Empire’s always been a fan of Richard Kind, a bear-like American character actor with a fragile, nerdish gracelessness that lit up the likes of TV show Spin City. But with the best will in the world, we never thought he’d make it as a leading man.
So thank God for the Coen Brothers, who don’t think the same way as most people. For they’ve just gone and cast Kind as one of the two very unheralded stars of their next movie (following the forthcoming Burn After Reading, of course), A Serious Man.
Yes, that’s right – no Clooneys or Pitts or Bardems this time around. Joel and Ethan are going low-key with A Serious Man, a pitch-black comedy set in 1967 which revolves around a man whose life falls apart when his wife sets out to leave him and his socially inept brother refuses to leave the house.
Tony Award-nominated actor Michael Stuhlbarg will play the title
character, while Kind will play his awkward brother (and as anyone who’s seen Kind onscreen in a plethora of blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em supporting roles, he does awkward like few others).
And if you thought Kind’s film career was middling, Stuhlbarg hasn’t been in a film since 2001. So the Coens are clearly going with their guts on these casting calls – and more power to them for doing so.
Filming starts next month in Minneapolis.