After a performance so sinister for its skin-crawling realism inGerald’s Gameand a smaller role inDoctor Sleep, it was past time forBruce Greenwoodto take center stage as part of horror connoisseurMike Flanagan’s troupe of recurring actors. Greenwood’s been a respected figure in the Canadian film industry for decades and far from ignored by American media, but beyond consistent indie roles, he’s nonetheless felt just this side of underutilized. Before assuming Netflix leading man status forThe Fall of the House of Usher, wider audiences likely knew him best for his roles in the 1980s television dramaSt. Elsewhereand directorJ. J. Abrams' Star Trek movies.
Mike Flanagan’sThe Fall of theHouse of Usherfixes that vague sense of Hollywood underappreciating Greenwood by placing the fate of the entire Netflix venture in his hands. Every cast member in Flanagan’sEdgar Allan Poe-inspired ensembleis an essential puzzle piece and each delivers unsurprisingly spectacular turns. But as the main character andthe non-linear storyteller,The Fall of theHouse of Ushersoars or fails based on Bruce Greenwood. His take on the fallen-from-grace patriarch Roderick Usher is a beat-for-beat perfect performance: towering, terrified, corrupted, and vulnerable in turns, often within the span of minutes. He anchorsHouse of Usher’s looming psychological melodrama. So it’s startling to remember thatFlanagan initially cast a veteran Hollywood name as Roderick, with Greenwood arriving to the role as a last-minute, desperately needed replacement.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher have built a pharmaceutical company into an empire of wealth, privilege and power; however, secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying.
Who Did Bruce Greenwood Replace as Roderick Usher in ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’?
When castingThe Fall of the House of Usher, Mike Flanagan stepped outside his reliable collaborators and initially castFrank Langellaas the doomed Roderick Usher. Langella is a multiple Tony Award-winning actor with a decades-long career in independent American film and the occasional blockbuster. Some of his more famous roles include Count Dracula in the 1979Draculareimagining and President Richard Nixon inFrost/Nixon, the latter of which earned him an Academy Award nomination. Production onHouse of Usherwas approximately halfway finished whenanonymous staff accused Langellaof allegedly committing inappropriate behavior on-set. Netflix conducted an official investigation into the claims, which included assertions that Langella’s racially and sexually charged statements toward the cast and crew were “toxic” and “crass.” Consequently,Netflix fired Langella fromThe Fall of the House of Usher, leading toBruce Greenwood quickly stepping into finish the series and refilm Langella’s scenes.
Frank Langella’s alleged behavior is unacceptable. For the sake of argument, even if one hypothetically divorced the claims from Langella’s industry experience and past performances, his presence just doesn’t suitthe reinterpreted Roderick Usher Mike Flanagan put to screen. Of course, the benefit of hindsight is a boon. YetRoderick feels tailor-made for Bruce Greenwood as much as Greenwood’s skills match the character’s designs in all respects: tone-wise, performance demands, and age (at the time of filming, Greenwood was 66 years old to Langella’s 84 years). It’s difficult if not impossible to overlay another actor upon Greenwood’s work, with Langella feeling especially out of place. And with Greenwood’s rich tapestry of a performance, why would we want to? Those monologues alone should guarantee him an Emmy assembly line.
Why Is Bruce Greenwood the Best Actor for Roderick Usher?
Mike Flanagan requires much from his actors. The quality of his scripts necessitates high-intensity emotion combined with eye-catching naturalism. As both headwriter and lead director onThe Fall of the House of Usher, Flanagan lets Bruce Greenwood play to his strengths as he grounds Flanagan’s gloriously ornate meditation on absolute power corrupting absolutely and its spectacularly gruesome comeuppance. One of Greenwood’s defining traits as a performer is never overplaying his hand.Whether he’s a heroic figure or a villain, he boasts a quiet intensity and organic charisma, both of which are physically and emotionally intimidating. The context is key. When Greenwood deploys his laser-focused fierceness as a heroic figure, it’s delightful.As a villain, it’s enough to make audiences squirm in discomfort. Gerald inGerald’s Game, for example, never topples into outright black-and-white villainy, yet something’s unsettling from the start. The more thematic layers the film reveals, the moreGreenwood imbues this seemingly charming man with a direct, vile intimacy that’s terrifying in its carefully dispensed realism: the cunning of a fox and the predatory appetite of a lion concealed behind a white-toothed smile.
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One can paint Roderick Usher with similar brush strokes. Roderick owns a room automatically because he’s an accomplished businessman, but he’s ruthlessly built his unfathomable fortune upon the graves of millions and maimed his soul in the process. The man’s easy swagger is undercut but a coldly off-putting aura, like an eel sliding along the floor. Rarely does Bruce Greenwood need to raise his voice or indisputably dispense cruelty onscreen to prove that the lesson his son Frederick (Henry Thomas) learned from his father was the law ofthe Usher household: don’t be “consistently cruel,” but do act “sufficiently brutal at least once to establish authority." Even when Roderick admits his plethora of crimes toC. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly), he leaks a privileged disdain: an expectancy that the person he’s graciously giving his time to had better make said time worthwhile. Somehow, Greenwood conveys this attitude with gravitas despite wearing slippers and matching blue pajamas. He weaves his way through Mike Flanagan’s complex speeches with measured, sharp-eyed severity, and that makes Roderick’s jump-scare moments of terror more ominously punctuated.
‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Needed Bruce Greenwood
Despite the ease of Bruce Greenwood’s approach,Roderick Usher isn’t an easy role. It’s a feast and a beast of a character in one, an actor’s dream that demands said actor balance Roderick’s confidence with his raw vulnerability. By design, Greenwood must be both the most performative member of the cast and its North Star force as supernatural deaths run amok. There’s the Roderick Usher who’s a rotten apple to his core with a worm inside, and there’s the non-manipulative tenderness he showshis granddaughter Lenore (Kyliegh Curran). Some might say that’s just the business of acting, and that perspective isn’t untrue. Still, Greenwood has to sell Roderick spending one minute wondering if he’s a god before those illusions shatter as he watches his love-deprived children die before his eyes. To hammer the point home, Roderick contends with that age-old gothic horror question of “Is my mind inventing this?” or “Are the mangled ghosts of my children haunting me?” With his soulful eyes and well-wielded gravely baritone, Greenwood makes Roderick age centuries within a week.The Fall of the House of Usheris about the dissolution of a wretched empire as much as it’s about shredding what little remains of one man’s tattered, bleak soul.
Greenwood proves especially visceral whenVerna’s (Carla Gugino) inevitable appearanceflips Roderick from predator to shell-shocked prey. No matter how hard he tries, Roderick can’t force rationality upon his situation. The monologue where he weighs the various ways he could end his life is more unhinged than the ones he inflicts upon Dupin. The narcissistic Roderick is a shadow; the newly broken version brands himself a coward. Greenwood truly captures the “poverty” of Roderick Usher, a young man chewed up and spat out by the real twin figures of death: ambition and self-preservation. The actor adeptly captures all of Roderick’s shades, even the flashes of his younger self played skillfully byZach Gilford. In a heavily populated cast of no-holds-barred, bare-your-soul performances,Bruce Greenwood deserves recognition for carryingThe Fall of the House of Usheron his back. It’s not that Frank Langella wouldn’t have delivered an excellent performance. It just wouldn’t be as affecting or satisfactorily superb.
The Fall of the House of Usheris available to stream on Netflix.
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