Miles Teller has a spectacularly bad cover profile in the September issue of Esquire. He’s nominally promoting Fantastic Four, but mostly he’s providing Good Gossip because the interview is a trainwreck. The writer, Anna Peele, calls him a dick or references his “dickishness” five times. Teller comes across as completely up his own ass, and also maybe like he’s trying to impress Peele by telling tasteless jokes. It’s not a good interview, not flattering and weirdly combative and the fact that Teller can’t cut a tough piece of meat undercuts all his macho posturing. But it’s also written in second person, which is f*cking intolerable, so it’s unreadable through no fault of Teller’s.

I maybe see why Peele adopted the second person for her point of view. There’s a kind of “you’re thinking it, I’m saying it” feel to the profile, and it’s also a little bit “can you believe this f*cking guy?” The problem is, Teller is doing such a good job of coming off like an asshole all on his own, so every time she inserts lines like “So yeah, he is kind of a dick,” it not only lacks anything approaching objectivity or subtlety, but it’s also redundant. It’s overkill, given how hard Teller is working to shoot himself in the foot. It’s just not good writing. I want to be annoyed the most with Teller, but the f*cking second person. Come on.

Teller, of course, thinks he’s been “misrepresented”.

There are a lot of direct quotes in the profile, is all I’m saying. And it’s not like this is the first bad interview Teller has given. This has become a pattern. Patterns add up. Teller is the kind of guy who direct messages Kobe Bryant to talk about greatness, who refers to Joaquin Phoenix as “Joaq”—he’s certainly providing fodder for anyone who doesn’t like, or want to like, him. It just sucks that it comes wrapped in the second person, because that’s more annoying than a twatty actor being a twat. You’re reading this and thinking—this guy’s a dick. Now you write that in the most irritating way possible.

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