Jeff Daniels loads up for loathing in 'A Man in Full' with big bluster, Georgia accent
LOS ANGELES – Jeff Daniels knew he was headed to unchartered territory portraying larger-than-life Atlanta real estate mogul Charlie Croker in "A Man in Full," the bombastic central character from Tom Wolfe's critically acclaimed 1998 novel.
Fortunately, Daniels found supersized Croker inspiration for the six-episode Netflix adaptation (streaming Thursday) from Shania Twain.
The country singer jetted onto the Atlanta set of the series, written and executive produced by David E. Kelley, to shoot a performance for Croker's over-the-top 60th birthday bash. As cameras rolled, Twain serenaded the beaming business tycoon with her hit "You're Still the One." Daniels saw the Croker light while lapping up the spotlight.
"We did the shot where Charlie steps out to the dance floor center to have Shania Twain sing just to him. That's when I got it," says Daniels. "He paid for Shania Twain to be at his party so she would sing to him. And he wants everybody to watch her sing to him. I was like, 'OK, there's Charlie Croker.' He's the star of his own show."
Still, even for two-time Emmy-winner Daniels, 69, the challenge of embodying the aging, arrogant good-ol-boy was as big as Croker's Georgia accent. Daniels, who played idealistic Will McAvoy in Aaron Sorkin's HBO series "The Newsroom," is best known for loved characters ranging from goofy Harry Dunne in 1994's "Dumb and Dumber" to Atticus Finch in Broadway's "To Kill a Mockingbird" in 2021.
"But risking failure is what keeps me interested. It's the opposite of finding a brand and then repeating it," says Daniels.
The knives are out for the love-him-but-detest-him Croker as his house-of-cards business empire is secretly failing due to overwhelming debt fueled by his conspicuous overspending (private jets, prized stallions, hiring Shania Twain for a party). His jealous loan officer Raymond Peepgrass (Tom Pelphrey) and fearsome bank loan collector Harry Zale (the sweat-inducing Bill Camp) seek to puncture the hot air from the colorful Croker's balloon.
That's exactly why executive producer and director Regina King knew Daniels was the perfect Croker.
"Even if he's fictional, Charlie Croker is a much-loathed human being," says King. "For the audience to take the series ride, it has to be someone they trust. That's Jeff, who was down to take that swing. He said on that first Zoom call, 'This is going to be fun.'"
How Jeff Daniels wrangled that big Georgia accent
Before the fun, Daniels had to dial into Croker's thick Georgia dialect. "The accent is like Charlie Croker's armor," says Kelley. "The more insecure he feels, the thicker the accent becomes."
Kelley is traditionally so averse to them that accents were banned from the set of his Emmy-winning ABC series "Boston Legal."
"If you miss the Boston accent by even a little bit, it sounds awful," says Kelley; "We had signs on the set, 'No Boston accents allowed.' You never heard one on the show."
Yet the Georgia-born (but Michigan-raised) Daniels was given free rein for his big – and bigger – speaking style, which he honed by studying YouTube videos of Southern senators and working with dialect coaches. "It's what Tom Wolfe wrote, so you've got to go there. Everything about Charlie is more, even the accent," says Daniels. "But this is not a documentary."
Are there changes to Tom Wolfe's 'A Man in Full' in the Netflix series?
Wolfe's main themes remain intact in the Netflix series, with some changes to the 742-page tome.
Conrad Hensley, a white, California-based Croker Foods employee, provides a stark social contrast to Croker's opulent world in Wolfe's novel when his layoff starts a downward spiral that lands him in prison. In the Netflix series, Hensley is a Black man (Jon Michael Hill), married to Croker's assistant, who's controversially jailed after a violent police arrest and represented by Croker's corporate attorney Roger White (Aml Ameen).
"It was a delicate dance because we wanted to try to offer different perspectives," says King. "We tried hard to tap into the psychology of everyone involved in a violent police crime, how all minds are playing at that given moment. It's risky, but hopefully, it leads to some watercooler conversations."
A rumored sex crime that threatens to disrupt Atlanta peace and politics in Wolfe's novel becomes part of the emerging backstory of Atlanta businesswoman Joyce Newman (Lucy Liu) – a friend of Croker's socialite ex-wife Martha (Diane Lane). But all the characters and events are entrenched in Croker's immediate world, making Daniels' role all the more pivotal. "We keep everything tightly tethered to Charlie," says Kelley. "If Charlie Croker isn't physically in a scene, he's part of that scene tangentially."
That leads to a series full of Croker follies. His out-of-touch bullheadedness is on full display when Croker injures himself while grabbing a rattlesnake in his barn to impress potential business investors. He makes his spiraling business worse by insisting the group join him at his breeding barn to watch his prized stallion breed with a mare, which ends up in a fiasco.
"That scene was in the book, and I remember thinking, 'I hope we keep that,'" says Daniels, who stood 10 feet away during a real equine breeding scene that was incorporated into a memorable Episode 3 scene. "Charlie thinks it's the most beautiful thing. And it's something that no one's seen before (on TV), certainly in this context," says Daniels. "It's repulsive as hell to some characters who run off. But the real horse wranglers that day were going, 'We're just making a baby.'"
Despite the deep character flaws, Kelley says he misses writing about the man who is "both repugnant and contagious at the same time. We repel against him, and yet somehow we relate to him and feel for him." (Kelley's next project: A series adaptation of Scott Turow's 1986 legal thriller "Presumed Innocent" starring Jake Gyllenhaal and due on Apple TV+ in June.)
Daniels has fond memories of living large: "I enjoyed him," says Daniels. "Maybe it was breaking all the actor rules of 'less is more' for three months. Whatever was on Charlie's mind was out of his mouth. I'm going to miss that personality."