He's been a king, chemist and ad exec. But Jared Harris wouldn't mind more physical roles, too
LOS ANGELES — The presence of actor Jared Harris in a movie or series is for me a kind of seal of quality, a sign the script was good enough to attract him, the producers smart enough to cast him. But whatever else, for bad things do happen to good actors, I will take every chance to watch him work.
Harris is currently top-billed in Apple TV+'s "Foundation," liberally adapted from Isaac Asimov's sci-fi trilogy, whose second season premiered July 14, with new episodes dropping weekly on Fridays. Harris plays Hari Seldon, creator of psychohistory, a mathematical crystal ball that has predicted a coming dark age, and as such he is anathema to the cloned triumvirate who have ruled the galaxy for centuries.
The actor's earlier television credits include whistleblowing chemist Valery Legasov in "Chernobyl"; a ship's captain working to keep keep his crew alive in the Arctic horror story "The Terror"; the doomed Lane Pryce in "Mad Men"; the villainous David Robert Jones in "Fringe" and King George VI in "The Crown," memorably singing Rodgers and Hart with Vanessa Kirby's Princess Margaret. (Among other real people of history, he's played Henry VIII, John Lennon, Ulysses S. Grant and Andy Warhol.)
Good, bad or in between, Harris' characters tend to communicate confidence and capability and a quiet strength that can grow louder when the occasion demands. His speech is musical; its cadence make you take him seriously. His choices are never obvious.
The British-born Harris spoke with me from his home in Los Angeles on the eve of the actors' strike. "One keeps reading they've acquired a lot of content," he said of the producers, "a stockpile to keep them
