In the Netflix smash hit Ozark, Marty Byrde is always calm under pressure. He’s almost unshakable to the point where he rarely shows genuine emotions in public. Yet he’s also a man who never once fails to calculate precisely the risks and odds before going ahead with a decision.
Is he the type of ordinary man who likes to stay as reserved as possible in an attempt, rightly or wrongly, to continue living his life in a way where any outsider wouldn’t even think he was laundering money for the Cartel?
Played expertly by Arrested Development and Horrible Bosses star Jason Bateman, Marty has been compared to two of television’s greatest antiheroes of recent times, Bryan Cranston’s genius portrayal of Walter White in Breaking Bad, and the De facto boss of the DiMeo crime family, Tony Soprano played by the late, great James Gandolfini.
Although Marty is nowhere near as ruthless and vicious as those pair of charismatic titans of the small screen, his journey from Chicago as a financial advisor to Missouri Ozarks shows him in a similar light of achieving success by keeping the gangsters satisfied and himself and his wife and two children alive.
For Bateman, the role has been defining, a rare thing to say for someone on the northern side of 50. As an actor synonymous with classic US comedic entertainment, his later years have provided cultural and genre shifts, even those that didn’t come off, such as Clue with Ryan Reynold and Artemis with Scarlett Johansson.
Has the New York-born actor ever been in a better place professionally?
STRIPLV: Ozark was one of those shows which seemed to come out of nowhere to become one of the most talked-about series in recent history. With so much choice and competition around, what do you think made it popular? BATEMAN: The fact I was in it and directed episodes, surely? No? Okay, no, ha! You know, people like a good story, and with Ozark, we had a great one. We had some spellbinding performances by so many great actors. We had a great team of people on both sides of the camera. I mean, thinking about it, those sound like cliched answers and the type of response that I sometimes don’t like to use, but it was just so true. You’ve got Laura Linney, Julia Garner, Lisa Emery, Felix Solis, Peter Mullan, Alfonso Herrera, and on and on and on. How can you fail to produce something brilliant when you’ve got so many superb people to work with who will put their own shine and touch to really engaging characters? The script was fantastic, and the writers are just great. It was always going to be popular because it was done right and was such a joy to be involved in. STRIPLV: You’ve talked in the past about “precision” with Ozark concerned. BATEMAN: By that, I mean the attention to detail. Nothing was left to chance – there was almost a luxuriousness in the way we went about filming, arranging shots, deciding on locations, wardrobe, scrutiny over the script, that sort of thing. It was more intense than anything I had worked on before, and, at times, you wondered if all the extra work and reworking was going to be evident when the thing was put together. Yet from season one, it became obvious that it was, and every season past, that we carried on that same formula, and I’m glad we did. STRIPLV: So, does that mean you miss it? BATEMAN: I do, I do, yes. However, when you’ve done something for a certain period of time, you get to a point where you are consumed with fear of screwing it up or outstaying your welcome. I think it was right to sew things up when we did because it gets harder and harder to maintain the high standards. We had all those wonderful human beings making something very impressive, but we wanted to keep them wonderful in the eyes of viewers, not tainted or strung out beyond their appeal. Sometimes you need to know when to stop, that’s either after you’ve tanked or just before you’re about to tank. (Laughs) STRIPLV: Netflix didn’t release too many of their viewing figures up until relatively recently, but one interesting report showed that Ozark was one of only two Netflix shows watched on television to top four billion minutes of viewing. That’s got to make you feel good, right? BATEMAN: Oh wow. Isn’t that a lot of time? I mean, haven’t these people got better things to do at all? Do they just sit around on their butts watching Netflix? Ha ha! Of course, it’s a great feeling when you and a great bunch of people have worked hard creating something people are tuning into in such great numbers. That is more than just one person, isn’t it? Not just me leaving the TV on and letting it play through when there’s nobody around just to boost those figures. It’s amazing when you really hear those kinds of things - it makes it all worthwhile. STRIPLV: And that is the end? No Season 5, no movie, no spin-off? BATEMAN: Not any time soon, not that I’m aware of. It’s one of those projects which just worked so well, and we all had such a great connection, and it just really fired. You can work for decades in this industry and not come close to what we had there. The way the story even ends up at the finale of season four shows that they surely couldn’t push their luck any further without being arrested or killed, such are the people that they meet on their journey. So, for their sake, let’s not see that happen. STRIPLV: With similar subject matters, Ozark has been compared to Breaking Bad. What are your thoughts on that? BATEMAN: Flattery, naturally. But while it’s great to be spoken of in the same leagues as such an unbelievable series, I think the comparisons of subject matter are easy to make. That’s not to say that it’s a bad thing, of course. What I mean is that we weren’t trying to make a series to rival Breaking Bad or any other TV show or movie, for that matter, which was an ode or an homage to that. We wanted it to be unique and a different path or journey for unrelated characters. I think we managed to do that really well, and the drug similarities, the money or power tropes, and themes are always going to be done in so many different ways. We did our bit working with those subjects, and I’d like to think we did a good job. STRIPLV: Your relationship with Netflix is still strong, though, and you return in 2023 with Your Place or Mine, starring Reese Witherspoon, Ashton Kutcher, and Jesse Williams, with you on producer duties. Are you happy “going upstairs,” as it were? BATEMAN: My days of hunting out the best roles are done. These days I just try to create them for myself. It’s much quicker and easier that way. (Laughs) In all seriousness, I like having a real creative eye over drama, and sometimes you can only really do that by stepping back away from the thing; and in an acting term, that means not acting. I know that sounds peculiar, but it’s definitely the case that the older you get and the more you stay in this industry, the less you require the buzz of being front and center. Of course, we were all like that at one point, all striving to be the big “I am” and grabbing the headlines. Yet the older you get, the more it feels a little greedy, a little disingenuous to others looking to catch a break in the same way I was right back in 1980 when I popped up in an advert for Golden Grahams. You also don’t need the fanfare in the same way that you used to, and often you don’t want it either. The truth is, though, Ozark flipped all of that at a time when I was perhaps happy to sit back. It pushed me right back to the front, and that was a lovely thing, a lovely, accidental thing. STRIPLV: Is it more challenging to make people laugh in 2022 than in, say, 1982? BATEMAN: That’s a good question. I think the answer to that is comedy obeys different rules these days than it did back then. There is definitely more in today’s comedy that means people are ready to come at you if you stray into an area that perhaps demeans or criticizes someone; yet so much comedy, if you look at it, is self-deprecating, so if we applied those same rules to ourselves, we may find the stuff we laugh about even more restricted. I think there is something of a rebellion going on where people are saying, “Hey, you can laugh, and me and I will laugh at you.” It’s a fair swap. After all, that’s how human civilization has existed for centuries, so we shouldn’t get to the point where everyone is beyond reproach. There’s something actually very admiring about laughing at someone else, and it basically means you have taken the time to observe and notice them. In a society where there is a trend to make everyone the same, surely we should all want to be observed.
HOW JASON BATEMAN CAME BACK FROM THE BRINK OF ADDICTION
As a child actor and star, Jason Bateman’s exposure to the darker side of the entertainment industry came early, and long before he should have, he was exposed to alcohol, drugs, and party life.
He admits losing his virginity at 15, drinking heavily at 16, and beginning to rely on drugs at 17. He said, “Booze was what would make me want to stay out all night and do some blow or smoke a joint or whatever, so shutting that off was key. It’s like ketchup and French fries — I don’t want one without the other.”
When Bateman married Amanda Anka, his reliance on drugs was still heavy, putting a significant strain on the relationship. He says it was with her help that he could move away from temptation and focus on other things in life. I asked myself, “Do you want to continue being great at being in your twenties, or do you want to step up and graduate into adulthood?”
From that moment onwards, Bateman sought different routes to fulfillment. “I realized a lot of what I had been chasing was just a reaction to it being put in front of me,” he says. “I did have a problem with temptation, but only when temptation was at my door.
“I learned that I didn’t need to open the door, nor even look out to see if it was there.”
Bateman subsequently went tee-total in 2004. Two years later, the couple’s first child, Francesca, arrived, and they have gone on to have another daughter, Maple.
“The Nineties were a blur for me, some parts good, some parts bad, and I never want to go back there!”