08: The Startling Range of Jim True-Frost
There are certain actors for whom for better or worse are primarily tied with one role. Patrick Stewart will for many people forever be Captain Picard. Alan Alda has had a long career in film and television, but some folks are unable to see Alda past Hawkeye. Daniel Radcliffe had such an iconic run as child wizard Harry Potter that after taking a stage role in a revival of Peter Schaffer’s “Equus”, the chatter about the role was not so much about Radcliffe taking such a dark and intense role as it was about patrons of London’s West End getting to see Harry Potter’s penis. While he has played dozens of screen roles in his career, actor Jim True-Frost is among these actors, primarily known as police officer turned teacher Roland Pryzbylewski in the HBO series The Wire
Roland Pryzbylewski (commonly referred to in the show as simply “Pryz”) is a fascinating character. He begins the series as a bumbling and incompetent (and indeed abusive) police officer, slowly realizing his strengths, understanding he has a knack for numbers and statistics and making a comprehensible story out of raw figues, eventually leaving the police force to become a math teacher in a local middle school, finding that he’s capable of making a positive difference in his community. While Pryz goes through many changes over the course of the show’s five seasons, Jim True-Frost’s portrayal of him is incredibly consistent. The same quiet and nervous energy that defines Pryz as an incompetent cop in season one is the same quiet and nervous energy that makes him approachable and helpful as a teacher in seasons 4 and 5. Anyone who saw one performance from the beginning of the show and one from the end without watching the journey in between would see that he’d gone on a journey, but would not have difficulty believing it was the same character due to his consistency.
(you can tell he’s more serious in season 5 because of the beard)
For many actors, being human beings with a certain limited combination of lived experiences and physical expressiveness, there is only a certain degree to which they can inhabit different roles and changes. This very idea is commonly referred to as an actor’s “range”. While an actor with a somewhat narrow range might still be celebrated, such as, say Robert DeNiro, who has had a long and storied career of magnificent roles, but each of his roles carried a great deal in common in terms of physicality and line delivery; an actor capable of delivering multiple completely dissimilar styles of performances, such as Meryl Streep or Daniel Day-Lewis is almost always lauded as a master of their craft. So where then, after having demonstrated his amazing range, is Jim True-Frost’s oscar?
When an actor known for one part is seen in another, it’s common enough to think about the iconic character simply finding themselves in a new predicament. I of course am aware that Dune and Star Trek take place in different universes, and yet when I see Patrick Stewart in David Lynch’s Dune adaptation, it takes me a minute to realize that I’m seeing Gurney Halleck and not a younger and more musical Jean-Luc Picard. It should speak volumes then that after seeing The Hudsucker Proxy for the first time in 1997, watching it regularly and indeed making it a yearly tradition to watch for the past 10 years, and watching the entirety of The Wire twice since 2006, that it took me until 2014 to realize that Jim True-Frost plays both Pryz and Buzz the elevator operator.
Buzz the elevator operator is in many ways the polar opposite of Pryz. Where Pryz is nervous and quiet, Buzz is brash and loud. Where Pryz is unsure, Buzz is overconfident. Even when expressing the same exact emotion, Pryz and Buzz express them in incredibly different ways. When Pryz is confronted with his boss Cedric Daniels putting him in his place, True-Frost expresses his humility and deference by not moving much and speaking quietly. When Buzz is confronted with his boss Sidney Mussburger putting him in his place, his brashness disappears in a flurry of movement, his voice breaking, and his gaze being averted. When Pryz loses his job in the Baltimore Police Department, he expresses his sadness by being quietly resigned. When Buzz loses his job at Hudsucker Industries, he explodes into a pile of blubbering and sobbing. More so than anything else, the outer demeanor of these two characters suggests a profoundly different inner life. Pryz’s demeanor suggests that he’s constantly lost in his own thoughts. Buzz on the other hand is too busy cracking wise and running his mouth to ever have a real thought in his head. The two characters are so profoundly different in terms of every aspect of their line deliveries, voices, physical bearings, even different outward physical appearances, so much that I was unable to recognize that the two characters were played by the same actor for roughly a decade, and that, friends, is range.
Roland Pryzbylewski getting fired
Buzz getting fired
Jim True-Frost’s latest film role was as Isaac in a film called Saint Frances that made the indie circuit in 2019 but as of this essay’s publication has yet to see a wide release. I could not tell you anything about the film, as I have not seen it or heard of it prior to researching this essay. I’m sure he’s spectacular in the film, but the fact that he’s not one of the biggest actors of our age is a pity, given that he apparently has the spectacular range commonly lauded in actors like Denzel Washington and Hudsucker’s own Jennifer Jason Leigh. I don’t imagine many casting directors read this silly little blog, but just in case one does, please hire Jim True-Frost for your next project. He’s amazing.