Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson on Breaking Out, Their Real-Life Bromance, and Adapting Stephen King
Early this year, Jonsson was anointed as the star of Frank Ocean’s feverishly anticipated directorial debut. Details of the production are as scant and enigmatic as anything else Ocean works on. And though Jonsson is determined to remain similarly tight-lipped about the project, he says it happened “organically.” “I think he’s been a bit of a fan of my work, as I am his,” Jonsson says. “He reached out, which was really, really sweet, and we got talking.”
“I’m working with someone who is risking something,” Jonsson adds. “And if my expression can add to that, then that’s what you do.”
Even with everything else in the works, Jonsson isn’t done hustling—in May he announced that he’s already set up his own production company.
It’s not, he made clear to me, a place for vanity projects. Instead, he’s hoping to be able to provide a seat at the table to artists from similar backgrounds as his. “If everyone just takes from the pie, there’ll be nothing left,” he says. “You’ve got to take, make something, and put it back on the table for other people to have some…. I don’t want monopoly.”
Cooper Hoffman was determined not to be an actor. “I wanted to do everything but act, basically,” he says. The legacy of his father, who died in 2014 when Cooper was 10, loomed large. He even entertained the idea of becoming a fashion designer. “I wanted to go to, like, Central Saint Martins,” he says of his teenage whims, referring to the famous London fashion school.
Instead, at 17, an age when his peers were getting ready for college, he was urged by family friend P.T.A. to audition for Licorice Pizza. He nailed the part, suddenly announcing himself as a major talent and jump-starting a career.
Hoffman says he had his own version of college doing several movies—Licorice Pizza, Wildcat, Old Guy, and Saturday Night—in quick succession. Early this year came the final exam: making his stage debut in an off-Broadway revival of Sam Shepard’s Curse of the Starving Class. “I was like, I’m so ill-prepared for this,” he says.
He found himself thinking about his father. “The only person I really wanted to talk to was my dad,” he says.
“He’s my favorite actor, but he’s also my dad,” Hoffman continues. “He’s also not here. A lot of people idolize their parents because they’re great parents. It’s a different thing to idolize your parent because you love their art. So as much as I would love him to be here and talk to him about acting, I also would be terrified to have him see my stuff and judge my stuff. Not that he would judge it, because he was a very empathetic person, and he would probably—hopefully—hold my hand through all of it.”
“I get to figure this out on my own,” he says. “But also, I would love his advice. And I would also just love my dad.”
