Outer Banks Star J. Anthony Crane on Embracing Failure and the Beautiful Danger of Playing Villains

Long before J. Anthony Crane became the kind of actor who could make a Netflix audience despise him, he was wandering through a museum pretending to have a severe limp.

The exercise was for a role. Crane wanted to understand how the character moved, so he spent about half an hour walking through the galleries that way. Other visitors began giving him an unusually wide berth. Eventually, a docent approached and offered him a wheelchair because several people had expressed concern. Crane finally confessed that he was only practicing.

It is a funny story, but it also says something essential about the way Crane works. He has spent much of his career deliberately creating difficulty for himself, testing how far he can push into discomfort without losing the truth of a performance. “I love to fail,” he says. He knows how strange that sounds. But failure, vulnerability, and the possibility of looking foolish are not things he regards as interruptions to the creative process. They are often where the process begins.

That instinct has followed him from childhood make-believe to a career spanning television, film, Broadway, touring productions, and regional theater. Growing up, Crane made books, drew comics, staged puppet shows in his bedroom doorway, and eventually recruited his younger brother into his private dramas. Theater gave those instincts a public outlet. He studied drama at Northwestern, spent time training in England, helped found theater companies in Chicago, and returned to Los Angeles at about 22.

His screen career accelerated almost immediately. At 23 or 24, Crane was cast as the lead in a television series, playing a police officer who was supposed to be considerably older. During a congratulatory call with the head of USA Network, Crane cheerfully mentioned his actual age. Silence followed. Minutes later, his agent called in alarm.

For several days, Crane wondered whether his honesty had cost him the job. It did not. He stayed with the series for two years. The episode became an early lesson in an industry where actors rarely control the decisions that shape their lives.

Crane eventually developed a philosophy about rejection that is less inspirational than practical. There are simply too many gifted actors competing for too few parts to treat every “no” as a verdict. “If you didn’t get it, it just wasn’t yours,” he says.

His own career has repeatedly complicated even that rule. Before joining Outer Banks, Crane auditioned for the role of Chandler Groff and lost it to another actor. He moved on, took a play he enjoyed, and later landed a Broadway project with Idina Menzel. Then the television production called again. After the actors’ strike disrupted the schedule and gave the producers more time to reconsider the role, Crane was asked to tape another audition. He eventually learned that they were reconsidering him for Groff after all.

The reversal placed him in one of the most visible roles of his career. On Outer Banks, Crane plays a man whose ambition has curdled into violence. Groff wants to escape the class position he was born into and believes determination should allow him to take control of his fate. Crane recognizes the ambition, but not the behavior it produces. “I’m a bit more reasonable than he is,” he says dryly.

That distinction matters because Crane resists protecting the characters he plays. An actor portraying someone selfish, racist, narcissistic, misogynistic, or violent, he argues, cannot start negotiating with the audience on the character’s behalf. “Your role is not to fix it,” he says. The job is to understand what the person wants, what is obstructing him, and what he will do next.

That willingness to remain inside uncomfortable characters was shaped as much by theater as by television. Crane spent years in demanding stage productions including The Lion King, Les Misérables, Spamalot, Disgraced, and Between Riverside and Crazy. The Lion King was physically punishing, with a heavy costume, difficult movement, stunts, touring, and eight performances a week. Disgraced demanded a different kind of endurance, requiring its actors to move through racial, religious, and interpersonal conflict with almost nowhere to hide.

One of Crane’s favorite experiences was Spamalot, working with Eric Idle and director Mike Nichols. Nichols gave him a piece of comedy advice that Crane still carries with him: stop trying so hard to make the audience laugh. Try to make the other actors laugh instead. The comedy would emerge from the attempt.

It fits Crane’s larger belief that art becomes interesting when control starts to loosen. “Art has technique, but art is also danger,” he says. Preparation matters enormously to him, but only because it creates more freedom once the work begins.

Now in his 50s, Crane finds himself moving again between forms. After spending nearly a decade concentrated largely in theater, Outer Banks has pulled him back toward film and television and introduced his work to a new audience. He is also continuing to act in films while maintaining another, quieter creative practice: watercolor painting.

The boy who staged puppet shows in his bedroom has not moved very far from the original impulse. Crane still seems most interested in what happens when make-believe becomes difficult enough to expose something real. His advice to younger actors is simple: prepare relentlessly, stop protecting yourself from failure, and “say yes a lot.” The rest, as his own career keeps demonstrating, is considerably harder to predict.

Yitzi Weiner: Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us your “Origin Story”? Can you tell us the story of how you grew up?

Tony Crane: I grew up living in a lot of make-believe. I used to make books, draw comics, and put on puppet shows in the doorway of my bedroom. It was my main sort of social outlet until my brother came along, and then I had somebody to cast in some of my little dramas.

Later, as I grew up, I became interested in theater and was given an opportunity to do it. At a young age, when you do something that not only you respond to and that responds to your particular skills, but that you find you can gain some kind of social purchase — where people notice you in the social group — it is very easy to decide that that’s something you’ll gravitate towards, at least until you’re 18 and have to do it for real.

I went to drama school at Northwestern in Chicago and spent some time studying in England as well. I finished school and helped found a few theater companies in Chicago, and that led me back to Los Angeles at about the age of 22. Los Angeles at 22, that’s the beginning of a lot of stories.

Yitzi Weiner: You’re an amazing storyteller. Speaking of stories, you probably have some incredible stories from your successful career, and I’m sure this is difficult to single out, but can you share with our readers two stories that stand out in your mind from your career?

Tony Crane: Yeah, sure. Absolutely. When I was only 23 or 24, I went in for a role of a much older, more mature, and more responsible man than I was at the time. I got it, and I suddenly found myself as the lead on a TV series for what was then a newly formed network making independent work. Up until then, the USA Network had only shown tennis, that was about it, and reruns. Here I was starting my career, and I just remember everyone around me being so kind and friendly, really just wanting me to succeed.

I was lucky. I got a very difficult initiation into the business, and I was lucky to have two years working on a show in which all the creative forces kind of banded together to make something really great. I was lucky to have that.

I remember I was very young. The role was for someone who was maybe 30 or 32 based on the fact that he was a police officer, so for the rank that he held in this story, he would have had to be this particular age. I remember just always coming off as older as an actor or playing older as an actor. Here I was, 23 or 24 when I got this part.

The head of the network called me to congratulate me and said, “Wow, man. It’s so great to have you on board. I can’t wait to work together.”

I said, “You know, this is great. I am just breaking into this business. It’s so wonderful for me. I can’t believe I achieved my dreams before the age of 24,” or something like that.

There was this complete silence on the other end of the line, and he wrapped up the call really quickly. About four minutes later, I got this call from my agent: “What did you tell the head of the USA Network? What did you tell him exactly?”

I think there was a couple of days where I thought, I may have ruined it. It might be gone. I may have to give up the job. They didn’t think I could do it at 24, but I showed them. It wasn’t me that got the show canceled, I’ll put it that way.

That was fun. I’ve done a lot of TV and film, and I’ve had a great time working in theater. I worked on a great play called The Lion King — I toured with that for a few years — as well as Les Misérables and Spamalot. Probably my favorite job I’ve worked on was with Eric Idle and Mike Nichols doing Spamalot. Mike was such a nice person and so supportive. He would just go, “The world is your oyster. You understand everything I tell you. How is this possible that I’ve only met you now?” Of course he was flattering, but it means a lot when someone like Nichols says that to you.

He said some of the greatest stuff about comedy to me, and I’ve done a lot of comedy. He just said, “Look, why are you trying so hard to make us laugh? Just try and make your friends laugh up there on the stage, and maybe we’ll laugh because of how absolutely stupid you look trying to convince your friends that you’re funny. That is good enough for us.” He just hated clowns and people throwing things, and he was right. There are so many beautiful, tender, delicate things that I learned about comedy from him. It is so sad that he is gone.

I could go on and on. I recently had a couple of shows. Do you know who Hershey Felder is? He’s a concert pianist from Montreal, and he has spent the last 30 years making these wonderful one-person shows based on composers, which he performs himself and turns into monologues. We spent time working together turning a few of his shows into movies so that we could all survive. We made one about Rachmaninoff and we made one about Verdi. It was lovely, and he is a great creative person. I really loved working with him and going out to Italy. I don’t get a chance to go out to Italy to work very often.

Yitzi Weiner: Oh, amazing. There’s a saying that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Do you have a story about a funny mistake that you made when you were first starting and the lesson that you took away from it?

Tony Crane: I love to fail. I know that sounds pathological, but I was taught very early on. I’d taken a lot of clowning in my youth, both at the Royal National in England where we did some work in clown, and at Northwestern. Really the rule through all of those things is: if you feel like it’s going well, then it’s already bad. If you feel like it’s going great, you’re going to just trust it too much, you’re no longer going to be working at it, and now you’ve lost the pocket of what clown is.

Clown is just us. It’s our vulnerability, and it’s trying to win a little bit. There has been no great piece of art about someone who was already on top, stayed on top, and nothing bad happened to him. It’s about being on top, falling, and trying to get back up, or being below and trying to defy some odds and overcome an obstacle.

When you ask me if there is a time when that has ever happened, it is every piece of work that I do. I remember I was working on a Pulitzer Prize-winning play from the 2010s called Disgraced. A woman named Karen Pittman — a great actress — played my wife. Right in rehearsal on the first or second day, she turned to me and was kind of joking, but she said, “Tony, why are you always in trouble?”

I replied, “Aren’t we all supposed to be in trouble? That’s what I’ve given myself an obstacle to do.”

It’s not the first time. I had a director once say, “You’ve got to learn to get out of your own way.” I thought, Well, I’m just creating challenges for myself. This shouldn’t be easy. I’m not trying to fail, and I’m not trying to make you fail, but that’s not always the way people perceive you. A lot of times I’ll walk into a room and begin a rehearsal, and it looks like I’ve got it all figured out — I’m engaging in excellent conversation — and then suddenly I’m creating challenges. I’m not trying to give you a problem, so sometimes there’s a little bit of a growing period before people figure that out, and then usually it’s all fine after that occurs.

There are too numerous examples to mention in that regard. I did once have to play someone who had a severe limp. I decided to go to the museum and just practice being on my feet with this limp. It was fine; I didn’t do anything too special. I can’t remember if I had a walking stick, but people were giving me so much room and moving aside in every direction.

Finally, after about 30 minutes, this docent in a suit came over and asked if I wanted a wheelchair.

I said, “No, it’s fine. I’m just fine. Please don’t worry.”

He said, “No, it’s because I’ve had a couple of people come to me and tell me they’re worried about you.”

What I realized in that moment is nobody wants to see a limping person while they’re trying to look at art. It is better to have them be in a wheelchair and just out of our way, out of our mind. It was an interesting revelation. Finally, I just told him, “No, I’m practicing this.” I said, “Look, I’ll wait for all these people to leave this room, and then with the new people, I’ll just walk regular,” because I didn’t want to embarrass whoever it was that was probably standing in the corner watching to make sure that I was being well taken care of.

Yitzi Weiner: That’s such a great story. There’s a related idea that ‘no’ is not rejection, but redirection. Do you have a story like that where you got a ‘no’ to an opportunity, but that led to an even better opportunity?

Tony Crane: All the time, really. There are so many people making art and so many talented people doing it — just loads of them — that if you didn’t get it, it just wasn’t yours.

On the other hand, there have been times when I really wanted something, they told me I didn’t get it, and then those same people came back and said, “Just kidding. We’ve gone in another direction, and the direction is you.”

That actually happened with the show that I’m on currently, believe it or not. It’s happened before, but with this one, it came down to me and one other gentleman who is a fine actor in New York. You go on a Zoom call and do the lines with hundreds of people from networks watching in the grid. An hour or so later, they wrote to me saying, “Look, we think he’s great, but we’re just going to go in this direction instead.”

I said, “Well, all right. Okay.”

I had a great summer. I did this play that I really liked doing and had a load of fun doing that. Then in November, all this other work was starting to happen for me. I had gotten a Broadway show with Idina Menzel in the meantime. I was getting ready to go; we were going to go to San Diego for two months and then come to Broadway to do this show. It was going to be my first time creating a character, which is always great.

Then they called me back from this TV show that I’m on now and said, “We’d like to look at you for a different character. Can you tape this and that?” It turned out it was for the same character. There had been an actors’ strike over the summer the whole time I was working on that play, and they had shot stuff with the other guy. They say idle hands are the devil’s workshop, and with too much time to ruminate on it — I’m not complaining, it made me very lucky here — with that much time to look at it, it ended up going my way just because of the extra time.

In a lot of ways, it’s a lesson to always do your best and not make any assumptions about why people make their decisions, lest you inadvertently burn a bridge or let your imagination run wild. If someone says, “You did great, but we went another way,” take the compliment and snatch the win from there somewhere. That is really my takeaway from things like that generally.

That’s what my business is like. People like to work with people. If they keep you around, it’s because they like you.

I used to joke with David E. Kelley — he made every television show from like 1995 to 2015 basically. Back when they used to have screen tests, I think I tested for him about twelve times. I never won the sweepstakes, but we used to see each other at least twice a year in the room for these tests, and they would just go, “Well, we obviously hate you.”

For them, they told me I was their guy who they knew could do it. There might be two other guys who had a bigger show or had just been in a movie, but they would also bring me in. That other person had to be better than me in order for them to get cast, and I guess they were. But it was because we got along, and that is a good thing to hear.

Yitzi Weiner: And what’s been the most challenging project or role you’ve taken on so far, and why?

Tony Crane: They’re all challenging in different ways. The Lion King was challenging because there were just so many moving parts to it. It was physically difficult in a lot of ways because it was a rather heavy costume that you had to wear, there was movement that was difficult, and there were stunts on stage that you had to perform, all while doing eight shows a week and traveling every three or four weeks. Altogether, that was the one that I probably had the most PTSD from doing.

They say people who have chronic pain and suddenly get an adjustment feel like a new person. That was how people were meeting me during and after The Lion King. People would say, “I feel like I don’t know anything about you,” and I was like, “I think I was in pain the whole time, brother.” That one was tough.

There have been others. The play I did called Disgraced was metaphysically taxing. It’s a play about the hierarchy of racism in America vis-à-vis Islamophobia as a baseline for where we are as a country in terms of our hierarchy. I played a Jewish art curator married to a Black lawyer who works in a law firm with a Muslim lawyer who’s married to a white woman. It’s about a dinner that blows up over the course of an evening. That was tough. You do 90 minutes and you really have to trust people. If you were even a little bit mad at someone, you just didn’t have anywhere to hide.

Yitzi Weiner: Unbelievable. You have so much impressive work, Tony. Could you share with our readers exciting new projects, new initiatives, or anything new that you’re working on now? We’d love to hear about it and support it in any way.

Tony Crane: I’m trying to work in the film and TV area as much as I can right now because of this TV show. That’s just the way it works, because they really are two different industries. When you go away to one, you leave the other one behind. I had been working almost exclusively in theater for almost ten years because I was on a bit of a roll.

Right now I’ve got two movies I’m going to make: one in October and one in November. One of them is with a great auteur of the American ’80s and ’90s named Bobcat Goldthwait. He’s a pal and has written a really funny script that we’re going to do about the celebrity fan world.

Another friend of mine, a filmmaker named Adam Lazarre-White, is making a film about a Southern Black gambler in the 1950s entering that mid-20th-century world. I play the chief antagonist, as I’m bound to do, and I’m happy to do it. Those should both be done before the end of the year, which I’m excited about.

Yitzi Weiner: Unbelievable. Let’s talk about Outer Banks. As you know, it has a cult following and is extremely popular. What do you think it was or is about the series that makes it so popular and compelling?

Tony Crane: All the cuties, obviously, period! People aren’t blind; they are red-blooded humans, and it’s natural.

The timing was also incredible. There were a lot of people inside looking for something outside to enjoy, and it was a perfect piece of escapism. It’s a combination of good-looking youth living in the definition of freedom. Those islands off the coast of North Carolina are so off the grid in a lot of ways; they really do run like their own little worlds. You add a little bit of class struggle and some darn fine sunsets, and it was bound to happen.

Honestly, having worked with the cast now, they are all so talented — superheroes in their own way. They occupy a fantastic space, and their chemistry is phenomenal.

Yitzi Weiner: Unbelievable. How would you compare and contrast your personal character, Tony Crane, with Chandler Groff, the character you play? How are you similar, and how are you different?

Tony Crane: I don’t like to think too much in that direction, in that I like to think the character is me just under different circumstances. You layer on the words, you layer on the things that you do, and there you are.

As for similarities, I had a fantastic mom who really encouraged my brother and me to be creative, to work very hard, and not to miss out on any opportunities in life. That created a very strong work ethic.

Ambitious people — America has a very strange relationship with ambition. We’ve almost gone over the edge with it, and that’s who I was trying to show. There’s one side of us that thinks a businessman should be able to accomplish anything in America, and then there’s the other part of us that thinks with ambition and drive, if you never give up, you’ll achieve something. Chandler Groff was both of those things.

He grew up in the exact same class system that all the kids in the show grew up in, and he had a view from the bottom looking up like all of them did. He decided at one point, “I’m going to change my life, and I’m going to do whatever I can.” He found that he was too unstable for those ambitions, because when he became frustrated by some of the problems he had, he became violent. That’s who he is: a violent person, because his dreams are so important to him.

In that way, he’s a bit broken. We can’t go around throttling our work partners or our wives; we’ve got to find other ways. Chandler was able to keep running away from his problems until he finally comes back to Kildare and tries to take what he feels is his.

I’m a bit more reasonable than he is. But he’s broken, and he thinks he can outrun his guilt. When we meet him this year, you find him at the crossroads of his sanity. We’re just encouraging the audience to follow him and go a little bit further over the edge after what he’s done. That makes him more dangerous, because he is less in control.

Yitzi Weiner: This is our signature question. Tony, you’ve been blessed with a lot of success, and looking back all the way to the beginning when you first started, can you share five things that you’ve learned over the years — maybe sometimes the hard way — that someone starting out today can really benefit from?

Tony Crane: One is: you must be unafraid of failure. What I mean is that in your work and in your creativity, risk-taking is where the fun is. Art has technique, but art is also danger. It has always been a little bit about magic, and sometimes you have to step out onto the edge of things a little in order to find out where that magic is. That’s one thing I learned quickly, and it helped me.

Another one is: you’re better off bringing your true self to a role than trying to reinvent yourself, because you’re going to be in there somewhere. You can add accents all you want and all these other things, but you have got to be in there.

Another one is: if you feel like you’re overprepared, just prepare more. You can never prepare enough, because you’re giving yourself room to work with. It doesn’t mean be more stressed or nervous; it means you’re full and ready to be useful. A lot of acting is asking: Am I a player in this drama? Can I tell the story? The more you know, the more useful you can be.

Another one is: you mustn’t be looking out for the reputation of your character. That’s not your business. I’ve learned this a lot playing antagonists or bad guys. If you can tell from the story that you’re meant to be misogynistic, selfish, narcissistic, or racist — if that’s the story and you’ve taken the role — I don’t want to catch you hedging it. That’s not your job, unless you’re playing someone who is inherently hypocritical and hedges until we catch him later. Your role is not to fix it; your role is to find out what’s broken and keep overcoming your obstacles and fears. That one is important to me.

My last one is: say yes a lot. I try not to think about just doing stuff for money, but about the quality of the work and the people involved. It means saying yes a lot, and you end up adding that to your approach to the work. I don’t project how the end is going to go or assume how it will turn out. All I have to do is do my best.

Yitzi Weiner: On a personal level, can you share some of the self-care routines that you do to help your body, mind, and heart to thrive?

Tony Crane: I started doing this a long time ago. I didn’t even notice it for a long time until I was sitting on a bus and had started to self-regulate through slow breathing. You’ve seen people with those little straws they breathe through to regulate breathing; I’ve been doing it just through controlled exhaling. It slows things down and slows the moment down a little bit.

A couple was sitting in front of me, and they suddenly turned around and said, “Do you know you’re breathing on our necks? Can you please stop that?”

I was immediately apologetic, but at the same time, you’re in a city with twelve million people. E.B. White said that the average personal space a New Yorker is afforded is 18 inches total in terms of elbow room at diners and things like that.

I’ve got two ways in which I keep myself out of trouble. There’s a prayer that I use for conflict in my life that I find very useful: “I love you. I’m sorry. Thank you.” That helps.

Also, remembering that you’re not the only person on the planet solves a lot of problems. People do things for their own reasons, and you don’t have to put yourself in the prison of assumptions all the time. Just do your best, try to be good to yourself and other people, and be impeccable with your word about yourself and others.

I’m in the gym, and I do a lot of bike riding around the city — trying not to die! I’m just getting into my 50s now, so elasticity is important. For mental elasticity, I play loads and loads of backgammon, trying not to become a dirty gambler. I lived in Vegas for a year, so I know that gambling is not good for anybody.

My meditation is watercolor painting. Next time, I’ll give you my handle off the air so you can look it up.

Yitzi Weiner: This is a final aspiration question. Tony, because of your amazing work and the platform that you’ve built, you’re honestly a person of enormous influence. If you could spread an idea or inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? Because you never know what your idea can inspire.

Tony Crane: My personal belief is that the arts can rehabilitate. Teaching people the arts is always helpful. We seem to be at war with the arts right now, considering them elitist in some way, but crayons in a coloring book are not elitist. Playing charades is not elitist. Those are arts.

The other thing is, I’ve worked for and supported anti-waste organizations — places that are just trying to keep food on everyone’s table. I think we’ve lost our perspective regarding the community of care that we used to have in this country, and we may have crippled it, hopefully not beyond repair. One of the things that was cut was nearly a hundred billion dollars in food for people who can barely afford to feed themselves nutritious food. If you have a food bank or a shelter where you can drop things off, it’s effort well spent. We all owe our fellow men a little bit of our time and our effort for nothing.

Yitzi Weiner: How can our readers continue to follow your work, watch your movies and TV shows, and support your work?

Tony Crane: I communicate through Instagram; that’s about my only outlet right now. My personal handle is @JanthonyCrane. I also share my watercolor paintings through my art Instagram, which is @onefoldedcrane. I keep them both active. Now that we’re in this new world, we communicate with a lot more people on our own, which is a privilege to do. Although I do love this format — I’m jealous that you have this format, Yitzi.

Yitzi Weiner: Tony. I wish you an amazing day, and I’m excited to share this with our readers.

Tony Crane: Thank you.