite the cult following from cinephiles across the globe for his unfussy and understated storytelling style.

Gray went on to release the ambitious crime dramas The Yards (2000) and We Own the Night (2007), but it was his 2017 film The Lost City of Z that really cemented him as one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation.

Now, three years after the release of Ad Astra, a thrilling space odyssey starring Brad Pitt, comes Gray’s most personal offering yet. Armageddon Time, starring up-and-coming sensation Michael Banks Repeta, Succession’s Jeremy Strong and Oscar-winner Anne Hathaway, is a semi-autobiographical story set in New York during the run-up to the 1980 presidential election between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

But after casting British acting legend Sir Anthony Hopkins as his own grandfather — a Russian Jew who fled Cossack persecution and lived in Britain for a short time before emigrating to the US with his mother — Gray raised a few eyebrows from a number of Jewish commentators with some wondering whether the role should have gone to a Jewish actor instead.

Speaking on a Zoom call, I tell Gray that, while I believe that the notion of Jewish roles being played only by Jews seems preposterous, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask him about the “Jewface” controversy.

“I think it’s the dumbest thing ever,” he tells me, without blinking. “It’s like a cancer that’s torn through culture, where it’s now an extension of social science or cultural studies.

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