Andrew Garfield is promoting tick, tick…BOOM!, now streaming on Netflix. Sarah’s review of the film was posted yesterday just in time for Thanksgiving television time. As Sarah wrote, Andrew gives an exuberant performance carrying the movie, and it’s why he’s contending for a Best Actor Oscar nomination. Several Oscar predictors have him on their lists right now. 

 

Andrew was on The Late Show Starring Stephen Colbert this week to talk about the film. He’s a lovely talk show guest – great energy, willing to be silly, earnest at the right times, irreverent at others. And vulnerable, especially when talking about his performance, how he personally related to the true story of Jonathan Larson’s talent and loss, and how he connected it to his own loss. Andrew’s mother died two years ago. His father and his brother were in the audience at Colbert and when Stephen asked him about the relationship between art and grief, Andrew spoke beautifully, while gesturing often to his father and brother, about how grief is “unexpressed love”, and that he was grateful for the opportunity to honour his mother through this story. 

I’m including both parts of the interview below because it’s worth the full watch; that emotional moment is in the second video, starting at the 4 minute mark if you don’t have time. 

 

 

 

And if you have even less time, here’s the clip isolated – and be ready, the tears will come. 

 

I love that he says that he wants to talk about it, that he doesn’t mind being asked about it, almost as though he’s embracing his grief because, as he says, it’s a testament to this amazing person who gave him life, it means she was there, it means she was cherished. And I’m sure we all have our own ways of connecting to what Andrew is communicating here, we all are missing someone, or someones, or we’re all preparing to. So it was a powerfully unifying moment, to see a man so comfortable showing his grief in the most public way. We can all probably learn something from that. 

Here are some shots of Andrew over the last week or so out and about New York with his girlfriend, Alyssa Miller. If that name sounds familiar it might be because Alyssa dated Jake Gyllenhaal back in 2013.