Skyler Gisondo Goes Dark in Primetime

Getty Images; A24; MH Illustration/Jason Speakman//Hearst Owned4 min readYOU MAY NOT know Skyler Gisondo by name just yet. But if you’ve seen him before, he’s almost certainly made you laugh—or, at the very least, brought a smile to your face. The scene-stealing actor has become a reliable source of humor and good vibes in the last decade, making a career of playing well-natured goofball roles alongside major talents. That’s manifested in shows like The Righteous Gemstones (as Danny McBride’s son) and in movies like Paul Thomas Anderson’s coming-of-age story Licorice Pizza (as a smug young actor alongside Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim). Last year, he made his DC Universe debut in James Gunn’s Superman as Jimmy Olsen, Clark Kent’s best friend and an intrepid reporter for the Daily Planet (embodying a new take on that character that transformed him into an undeniable ladies magnet, for good measure).His latest role, however, puts him next to Robert Pattinson in Primetime—the debut feature from acclaimed documentary director Lance Oppenheim that stars Pattinson as infamous To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen—and is a bit different from what he’s been doing. Gisondo once again plays an aspiring actor, but this time he’s “Decoy” Dan Plumb, a young man desperate for his SAG card who gets drawn into Hansen’s elaborate world of capturing online predators, orchestrating dubious sting operations, and chasing television ratings at any cost.When Gisondo first got the call from Oppenheim, he wondered how, exactly, he fit into the film’s grisly world of early internet crime. “In our first meeting, I was just like, ‘Dude, what made you think this would be a good idea?’” he recalls with a laugh. “‘What have you seen of mine that makes you think I would be right?’”A few years ago, he might’ve even turned down a role that was such a departure from his previous work. “Frankly, I would’ve been too scared,” Gisondo says. “I remember reading this script, looking at scenes, like, ‘Oh man, I don’t know if it can do that. I don’t know if I can get there. I’ve never done anything like that.’” As a result, Gisondo entered production on Primetime with “major impostor syndrome,” he says. “I responded to [that] by trying to work harder than I had before. It ultimately was the most gratifying process of my career, in a way, to be operating so often from a place of real uncertainty.”While Pattinson’s operatic performance as Hansen and Oppenheim’s moody, colorful, saturated visuals are the headliners, Gisondo’s Dan serves as the film’s emotional anchor. If Pattinson’s Hansen is the Jay Gatsby figure in Primetime—an entry point in the film’s complex—then it’s Dan who’s our Nick Carraway, our eyes and ears as we attempt to understand it.That’s not to say that Primetime is all grim darkness; the film has a playful sense of humor, often at the expense of showcasing just how out of his depth Dan really is. In one early sequence, Chris takes Dan out for a drink to talk to him and calm his nerves. After Dan initially orders a Bud Light, Chris tells him it’s OK to order something a little classier and more upscale—this round is on NBC, he insists. Dan blushes, smiles, and changes his order: “Budweiser, then,” he clarifies. It’s moments like this where the chemistry between Pattinson and Gisondo really shines.While Hansen is an intense and manipulative character on screen, Pattinson was anything but, according to Gisondo. “Inspiring” is the only word he can think of to describe his co-star. “To be someone at his level, willing to take such big swings and try things?” he says, still with a slight sense of awe. “If you come into a scene with any sort of game plan, very quickly it goes out the window, and there’s just this thing that is constantly alive and changing.” Gisondo credits Pattinson’s seemingly inherent ability to “go to this extreme place, and then immediately [come] out of it” for helping the pair maintain a playful, collaborative energy even while engaging with such heavy subject material. “He’s so generously wanting to know how that’s working for you,” Gisondo says, “and if you want to try anything, and if you want to go again.”Mondadori PortfolioNot long after completing work on Primetime, Gisondo filmed the comedy sequel Focker-in-Law (with Robert De Niro, Ben Stiller, and Ariana Grande), a sharp, slapstick turn into a far broader comedic world. While Gisondo saw Pattinson’s ability to drop in and out of the darkness of Primetime firsthand, he found it harder for himself to shake things off. “There were moments in Fockers early on, where it was like, I’ve gotta remember what movie I’m in,” he says with a laugh. “There were a couple times where [Focker-in-Law director] John Hamburg gave me the note where he was like, ‘Sky, you know, energy-wise, it’s happy?’”The ability to move back and forth between two disparate tones, he says, is a privilege he plans to take full advantage of with his next project, HBO’s The People vs. Gorilla Grodd. The series, in which Gisondo reprises his role as Jimmy Olsen, comes from creators Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault, who were behind Netflix’s very funny and criminally underrated mockumentary series American Vandal. “I’m pinching myself,” he says with a smile on his face, softly laughing as he realizes the comparison he’s about to make. “It’s helpful coming from Primetime… It’s this true crime mockumentary, so it’s not a dissimilar thing. Oftentimes, you don’t even know where the camera is. It might just be CCTV cameras in a courtroom, so it feels like a play, or it feels like anything could happen.”Anything could happen seems like the right descriptor for how viewers might start to feel when they see Gisondo pop up—especially if he so efficiently continues to toe the line between levity and darkness.Evan is the culture editor for Men's Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn't.