2 Dec 2014 8:37 AM PT
BY ALEX BHATTACHARJI AND DAVID WALTERS,PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY LIEBMAN,STYLING BY SARAH SCHUSSHEIM AND EUGENE TONG
It’s like a tale of two cities in Hollywood these days. Not just because it’s the best of times (there are more ways to reach audiences than ever) and the worst of times (a historically bad summer at the box office, Kourtney & Khloé Take the Hamptons), but because entertainment, too, is being riven by the struggle between the haves and the have-nots. Only in this case, it’s the have-talents, the have-ideas, and the have-guts vs. the have-not-a-clues—that is, the slaves to the status quo. We’re betting big on the former: the freethinking innovators, creative disrupters, and risk-courting visionaries bold enough to flip the script or go off it entirely—payday, reputation, and conventional wisdom be damned. They range from a comedic duo taking dead aim at North Korea to billionaire hedge-funders on a mission to save independent film to a first-time director igniting a dialogue about race relations to a fearless actress starring in the sweetest little abortion rom-com you’ll ever see. There’s no happy ending to this story—at least not yet—because our heroes are still writing it.
Jim Parsons: The New King of Comedy Image: Jeremy Liebman for Details Magazine
From one of TV’s biggest paydays to a widely lauded dramatic turn, the bangs keep getting bigger for Jim Parsons.
This past September, the trade website The Wrap published a list of network stars’ Q scores, the oft-cited, little-understood Hollywood metric measuring familiarity and appeal. Of 62 scored actors, Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons ranked second. “I always thought it was something you weren’t allowed to know,” says Parsons, downplaying the industry-wonk popularity contest. “Like it was something only God and Les Moonves knew.”
Tuxedo jacket by Michael Bastian. Shirt by Dolce & Gabbana. Pants by Ralph Lauren Black Label. Bow tie by Turnbull & Asser. Cummerbund by Pink by Thomas Pink. Studs by Paul Stuart.
Two is something of a lucky number for Parsons these days. It’s the number of Emmy nominations he received this year, one for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (a category he won for the fourth time for portraying Asperger’s-ish theoretical physicist Sheldon Cooper) and another for his role as activist Tommy Boatwright in The Normal Heart, HBO’s adaptation of Larry Kramer’s seminal play about the HIV-AIDS crisis in early-eighties New York City. Viewers who doubted Parsons’ dramatic chops—or who were unaware that he played Boatwright in a 2011 Broadway run that won a Drama Desk award—were stunned by his nuanced performance. Parsons admits that distancing himself from Sheldon to make the shift presented a challenge: “I remember approaching the character like, Oh God, he wants to touch people. I needed to open up physically, as opposed to what I do on the show, which is ‘Get away.'”
Another figure that effectively demonstrates Parsons’ value to CBS: $1 million, the per-episode compensation that he and castmates Johnny Galecki and Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting secured in their recent contract renegotiations, plus a 1.25 percent share of the show’s back-end revenue—an estimated $90 million haul for the next three seasons. (The average network-series regular is paid $15,000 to $25,000 an episode.) The deal makes Parsons the highest-paid openly gay man on TV, a bit of “accidental activism” that he’s happy to embrace. “I’m proud to carry that mantle, if that’s what it is,” Parsons says. “It touches me to think there’s some subtle message being delivered through it.”
• • •
Jim Parsons, 41
Credit check: The Big Bang Theory, The Normal Heart. Upcoming: Home
“I get to do what I want professionally, which was always a goal. Now you can hold that over me every time you see me in something awful and say, ‘He didn’t have to do that—jackass.'”
• • •