Hamish Linklater has a lot going on. He and his family just moved back to New York from Los Angeles, and he’s got two major projects coming out in the same week. He plays Dean Cipher in Season 2 of Gen V on Amazon Prime and he’s also in the movie A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, starring alongside Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell, in theaters now. The in-demand actor was recently seen on stage earlier this year with Lily Rabe, his longtime partner in life and work, in the revival of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts at Lincoln Center. Bare Mag was thrilled to photograph him on a Saturday at Lucinda’s bar in the East Village, where Hamish had fun getting into the honkytonk vibe as classic Hank Williams and Waylon Jennings blasted on the juke box. The multi-faceted actor is funny, sexy, sweet, super smart, well read and perpetually curious—and he was up for anything. Writer Gina Way hung out with Hamish post-shoot to talk Gen V, parenting, NY vs LA, acting, and the thing that always make him cry.

Gina Way: We’re at Lucinda’s – did you name your daughter after Lucinda Williams?

Hamish Linklater: One hundred percent named her after Lucinda Williams. But it’s also such a beautiful name. This Italian friend of mine told me that Lucinda means “a pretty light,” which is so nice. That’s such a gentle gesture.

GW: You’re in Season 2 of the Amazon Prime show Gen V, playing the new dean of Godolkin University. Tell us more…

HL: This show is fucking insane because it’s about white nationalism. The superheroes are a super race and my character, Dean Cipher has been put in charge of this university to make this elite superhero race. The creator, Eric Kripke, had no idea that history would jump on him when he started this project and he didn’t run away from it, which is so impressive. I love the show so much—it’s a blunt force weapon that kids today are gonna watch, and the message of this season is: Resist. How can you not get excited about being part of that?

GW: You’ve played some real bad guys, like Father Paul in Midnight Mass.

HL: In Gen V and Midnight Mass, those characters are so masterfully written, so I get to do a lot of mislead, and a lot of dance, and a lot of tangoing with expectations, which is great. Both of those guys think they’re doing the best thing possible for humanity. I mean, Father Paul is trying to kill death, which would be quite an accomplishment. You’ll just have to wait and see what Cipher has up his sleeve.

GW: On the flip side, you’ve played heroes, like Abraham Lincoln and the voice of Batman.

HL: Last year I got to play Lincoln (in Apple TV+ Manhunt) and then do Nickel Boys where I was playing like the worst racist one could imagine. (As an actor) you have to imagine that there’s a positive objective for whatever character you’re playing, but with Nickel Boys he was such a horrible person, that I was done with doing that. I just want to bury him. But I was so lucky because earlier that year I got to play Lincoln, one of the better angels of our nature that’s ever existed.

GW: You’re a character actor who can disappear into a role. Who are your favorite character actors ever?

HL: Character actors, those real chameleons, are remarkable, like Peter Sellers, of course. My actor all-star team is infinite, but I’m not sure if there are such things as “character actors.” There are massive movie stars who are really character actors in every single role they play. Everyone is acting. With every different part, you’re looking for what the spark is and then you’re going to chase it, and hopefully if the part is rich enough, you’re going to be chasing a sky full of fireflies – and you bring all of yourself to bear.

GW: How do you get into character?

HL: Well, you don’t want to give away all the secrets and the heart of your mystery.

GW: You know how some actors use a piece of clothing or a certain song to help them get into a role?

HL: When I have an emotional scene to play, I think about when Magic Johnson announced he was HIV positive, and when Larry Bird learned of this news, he was driving and had to pull over to the side of the road. That Magic and Bird story will always make me cry.

GW: Wow. You’re really into sports. What is the tattoo on your arm?

HL: Derek Jeter’s, Magic Johnson’s and Walter Payton’s numbers.

GW: Back to acting - have you always wanted to be an actor?

HL: My mom Kristin Linklater, co-founded Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass when I was 2. I grew up in a year-round theater company and in the summer, they performed Shakespeare at Edith Wharton’s house. My mother would drop me off on the lawn with the audience and go onstage and perform, and I sat there, and watched Shakespeare every night through my youth.

(As I got older) they started to worry that I would wander off the lawn so they started putting me in the plays to keep track of me and save on babysitting. It was a family business. I tried to run away from it, I tried to study English in college and not be an actor. When I was considering taking a semester off to move to New York, my mom said, “Drop out right now. Save my money. You’re going to be an actor, just go and do it.” So, I moved to the city when I was 19 and eventually became a regional theater actor.

GW: So, the stage feels like home.

HL: It’s like my childhood. It’s the most natural thing that I get to do (as an actor).

GW: What kind of theater project would love to do?

HL: I would love to be in a revolving repertory season where I’m playing five different characters that are as different from each other as Abraham Lincoln and the guy in Nickel Boys, and that I get to swap hats every other night. That sounds like bliss to me.

GW: You’re part of a creative and real-life partnership with your love Lily Rabe – writing, directing, and acting together in different mediums. How do you balance work and family life?

HL: I think because we were both raised in homes where work always came home and never felt like work – it just felt like living and breathing, it’s never felt like, “Could you please stop talking about your day speaking blank verse!” or “Could you please just shut up about what lenses the camera man was using today?” When Beyonce and Jay-Z go home, do they say, “Could we just stop talking about rhyming right now?” No! It’s the thing that you both love, and you got together because you both love the same thing.

GW: Your family recently moved back to NYC from LA. Does it feel good to be back home?

HL: We’re so happy. We moved Labor Day weekend, just in time for school to start. I’ve been living in Los Angeles for 25 years, and every time I would go back and forth between coasts, I would be so angry at my old lover – that other city. I would think, “In Los Angeles, at least we make stories for young people!” And then I would be, “I can’t stand the commerce of LA, I need to get back to New York.” Then I realized I could be sort of polyamorous between these two coasts – you can live in the dichotomy. Why do you have to be dyed-in-the-blue anything?

But I have spent so long now in LA, so I do want to spend a long time here. And our kids really seem to flourish in this environment. When you commute to school with your kids in LA, they’re sitting behind you in a single-family vehicle in heavy traffic, and when you’re taking them to school in New York, you have people walking by you or you’re in the train with all kinds of people around you and that’s kind of cool. I think it’s nice for us to raise our kids not being as afraid of their friends and neighbors as they might be if they were raised in a Volvo.

GW: Who are the directors that you’d love to work with in the future?

HL: Spike Lee is absolutely at the top of that list, and I wish Miranda July would hire me again because she’s such a phenomenal writer/director. In the theater, I’d love to work with Danya Taymor and with Ivo van Hove. Working with new people really pushes you and stretches you, and you have no idea what’s going to happen next. I’d love to work with Sam Gold again, and with Bart Sher again too – they’re both total mentor /taste guys who’ve done such great directing. I should stop talking – we’ll be here forever.

GW: Is there a film director you wish you could have worked with in the past?

HL: Robert Altman. Because I’m so uncomfortable improvising. I think of funny things to say, but that isn’t good improv. When I was in college, my girlfriend at the time was in an improv comedy group and I auditioned to get in. And when I got in, I learned that comedy improv was not something I excelled at. What I excelled at was standing onstage and monologuing, but I did not excel at passing the ball. That’s why Robert Altman is my ideal: If I could just learn how to pass the ball like those actors did in his movies, I would feel like LeBron times 10.

GW: What inspires you?

HL: New York is very inspiring to me right now because we’re fresh being back here. I also read some fabulous novels this summer.

GW: Please give us your book list!

HL:

The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley (a book club book with my eldest, Lucinda)

The Director by Daniel Kehlmann

Juan in America by Eric Linklater (written in 1931 by my grandfather, an inenarrable writer)

Audition by Katie Kitamura

The Trees by Percival Everett (OBSESSED with this book. It would make the greatest show, aaaahhhh!)

The House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

GW: What do you do to relax and recharge?

HL: Making breakfast, getting the kids out the door, and that sort of thing…just kids.

GW: You do seem like a fun dad.

HL: I try. But there are tons of boundaries too. There’s a lot of rings to the circus and we have to stay inside the rings.

GW: What are your Bare Essentials?

HL:

Family. And always the kids. They let you know the true measure of your planetary value, if you’re ever in doubt, in a lip curl. And after a certain age they never need you, but oh, when they want you, you know you’ve won the big board game.
A text chain with my three best friends from elementary school. We’re rough with each other and sweet with each other and we talk sports, and we talk books, and we text constantly.
Tito’s vodka
Buffalo wings (Ye Rustic Inn on Hillhurst in LA has good wings.)
Blank verse
The Laker’s lineup (but if we talk about my other teams, the Bears and the Yankees, I will not relax at all.)
My Wolverine 1000s, my white Dickies paint pants, my Gulf Of Mexico t shirt, my pearl snap shirts low buttoned
ESPN
Engaging conversation, rambunctious intellects, uncomfortable truths, and then the kids again