As the private equity investor Stewy Hosseini on “Succession,” Arian Moayed delivers the show’s piquant profanities with an elegant flair. It’s a role that has made Moayed instantly recognizable, in addition to his roles in the Disney+ series “Ms. Marvel” and the second season of the HBO anthology series “Love Life” opposite William Jackson Harper.
Born in Iran, Moayed grew up in Glenview, Illinois. He’s had a prolific career on stage, and is also the creator, writer, producer and director of the TV drama “The Accidental Wolf,” now streaming its third season on Topic. Moayed calls it an “empathy thriller” and it stars Kelli O’Hara.
“She and I did ‘King Lear’ together at the Public Theater,” he said, “and I asked her if I wrote her something, would she do it? And that was the spark of it.”
The series is about a young mother “with all the privileges in the world — from her race to her finances and access — who tries to do something really big, which is to go out and try to help a stranger. And the stranger doesn’t necessarily want her help. And her own privileged white society doesn’t want her to do this. What’s kind of a miracle about the show is that if you watch it now, as this third and final season airs, what you see is a timeline of what’s happened in our society over the last seven years.”
Moayed’s career is filled with numerous high points. When asked about a low point, he remembered a moment on stage during the 2016 Broadway run of “The Humans.”
My worst moment …
“I had the privilege of doing this play In New York called ‘The Humans,’ which actually started in Chicago, written by Stephen Karam, who was my roommate at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. So I had the privilege of doing this on Broadway and it ran for 500-plus performances. And I loved doing it.
The play is about a family that gathers in an apartment in New York’s Chinatown for Thanksgiving.
“It takes place over one scene — there is no lights up-lights down, just one long scene — where I, as the outsider of the family, make a Thanksgiving dinner in this apartment. And one of the most crucial parts, after the dinner is done, is between the father, who is a blue-collar man played by the great Reed Birney, and me — I’m the boyfriend who’s maybe 15 years older than his daughter — and we’re sitting at the table.
“We’ve done the show 100 or maybe 200 times by this point. It’s a sold-out house. We were just nominated for the Tony Award, which we subsequently won, but it was voting time so you want to be on your game. You want to make sure that you’re killing it.
“And there is this moment between these two gentlemen which basically sets up the end of the play. It’s very subtle and it’s very small. And we get to that moment, I put my feet up on a chair and I look at Reed Birney and I’m watching him and it suddenly occurs to me that I have no clue — nothing — of where we are in the play, of what my lines are or what I should be saying or doing.
“I look at Reed. And Reed’s looking at me. And he’s basically like, with his eyes: ‘I think it’s your turn to talk, dude!’ (Laughs) And I’m looking back at him and I’m trying to somehow with my eyes tell him: ‘I don’t know where we are at all. No concept. No clue. Nothing.’
“And for some odd reason we just kind of looked back and forth at each other like this for almost two minutes. I think I blacked out slightly. I was in panic mode. I was trying to open my mouth — like maybe if the motor starts — and nothing’s coming out. I’m sweating profusely. And I’m looking at him with panic in my eyes. I’m reliving this right now, it feels so painful! And I remember kind of fake laughing a lot.
“Eventually we skipped a big portion (of their lines) so that the ending of the play slightly does not make sense.
“I was mortified by this.
“Later, I remember Sarah Steele, who plays my girlfriend, she came over and sat on my lap for another portion of the play and she could tell I was shaky and she whispered in my ear, ‘You’re fine, it’s OK.’
“Then we went to the bar afterward, and the director showed up and he brought someone along and they were talking about the show. And the guy was like, ‘Oh, the director told me there was a moment in the play where you forgot your lines — when was that?’ And it dawned on me: Nobody knew. He didn’t know! That’s just bonkers to me!”
Doing a play night after night, it’s possible your mind occasionally wanders. Was some of that a factor here?
“A hundred percent. You’re on autopilot for a little bit of it. And what’s amazing about ‘The Humans’ and also what’s tricky about it is that it’s just one scene. So if water would spill during dinner, all of sudden I would have to get up and say my lines while cleaning up. So all that stuff was constantly alive and you have to be very present.
“So a hundred percent in that moment I was thinking about something else — about probably getting groceries or picking up my kids or whatever. Your body is going through the motions. I remember vividly that I put my feet up on the chair as I did all 500-plus performances that I did, and all of a sudden I’m like: I don’t even know what’s happening.
“This is the actor’s nightmare. We all have dreams where tonight’s opening night and we don’t know a single line. Here you are, you’re the lead of the show and you’re like, I haven’t memorized any of this!
“There’s a very famous story about Frances McDormand. She was doing a play at New York Theatre Workshop and there was a talkback afterward, and someone said to her: ‘That moment you took to pause and you listened to what he had to say and you just took it in? It was the most meaningful, most powerful moment I have ever witnessed in the theater.’ And she responds: ‘That’s great, I completely forgot my lines and I just stood there.’
“Now, who knows if that’s true, but it makes a ton of sense now.”
Is it taboo to call out “Line!” to the stage manager in this situation?
“After we’ve opened and we’re already a huge hit, I’ve never really heard of a scenario where that’s plausible. You can do that maybe in previews? But we were already well on our way. Is it taboo? I’ve never really heard of that happening, so maybe it is. And to be honest, at that moment it really felt like we were going to die out there. Reed couldn’t do anything because my next line was supposed to bring up a new idea in this moment.
“I think why I probably didn’t improvise either, because I had to come up with this new thing, which was about comic books, which I vividly remember now. And before that there was no talk of comic books (laughs).
“On ‘Succession’ this happens all the time. We’re doing a long take of a scene with 20 actors and if you don’t remember your line, you have to go out there and improvise. And just to full-circle this: I think one of the reasons I’m on ‘Succession’ is because they saw me in ‘The Humans.’
“But I think here, I had no idea what to improvise about. I was stuck. I was frozen. I was in shock. I was like: I don’t even know what to do.
“And maybe I thought my chuckling would help (laughs). But man. Man oh man, oh man.
“I remember this: Before the next performance, I opened up the script again and I’m reading every word of that section over and over again. Now is the time to get good at this because this is never happening again! And I kind of knew it would never happen again, but I worked my tail off on it. And you do have to stop beating yourself up about it because nobody noticed.
“But probably for a week, there were slight nerves when I got to that section. You all of a sudden have an insecure spot. Uh-oh, this is a little divot. And every time that comes up, you’re overthinking it, where you should actually work on being present in the moment.”
The takeaway …
“We’re all going to die and on my deathbed I’m definitely not going to remember this (laughs). I’m not going to be like: ‘I wish I had remembered my lines that night!’ Especially with how that audience member didn’t even realize what had happened. He took that moment to be two awkward gentlemen who don’t know how to talk to each other.
“So my takeaway is: What may seem big to you might be nothing to someone else.”
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