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In the years since his fame skyrocketed thanks to his Emmy-winning performance on Succession<\/em>, Jeremy Strong<\/strong> has developed a reputation that doesn\u2019t always sit right with him. He never hides his earnest passion for acting, nor his exhaustive commitment to getting inside his characters. Just last year, Strong told me<\/a> how hard he worked to play Roy Cohn in the Donald Trump<\/strong> origin story The Apprentice:<\/em> \u201cIt was a disturbing, upsetting place to be\u2014that heart of darkness.\u201d<\/p>\n That said, Strong also thinks observers often draw the wrong conclusions about him. \u201cI\u2019m known as this pretentious, unfunny person\u2014that\u2019s the sense I get from some people, or from the media,\u201d he tells Vanity Fair.<\/em> \u201cBut a lot of people who know me know I\u2019m not a very particularly intense person.\u201d<\/p>\n Enter \u201cThe Bean Method,\u201d a new Super Bowl spot for Dunkin\u2019 Donuts that Strong filmed opposite Oscar winners Ben<\/strong> and Casey Affleck.<\/strong> Strong plays a heightened version of himself, an actor impossibly committed to, yes, making a Dunkin\u2019 commercial. The ad leads to the Affleck brothers finding Strong in his dressing room, soaking in a bath of coffee grinds before coming up for air, Apocalypse Now!<\/em> style<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m just trying to find the character,\u201d Strong says in the final spot, which aired Sunday evening. \u201cI\u2019m all in for Dunkin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n In his first interview about the commercial, Strong describes how he came up with the idea for it after an initial pitch from Ben Affleck (who also directed) that left him feeling conflicted. From there, Strong committed to the bit with a level of research, detail, and ferocity that could only be expected of, well, Jeremy Strong. And yes, it\u2019s especially funny for him to do this on the heels of his first-ever Oscar nomination, for his powerful work in The Apprentice<\/em>\u2014a film that has taken on new resonance in the unsettling first weeks of the Trump presidency. But as Strong explains, there\u2019s a richer link between his two most recent screen roles than you might expect.<\/p>\n Vanity Fair:<\/em> How did this happen, Jeremy?<\/strong><\/p>\n Jeremy Strong:<\/em> [Laughs<\/em>] \u201cHow did this happen?\u201d is a great question. It\u2019s not something I ever imagined myself doing. It was so uncharacteristic that it felt like a different kind of risk.<\/p>\n I\u2019d been approached a year ago to do something else for the Super Bowl with my siblings from Succession,<\/em> for a brand that I didn\u2019t really have a connection to. That categorically was a no for me. I\u2019ve been interested in achieving escape velocity from Succession<\/em>, which was an incredible life experience, but not something I wish to stay connected to forever. Then I got a call saying that Ben Affleck was doing this Dunkin\u2019 commercial, and would I consider doing it? I read it and it had me in a tracksuit coming out at the very end and doing a rap\u2014like Kendall\u2019s rap<\/a>\u2014to the other coffee brands. I said, \u201cI can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n So this premise was your idea?<\/strong><\/p>\n For some reason, I had this image of Marty Sheen<\/strong> coming out of the mud in Apocalypse Now!<\/em> I started to just formulate some ideas. I texted Ben saying, \u201cHey, I can\u2019t do a rap, but you want to hop on a call and maybe can I pitch you some things?\u201d We got on the phone and I said, \u201cWhat if we just take the given circumstances as they are: that I\u2019m meant to be doing your commercial, and I\u2019m this actor who takes what he does seriously, and I\u2019m not getting to show up on the set when I\u2019m meant<\/em> to come out and do the rap?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n