Jeremy Piven: All that glitters is Ari Gold
NEW YORK — If you ask Ari Gold about Jeremy Piven, here's what he'd say.
"First of all, Piven needs a better team. He's making a festival of bad decisions," says Piven, seamlessly switching into Gold mode. "I can't even find anyone who's seen Mr. Selfie, or whatever the (expletive) it's called. ... That sensitive (expletive) thespian."
Piven plays the blustering, expletive-spewing, power suit-wearing, status-loving agent-turned-studio head in the film version of Entourage, in theaters Wednesday. It's the continuation of the series that ran on HBO until 2011, about a foursome of actors and hangers-on forging their way through Hollywood, with Gold to guide them.
Piven, 49, won three Emmy Awards for playing Gold, and now, in what he calls "artistic sorbet," spends his time in London playing American department store king Harry Gordon Selfridge on PBS' Mr. Selfridge.
In the Entourage movie, Gold has left his short-lived retirement in Italy and returned to Tinseltown to run a studio, which is financing the directorial debut of acting superstar Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier). Part of Gold's new persona is a tenuous commitment, at the behest of his wife, to finding inner peace.
"He's trying to evolve. The idea that that character has any link to the spiritual world is comedy. He's the antithesis of anything spiritual. He lives in a reactive world," says Piven.
For the actor, buttoning up Gold's tailored attire again was disconcerting. He has very little in common with the power player.
"The fact that you can work your entire life and really love acting and be mistaken as this horrifying douchebag — there's a compliment in there," Piven says. "And I will embrace it at some point. But it does get a bit confusing."
And a little tiresome that people expect him to be similar to Gold.
"The first thing you said to me was, 'We have a chair for Ari Gold.' That's somehow your mindset," says Piven. "The only reason I can embody that character is because I'm an actor. You do understand that? People like this exist. Why isn't it possible that I'm an actor who is nothing like this character? Google any one of my interviews where I'm actually myself, and you can see who Jeremy is."
The real Piven, says Entourage writer/director Doug Ellin, is "into meditation but his acting is high energy. He's able to turn that on very quickly. He's a very serious actor."
Adds his Mr. Selfridge co-star Katherine Kelly: "The Jeremy I know is very centered. He's not brash and he's not difficult. You could easily meet him in the pub here and talk to him about Wimbledon and you'd be none of the wiser that he's famous."
Piven hails from an acting family. His parents run the Illinois-based Piven Theatre and his sister Shira, a filmmaker, is married to Adam McKay, co-founder of Funny or Die and director of comedies including Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. He's the doting uncle of their two daughters, Pearl (who was in that infamous 2007 video The Landlord) and Lili Rose.
"Pearl is a little angel. She and Lili Rose have never seen Entourage and don't know who Ari Gold is. Someday they'll probably stumble on it and it will be very surreal to them," says Piven. "For them to witness Uncle Jeremy being so cruel — I can't wrap my mind around what that would feel like for them. I love them so much.
"Pearl asked me if I worked for a bus company because she saw me on the side of a bus. I said, 'Yes, I repair the buses.'"