Adam Goldberg talks 'The Equalizer' and his 30-year career (2024)

Most actors would try to gloss over the fact they’ve been cast as regulars in a number of TV shows that were cancelled after a single season if they even last that long, but not Adam Goldberg. Instead, with the fifth season of The Equalizer continuing on his longest recurring episodic role ever, he’s happy to see the positives that come with finally landing a series that’s caught on with audiences and network executives alike.

“I don’t know how much you know about the annals of my career, but I’ve been doing this for 30+ years, and I’ve been on… I was trying to count the other day, and I was miscounting. That’s how many TV series I had been on as a regular, and I think other than Fargo, which is an anthology show, so it doesn’t really count and The Jim Gaffigan Show, which was on for two seasons, all the shows I’d ever been on were really pretty brutally truncated after half a season, maybe a season.”

Not only that but with the advent of streaming and shortened attention spans making it harder than ever for a new show to gain a foothold, Goldberg appreciates where he’s at. “The idea that in the year 2024, you could be on a show, any show, but particularly on broadcast television that would last longer than a year or two or three is absolutely an outlier. Yeah, I feel really lucky because there is such an incredible amount of competition.”

In The Equalizer, Goldberg plays Harry Keshegian, who faked his own death with the help of Queen Latifah’s Robyn McCall and now works in the shadows as one of her closest allies and erstwhile ‘guy in the chair’. He was grateful for the opportunity, even if there was some initial trepidation for circumstances out of his control.

Goldberg was offered the role days before the pandemic slowed the world to a standstill, and while he enjoyed the script and was keen on the concept, there were mitigating factors in play as a father with young children. However, once he weighed the personal and professional pros against the cons, he signed on with one eye on a future that had been informed directly by his past.

“I think that what made it an easier decision was the fact that I had been working for so many years and in many ways, not that this is the endgame, and this isn’t the last thing I’m ever going to do, but the idea of trying to kind of really bank some consistent work for several years was important to me, because I have been making a living doing this incredibly erratic, unknowable thing for so many years, and it stops becoming fun, particularly when you have a family that you have to help support.”

Harry’s wardrobe in the show is comprised largely of items pulled straight from Goldberg’s personal clothing collection, and if they’re not, then he’s worked closely with the costuming team to pick them out. It wasn’t a deal-breaker, but that sense of ownership over a character is always going to be a positive for any actor who spends so long playing the same role.

“I have kind of a history of, I think, bringing a lot to the table,” he offered. “There are certain characters that are so different from me that I’m very deferential, particularly when it comes to wardrobe. For instance, you don’t come to A Beautiful Mind saying, ‘I think I should wear this or that’, necessarily. Although, having said that, we were sort of modelling my look after Allen Ginsberg, and I did bring that to the table.”

Ron Howard’s ‘Best Picture’ winner wasn’t “just a few ticks off from your own personality,” as Goldberg puts it, but The Equalizer‘s Harry definitely is. “I love being able to infuse a character that I think people have certain ideas of what this character would be like, and there are certain cliches and stuff, and flip those on their ear a little bit, and they’ve been great about incorporating that from the beginning.”

That creative collaboration has allowed Goldberg to put his own stamp on a role that could have easily been archetypal or one-dimensional, and he knows it. “That kind of stuff just takes it a little bit out of the doldrums of just ‘tech guy’ or ‘IT guy’, you know what I mean?”

One of the inevitabilities of ‘guy in the chair’ duties is the technological dialogue that comes with it, and the actor has developed his own approach to words that don’t mean much to him on the page. “I wouldn’t say it’s become easier, but it’s become less daunting,” he acknowledged.

“I mean, there were times when I was just like, ‘I can’t do it’. I’m not insane about having to come up with some kind of protocol by which to memorise the stuff or whatever, but I know that my brain can do it. The only key I have discovered, and this is really true for any actor doing anything ever, is that you just have to understand what you’re saying.”

It sounds simple enough, but it’s actually a lot more complicated than it sounds. “If you understand what you’re saying, you can get pretty close. Once I look at something and I understand it, I can sort of make the imprint. I was just telling somebody I have extremely good short-term memory. And then, medium-term memory is just absolutely gone. So, I can cram an incredible amount of information in my brain in a short amount of time. But if you were to ask me, for instance, if my life depended on it, I’m not sure I could tell you what the episode this Sunday is about.”

As a filmmaker who’s helmed three features along with a number of shorts and music videos, has Goldberg ever been tempted to step behind the camera and direct an episode of The Equalizer? As it turns out, the answer is another complicated one.

“I did sort of early on, and we were going to talk about doing that the second season,” he elaborated. “There’s a bigger question I asked myself, which is, ‘Why’? I haven’t directed any television episodes ever. And I guess I just never felt like one thing had anything to do with the other. Really, I just don’t think of that when I think of directing.”

“I’ve only made three, and for good reason. It’s incredibly immersive and exhausting and depleting and oftentimes extremely disappointing. But that’s because I’m also writing that stuff, so I’ve never really separated the writing from the directing. So, the idea of directing other people’s material, though, I’ve gotten very close to doing it in the past. In the end, somehow, I’ve always pulled back.”

Describing himself as “an extremely visual person,” Goldberg loves creating his own films, but “taking a product which sort of exists and has a template and then inserting myself, it just never really seemed to make sense other than to really exacerbate stress and anxiety.” For him, it’s stressful enough being an actor on The Equalizer, and pulling double duty would only increase his workload and concerns.

On the other hand, with Goldberg’s feature-length offerings tending to arrive roughly a decade apart from 1998’s debut Scotch and Milk onto 2005’s I Love Your Work, and 2015’s No Way, Jose, isn’t he about due a fourth movie as a director?

“It’s so funny because I was like, ‘It’s only been nine years’, and I thought you were going to say I Love Your Work because I forgot about No Way, Jose. That just goes to show you how good my medium-term memory is, right?” He might have forgotten about his own movie, but there are at least tentative plans for a fourth, even if there’s no set timeline in place.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about this one idea for a couple of years,” Goldberg hinted. “That seems to be how it goes. There’ll be a long gestation period, and then I’ll sort of barf it out. So I don’t know, we’ll see.” He’s been a working actor for over 30 years, not that it was his initial dream after he revealed filmmaking was supposed to be his true calling.

“When I was a kid, that’s really what I thought I was going to be doing,” he said. “I actually dropped out of liberal arts college to go to film school, and then I dropped out of film school to start acting. I had really thought that’s what I was going to be doing with my life. But once I had done it, once, twice, and then three times in an extremely independent space, there’s just absolutely no room for anything else in one’s life during those periods.”

“It seems unthinkable to go back into that, knowing what I had to deal with, for instance, on No Way, Jose. I mean, a lot of financial issues with the film, and just to willy-nilly go back into that seems almost masochistic. If I were to do it again, I would have to figure out a different way to go about doing that so I didn’t end up having to bear the brunt of so many partisan aspects of filmmaking, which is really the least pleasant.”

Goldberg has suggested there’s been no grand masterplan behind his career, but more than 30 years and almost 100 credits into it, he’s clearly doing something right. Then again, he still wouldn’t dare say he’s got this whole acting and filmmaking thing figured out, but there are two key factors that continue to drive him.

“I think if it’s not going to pay you a lot of money, you have to really like what it is, and you have to like what you’ll be able to do with it,” he stated. Helping out friend and fellow filmmaker Alexi Wasser on her debut feature Messy by casting his eyes over the script and taking a role in the cast ticked one of them. Calling it “an opportunity to do something fun and cool” that appealed to him as a creative is key, but then there’s the fiscal side of the equation.

“On the flip side, if it’s not something that you’re going to love and it’s not something that stretches you in one way or another, it’s got to pay you a lot. Those are pretty much the two deciding factors.” A refreshingly honest assessment of how he approaches his life and work, Goldberg has always moved between the micro and macro of film and television to keep both sides of the scale in balance.

“I think it’s been pretty clear if you have the time and you can afford to do something that you like, and then if something is clearly on paper a great thing for you to do and it’s a great opportunity for you to be seen in a mainstream way then you do that,” before outlining that there aren’t many people in his line of work who’ve got it all planned out and then followed the map they’d envisioned for themselves.

“I really think it’s disingenuous for any actor of my level to pretend that they have any agency, really, over the narrative arc of their career. It might be generated by what you bring to the table, but generally, then you’re being offered roles based on what you brought to the table, not because you’re necessarily breaking new ground each time. You’re doing a job.”

In doing the job, Goldberg has made a habit of stealing scenes in some iconic productions, many of which recently celebrated milestone anniversaries. 2023 made it 30 years since he played Mike Newhouse in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, while 2024 marked 30 years since the first episode of Friends premiered, with the actor playing the small but memorable role of Chandler’s temporary roommate ‘Crazy’ Eddie Menuek in three episodes of the second season.

“The Friends thing: I was there, I did my thing,” he reflected. “You know, it’s like it has its little mini, micro life within that massive cultural phenomenon.” He was only a small part of the all-conquering sitcom yet still made a lasting impression on its multiple generations of fans, but Dazed and Confused is definitely something Goldberg holds close to his heart.

“In the end, it felt like the little engine that could,” came his unique assessment of the coming-of-age classic. “I think we all knew it was going to have a cultural impact. I just think the question was, at the time, when exactly would it have that cultural impact and to what extent?”

“It was almost not by design. It wasn’t written that way. It wasn’t shot that way. And Rick never thought of it that way,” he continued. “It was couched as a kind of cultural brother to films like Fast Times. So you felt like you were part of something at the time, especially in Hollywood, where you see the same people all the time, and everyone was there at that last pizza party. You had a sense that it was a film to be doing, but the fact it’s been not ten, not 20, but 30 years, and it’s so baked into people’s cultural lexicon.”

“What’s weirder is that there’s a generation of people who were zero years old when we made the film, and they’re not even the newest generation to have seen the movie. That’s the part that’s strange. There’s going to be some 15-year-old kid who was born, like, 15 fucking years ago who’s going to appreciate the film. And that’s how you know that it’s one of those films that’s going to survive the test of time.”

Another of Goldberg’s most famous roles was playing Stanley Mellish in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. He describes those two films as “the bookends of my career,” even though the latter was released in 1998, and he’s been working solidly ever since.

Along with Dazed and Confused, Saving Private Ryan, Friends, and A Beautiful Mind, Goldberg has appeared in shows like Fargo and Entourage, as well as projects like David Fincher’s Zodiac, and rom-com favourite How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, making him one of the most in-demand and recognisable characters around. That said, does he have a favourite role from such a long and busy career?

“It sounds ridiculous, but I don’t like my performance in Dazed and Confused, but that will always be the most important to me emotionally; there are just no two ways around it.” Self-deprecating, sure, but honest. “Saving Private Ryan, again, I don’t really love my performance in it, but it was hugely impactful for me personally.”

“And then, just the making of that movie. And then, of course, the resonance that it had, particularly at the time, with the veterans that it affected. It was an incredibly powerful experience, and I won’t ever have that experience again. And I really like my Fargo role; that’s more of an example of me just liking my performance.”

From Mellish to Mike Newhouse via Crazy Eddie, Nick Rubenstein, and Crazy Smothers, Goldberg has brought to life plenty of characters that people know, love, or hate the world over. However, whenever people stop him in the street, which character comes up the most often?

“I guess Saving Private Ryan, people want to talk to me about Saving Private Ryan,” he acknowledged. “People will have very emotional reactions. Whether they stop me in the street or whether it’s knowing them for three weeks and they say, ‘Hey, by the way, I gotta tell you that scene in Saving Private Ryan when you get stabbed, it still haunts me’. And I would say that it’s got to be the most impactful thing I’ve ever done in terms of my experience, in terms of feedback to a performance, in terms of sheer straight-up recognition.”

On the other hand, playing so many memorable characters tends to vary things up on occasion. “I guess it seems to have varied over the years,” Goldberg ruminated. “There was a period, I remember, around Entourage where I couldn’t walk down the streets of New York. A lot of people say The Hebrew Hammer, which is interesting because it’s a very hard film to even find. But I get that a lot, just like, ‘You’re the Hebrew Hammer’.

Saving Private Ryan, Entourage, and The Hebrew Hammer couldn’t be more different from each other, but it’s a testament to Goldberg’s ongoing position as a character actor and scene-stealer extraordinaire that those are the three characters that get him stopped the most, and there’s no doubt going to be more to come.

Related Topics