2020 was a year of stress and strife, but admittedly, amid the chaos, there were bright spots that helped bring about moments of great clarity. Between The Invisible Man and The Haunting of Bly Manor, actor Oliver Jackson-Cohen was one of those moments. Caught between the fraught emotions and the oh-so-blurred lines of love and obsession, Jackson-Cohen was engaging in a much-needed artistically pertinent conversation regarding toxic masculinity and the culture surrounding it unlike any other actor. All the while, Jackson-Cohen proved that actors in horror are hardly the one-note scream queens and kings that many reviewers and audiences dismiss them as being. Drawing on his own experiences and empathetic creative abilities, he was able to craft two of the most compelling villains in the past decade.
Going from the gentle and troubled Luke Crain in Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House series to outright despicable Adrian Griffin in Leigh Whannell’s 2020 update of The Invisible Man feels a lot like whiplash to the viewer, but Jackson-Cohen manages to embody both with ease and skill that is utterly enviable. The journey from a character so heartfelt in one of the most beloved Netflix originals to a complete monster was breathtaking and added to the complete sucker punch of Whannell’s commentary on domestic violence and abuse. He didn’t stop there, and he once again reunited with Mike Flanagan in a new installment of The Haunting series that took the viewer to the halls of Bly Manor. It would have been easy for Jackson-Cohen’s next dastardly male to be a rehashing of Adrian Griffin, but Peter Quint became anything but, and in the process, he was able to further the commentary on the nature of abusive relationships, gaslighting, and the toxicity that was touched upon with Adrian’s character. It’s not often that an actor will take on roles that speak to one another in such a stunningly thematic way, but 2020 was Jackson-Cohen’s year of love and obsession as he created a necessary creative dialogue that speaks to intense real-world issues.
What makes a bad man? In media, it is all too easy to create a character that is a one-note villain and forgo the hazy nuance of actual humanity. Jackson-Cohen’s performances don’t allow the audience to forget that, while these men are monstrous, they are very much humans and byproducts of the systems that made them. When discussing Adrian Griffin’s character with The Gentleman’s Journal, Jackson-Cohen said, “He’s terrifying because he’s real,” which brilliantly sums up the character. While Adrian Griffin is merely imagined, men like him are allowed to roam around and prey on women. In the same interview, Jackson-Cohen continued to expand upon the character by saying, “It’s about gaslighting and how, as a society, we still always question the woman and call her emotional or crazy. I know that so much has happened in the world over the past couple of years, but it’s still just as rife, and it’s a really important conversation that needs to happen. The degree of control and the degree of narcissism, of course it’s inflated in the movie, but it’s terrifying because it’s true.”
Adrian is bolstered by his status in life. He’s literally a wealthy, handsome genius, an archetype that most people would fall over themselves for, but the veneer falls away. Just check out the news to see which beautiful and affluent man has been revealed to be a covert abuser because there always is one who is hiding behind looks, charisma, and a ton of money. Whannell knows this, Jackson-Cohen knows it, and the viewer does, too. Jackson-Cohen uses this as his in to get under the audience’s skin, and it works. The hyper-awareness and acknowledgment of the real-world terror at play aids in the portrayal of Adrian. Jackson-Cohen decided not to sugar coat a grave reality but instead chose to engage with it, keeping it at the forefront of his interviews and talking points while doing press for the film. A lot of actors refuse to engage with this type of discourse because many deem it “political” or “anti-male,” even though it isn’t. In these cases, the idea of the actor as a brand wins out over telling any kind of meaningful story, but Jackson-Cohen isn’t interested in image because he’s interested in the tale itself and what that tale conveys. He’s not coasting by pretending that toxic masculinity is a myth. He makes a choice not only to acknowledge it via his portrayals, but he consistently centers it in the conversation about these characters. He’s definitely not shy that extensive research went into Adrian and that the character is wholly based in the reality women face when in abusive relationships.
When it comes to the horror genre, Jackson-Cohen is drawn to the emotional gravity of the genre and the ability to use it to work through real world issues. “I think what’s so clever about horror, and I think specifically with what Mike has done on our show, it becomes a metaphor for something else. So specifically with Hill House, if you take away the house and all the ghosts and all the horror elements, it’s about childhood trauma. So you can swap out what all those kids went through, the horror they experienced, can be swapped out for sexual abuse or physical abuse or anything like that. So you manage to kind of navigate all of these horrific things we kind of don’t want to look at, in the veil of ghosts, so it becomes palatable for an audience,” Jackson-Cohen relays to Flaunt regarding his work in Hill House. A statement like that alone is enough at times to get the “horror isn’t political” and the “horror isn’t that deep” crowds frothing rabidly at their mouths. It’s Jackson-Cohen’s respect for the depth horror can bring that allows him to create characters like Adrian and make the experience an immersive one for the audience. The respect he has for the genre’s ability to facilitate difficult discussions lends speaks to his own brilliance as a creative, and in many other interviews, he mentions how horror has given way to some of the richest and most interesting characters. Horror is catharsis if it is anything, and many people find healing within it. Jackson-Cohen is, after all, no stranger to trauma and catharsis, in the same interview with Flaunt he divulges that a few years ago he received a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis. He states, “You know we all have incredibly complicated lives and incredibly complicated upbringings, and I used all of my stuff: I was diagnosed with PTSD a couple of years ago, so all of that is in there with Luke — and it felt incredibly cathartic to be able to kind of put it all out there and be there.” It’s certainly never easy to discuss the complexities of mental health diagnoses, especially those directly linked to trauma, which makes Jackson-Cohen a beautiful and refreshing oddity in a landscape that is woefully focused on appearances and perfection. In fact, with his own background of trauma in mind, it’s positively admirable that he takes on these heavy roles. With PTSD there is always the danger of experiencing triggers, and portraying characters that are actively abusive, it would be extremely easy to find oneself in the midst of a particularly fragile state. However, it’s easy to see how his past informs his approach to the characters and the works as a whole. He’s found a way to channel those emotions into pure productive brilliance, creating catharsis for himself as viewers alike.
Being comfortable with emotional depths and shades of gray has allowed Jackson-Cohen to take the plunge into complicated roles. After The Invisible Man’s debut in February, audiences were on edge in a most delightful way to see what would become of the actor’s next collaboration with Flanagan. The Haunting of Bly Manor became one of the most anticipated shows of 2020. Early on, it was revealed that Jackson-Cohen would be portraying a version of Peter Quint. Readers and viewers alike who are familiar with Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw” are aware that Peter Quint is the tale’s menacing spectral antagonist. Again, like with Adrian, there was the chance for error when crafting this villain as they have to be as well developed and as rounded as the story’s heroes and every character in between. Taking an approach similar to what he did with Adrian, Jackson-Cohen strived to ground Peter in reality, yet the two characters could not be more different in how he portrayed them. Adrian was steeped in pure narcissism and rage while Peter became a character who was rooted in long-buried traumatic experiences and a warped sense of what constitutes love. Both are undoubtedly possessive, and present factual romantic pitfalls people could easily fall into.
In an interview with Collider Jackson-Cohen explains, “And I do have this theory, and maybe I’m wrong, and hopefully it’s clear in the show, that Peter had this incredibly rough upbringing and it damaged him to a point that his will to good and his will to sense has been permanently damaged.” Peter’s toxicity is a direct result of being a victim himself, a vicious cycle where the abused can become the abuser themselves. Trauma changes the brain and people’s perceptions, causing some victims to give in to the same toxic mentality that harmed them. As a way to protect himself, Peter presents a mask to the world, much like Adrian, yet in an entirely different way. Peter presents himself as hypermasculine and cultured, a natural charmer. Adrian relies on his wealth and tech prowess to create a facade. They are similarly imbued with the tenants of toxic masculinity despite there being a class difference between the two men. Adrian’s wealth allows him to abuse women continually, and Peter’s lower-class status has put him at a marked disadvantage, thus showing that such toxic displays of masculine energy can affect any man on the socioeconomic spectrum.
The show takes its sweet time getting to the origins of Peter’s damage, but when it does, it does so with absolutely heartrending effect. This integral detail about Peter’s background is of Jackson-Cohen’s own design. In an interview with TV Line, Jackson-Cohen details the soul-searching process that led to his revelation that Peter was sexually abused by his father as a child. Jackson-Cohen says, “And so, I spoke to Mike about that, and I said I don’t think we need to go into, ‘This is what happened to me: I was abused, and I was sexually abused.’ I think Mike handled it in a very, very respectful way and in an honest way. Anyone that’s been a victim of anything like this, it’s not something that is usually said aloud.” This detail doesn’t excuse Peter’s abusive nature toward Rebecca and how he has taken advantage of the Wingrave childrens’ trust, but it allows the audience to better understand the man behind the carefully curated societal mask. Jackson-Cohen created such an emotionally uncomfortable villain because he allowed himself to go to a place of deep emotional turmoil and vulnerability. Peter puts the viewer in an awkward place because he is searingly and unforgettably human. Watching the show, the audience goes from hating Peter and how smarmy he is to understanding him and feeling for him, all the while realizing that he is still an extremely toxic human being because oftentimes humanity is more terrifying than any fictitious monster.
Above all, Jackson-Cohen doesn’t seek to make excuses for the bad behavior of his characters, which, in many ways, lends clemency to his portrayals. Far too many actors seek to make characters who are simply horrible people palatable to an audience or try to justify their actions to the viewers. Jackson-Cohen allows Adrian and Peter to exist on their own obsessive terms as two sides of the same toxic coin and doesn’t try to condone their actions in the least. Condoning their actions would destroy any and all dialogue that he created as an actor, allowing people to look at the characters through rose-colored glasses and not in the harsh light of reality.
What’s admirable is that Jackson-Cohen has committed himself to being emotionally raw and vulnerable as a person. It’s uncommon to see a man with that range and platform allowing himself to be seen in such an unguarded fashion. The amount of emotional intelligence is astounding and has only added more profundity to his starkly important portrayals of flawed men. In an interview with InStyle, Jackson-Cohen says, “I am very sensitive, and I always have been — I’m aware that I am a man, and I am supposed to be non-emotional, and I’ve battled that my whole life, but I feel so much that it’s … I don’t know. That’s just kind of who I am, and I know it’s not the norm: I’m six foot three, I’m a big man, and I think it’s quite rare to have someone that cries so much when they are my size.” In owning his own sensitivity and acknowledging that men are often expected to be stalwart beacons of cold unfeelingness, Jackson-Cohen gives other men the permission to embrace that part of themselves. It’s comforting to know that his openness goes far beyond his screen work and is a part of his day-to-day life. He’s clearly not boasting about this as a play to attract praise; in fact, he appears to be humble and bordering on self-deprecating, but it’s something that should be more celebrated.
There are a vast array of actors working today, both in horror and outside of it, but it often feels like there are so few that actively choose to engage with an important and meaningful discourse. Culture as a whole is drenched in toxic masculinity, and too few men are willing to take it to task with their craft or elsewhere. After 2020, it’s extremely safe to say Oliver Jackson-Cohen is not one of those men and his work in The Invisible Man and The Haunting of Bly Manor stands as irrefutable proof. Audiences can only hope that his next works will continue to deepen and expand upon these important themes and narratives both within horror and beyond. However, it would definitely be a treat to see him stick with the genre that has allowed him to partake in such beautiful creation.
