‘September 5’ Star John Magaro Talks Bob Iger’s Big Assist and How Co-Star Peter Sarsgaard Influenced His ‘The Bride’ Casting
September 5 star John Magaro knows he’s had a charmed run the last five years, but his Cleveland-area upbringing won’t let him get too comfortable.
Ever since his Carol director, Todd Haynes, endorsed his casting to First Cow filmmaker Kelly Reichardt in 2018, Magaro has been working like there’s no tomorrow. You can currently find him on the big screen in Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5, as well as on the small screen in the George Clooney-produced series, The Agency. He also has two films on the festival circuit this year before he’s set to appear in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! this fall. If that wasn’t enough, he just wrapped The Mastermind, his third movie with Reichardt in the last handful of years.
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Magaro’s work ethic is a byproduct of growing up in Northeast Ohio, a region that’s “used to disappointment,” as he once put it. It’s also a response to the pandemic and strike-ridden years of 2020 and 2023, which began with him becoming a new father. And in this current age of contraction and disastrous Southern California wildfires, Magaro isn’t taking anything for granted.
“I feel very fortunate because I am hearing about so many of my peers and colleagues who aren’t working after all these events. Now, we have these fires in L.A., and L.A.’s film industry has already been so ravaged,” Magaro tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So I feel very lucky to keep working, and that’s why I’m always excited to jump at opportunities. I know how tough this business is, and I know that it’s only getting more and more difficult.”
Expanding nationwide on Jan. 17, September 5 takes the audience inside ABC Sports’ control room as they chronicled Black September’s nearby terrorist attack during 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany. Magaro portrays real-life sports producer, Geoffrey Mason, who, at 32, stepped up on the fly to cover the ultimately deadly threat to 11 of the Israeli Olympic Team’s athletes and coaches. Magaro — who kicked off his career as an extra on Steven Spielberg’s post-Munich Massacre movie Munich (2005) — credits Mason for his invaluable insight and pivotal effort in acquiring ABC’s archival footage via Disney CEO Bob Iger.
“There could have been a version of [September 5] without the footage, and I cringe at the thought of an actor playing [broadcaster] Jim McKay. I don’t know if the film would’ve worked in the same way if it wasn’t the real Jim McKay on the screen,” Magaro says. “They’d been talking about actors that could play Jim McKay, and [co-writer/director] Tim [Fehlbaum] said, ‘If this is how it’s going to be, I’m not going to make the film.’ I think he was bluffing, but that’s how strongly he felt about getting the footage.”
Magaro’s castmate, Peter Sarsgaard, was so impressed by his scene partner’s dedication that he suggested him to his partner, Maggie Gyllenhaal, for a role in The Bride!, the latter’s follow-up to her Oscar-nominated feature directorial debut, The Lost Daughter. The genre pic is a bold riff on Bride of Frankenstein, and is led by Christian Bale (Frankenstein’s Monster) and Jessie Buckley (Frankestein’s Bride).
“Peter was kind enough to recommend me to his wife [Gyllenhaal] for The Bride!, so I had a really good time shooting it last spring. It’s a wild movie. It’s very different than The Lost Daughter,” Magaro shares. “It’s like a mix of a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie, Young Frankenstein, Frankenstein, Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands. It’s just a wild, fun ride. It’s something that people haven’t seen before, and I’m really excited to get it in front of an audience. It’s bonkers.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Magaro also discusses the great lengths he went to in order to prepare for the role of Mason, which included some time spent in CBS’ Sunday football control room. The aforementioned access was provided by Jim McKay’s son and former chairman of CBS Sports, Sean McManus, who was with his father in Munich on that fateful day in 1972.
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You’ve been on quite a run since I last spoke to you for First Cow’s awards campaign. I commented at the time that you seemed to have the wind at your back, but you brushed it off due to the “Cleveland” in you. Can you now sense the bump that First Cow’s Cookie has likely given you?
My career has always had hiccups. Even First Cow had to battle through Covid. It came out the first week of March 2020, with all this expectation and excitement around it, and then the entire world just shut down. I just had a baby at the time, and we were stuck in an apartment for two years just waiting for things to come back to some semblance of normal. And when it finally did, we had the strikes, so everything was shut down again. So there’s always been these battles that help build character, and those struggles only help reinforce my passion for acting.
But, yeah, First Cow really forged a relationship that continues with Kelly Reichardt and I. We just finished our third film together, The Mastermind, with Josh O’Connor, and I feel very lucky to have that relationship with an auteur director that I really respect. I still have people who come up to me after finding First Cow, mainly through streaming services, and they really think it’s a special film. I agree with them.
We’re talking September 5 today, and I did a double take when I read that you were an extra in Steven Spielberg’s Munich. That’s quite a full circle. Thus, when September 5 showed up in your inbox, did it feel almost predestined in a way?
It definitely made me chuckle. It’s funny to think that, 20 years ago, I, as this skinny little fresh-out-of-college extra, was walking across the street from Eric Bana on the Munich set. It was my first time on a movie set, too. I didn’t really learn anything by looking at Spielberg and the principal cast from afar; I was just trying to not get in trouble or ruin shots. But, yes, it’s strange that it has come back around in this way. I don’t know why these things happen. I don’t know if it’s a law of attraction kind of thing. But it’s definitely a funny coincidence that I am revisiting the first thing that put me on film in a way, although our story is very, very different from Munich.
Your real-life sports producer character, Geoffrey Mason, was instrumental in September 5 getting made as precisely as it was, but it took some convincing at first, right?
I think so. Geoff Mason was contacted by Tim Fehlbaum, our writer-director, and Moritz Binder, our other writer, and he gave them an interview. They interviewed several other people who were involved, but it was Geoff’s interview that really captivated them and gave them a unique perspective of what happened in Munich that day. He’s the one who gave him the idea to tell it from the media standpoint, as opposed to a much broader or more sweeping scale. So they had to pare down their initial idea of the story due to the constraints of independent filmmaking, and because Geoff is such a humble guy, he didn’t expect his conversation to become the entirety of the film. So I think being shoved into the spotlight scared him a little bit, and I sensed he would’ve preferred it to be someone else.
Throughout my early conversations with him, he was very protective of the other people who were in the control room. He wanted their stories to be honored and highlighted as well, but that’s tough to do when you have a 94-minute script. Some things are just going to be left on the sideline, so Tim, myself and our producers tried to assure him that we were going to honor what happened that day and not make his experience something sensational or false. We were going to approach it from an honest, authentic standpoint, and that started to put his mind at rest. He then saw our commitment when we recreated the [ABC] control room to the exact specifications of the blueprints. We even got the equipment from 1972 to work so that all the actors could interact with it.
On top of that, Tim and I insisted on getting me into control rooms so that I could learn the language of control rooms and how sports broadcasts and live broadcasts are called. There’s a very specific language, and it has a very specific musicality to it that you can’t fake. You have to know it. I’ve seen films with control rooms that are loud and boisterous, but we quickly realized that that’s not what they are. There’s an intensity and an adrenaline coursing throughout the room, but there’s also a specificity and a quietness in the way that these directors and producers call a live broadcast. So all of those components put Geoff’s mind at ease, and as he was starting to see dailies and scenes come together, I would get calls and emails from him that let us know that we were on the right path.
With acting, all roads lead to Rome. Every actor has their own way of doing things. I remember your co-star Peter Sarsgaard telling me years ago that he doesn’t play real people all that differently from fictional people. For instance, he based his Bobby Kennedy in Jackie on two kids he knew from childhood. But given Mason’s contributions to the movie, did you feel an obligation to be as faithful as possible?
I felt that it was necessary to be faithful to his experience, but I didn’t feel that this performance required me to imitate him or his mannerisms. I thought it was better to just try and tell the story that he had told to me in the most honest way possible. There was a freedom in that because no one knows how Geoff Mason sounds. No one really knows what he looks like. So by pushing aside those worries and focusing on the storytelling and what he was going through that day, it allowed it to be more authentic. There were qualities in him that I wanted to show, especially his sense of innovation and his great sense of humor. He constantly jokes around, and while we don’t have many opportunities to do that in the film, I hope there’s a sense of that nature from my portrayal at the beginning of the film. Obviously, that changes once the shots go off, but he also made it clear that he was very business-focused that day. It was: “Stay on the air, do your job, leave emotion out of it.” Also, if you’re doing a Bobby Kennedy movie and it’s about his entire life, then there’s a different kind of responsibility. But so much of this story is about one day at work, and it was more important to get to the core of what they were feeling on that one day. That was really the way to honor Jeff, as opposed to acting like Jeff.
On top of sharing all of his insight, Mason also helped procure the archival footage via Disney CEO Bob Iger. How valuable was that footage on the day?
I don’t know how we could have done this movie without the footage. There could have been a version of this movie without the footage, and I cringe at the thought of an actor playing Jim McKay. We’re so lucky that did not happen, and the archival footage is a large part of the reason why the film is resonating so strongly with people. I don’t know if the film would’ve worked in the same way if it wasn’t the real Jim McKay on the screen. He is the fifth lead of the film, and getting that footage really came down to the wire. It wasn’t until two weeks before we started rolling that we knew we were going to have the footage. They’d been talking about actors that could play Jim McKay, and Tim said, “If this is how it’s going to be, I’m not going to make the film.” I think he was bluffing, but that’s how strongly he felt about getting the footage.
Thankfully, our producers kept on it and made it clear that we wanted it, so Geoff Mason took the reins. And because of his reverence and relationships in the sports broadcast community and how beloved he is, he was able to make some calls. So we had his support and Sean McManus’ support, who, at the time, was the head of CBS Sports and CBS News. Sean McManus is also Jim McKay’s son, and he was in the room in Munich that day. So Geoff’s relationship with Bob Iger made it possible to call in these favors and get the tapes released to us.
But that also meant rewriting some of the script to accommodate the actual footage that we now had. On the day, we would sometimes have to rewrite the scenes even more because we had to play with what we had, which was an amazing challenge. And because I had done a lot of research ahead of time and spent time in control rooms and studied how sports broadcasts are called live in real time, I felt comfortable pivoting along with the factual footage. It just gave the entire film a really magical quality that it wouldn’t have had otherwise.
When recreating such a harrowing historical event and watching the corresponding footage all day, I have to assume that the vibe of the set was pretty heavy. Is there a poignant moment from filming that will likely linger for years to come?
I have to say that it was almost the opposite of that. In my years of doing this, I’ve found that the heavier the material is, the more playful the ensemble becomes and the lighter the set becomes. It’s just an exhausting thing to stay in that heavy space all day. It’s not healthy, and it doesn’t necessarily lead to a strong performance. You find yourself living in drama all day instead of letting the drama and the emotion come out while the camera is rolling.
So we were lightening the mood and joking around when the camera wasn’t rolling. We talked, and we lived almost like a real broadcast team lives. When you’re not broadcasting live, you’re more casual and playful, and so we ended up building our own camaraderie in between takes. Of course, whenever the camera was rolling, we were aware that we wanted to honor the victims and honor the people in that broadcast room. But we found it was easier to get to that necessary place by doing all of that between takes.
One of the moments that will stick with me is when I, as Geoff, said, “They’re all gone” to Jim McKay. I was looking at the ghost of Jim McKay on this screen, and I was really being transported to what it must have been like in that room. I was looking in his eyes and seeing how he holds his earpiece as he’s being delivered the news from [Geoff] in this situation. There’s something uniquely surreal about that, and to play off of an existing live broadcast is an opportunity that I don’t think I will ever get again. But you’d be surprised by how fun and playful the set was even though it was this crazy claustrophobic space.
The characters constantly question whether they’re helping or hurting the rescue effort. They’re also concerned about reporting unconfirmed information too soon. Did you get the sense that Mason still replays these events in his mind today?
I don’t think we ever really got into that, but I know that this day has left a scar on him that he is still constantly dealing with today. We’ve talked a little bit about that since the film has come out, but I didn’t really feel that it was necessary to deal with his hindsight of what happened. Again, our story is about one day and what he did on that day. But I do know that, from his point of view, there was no time to think. He was just doing the best he could with what they had, and I think we did a good job of portraying these questions in the film. This was the first time that a live global broadcast was dealing with such a tragic event, and these sports broadcasters were trying to cover news, something they had never done before. So when these questions would arise of, “Do we show someone being shot on live TV,” or, “Did we affect the rescue effort?” — I gathered from Jeff that they just didn’t have any time to figure out what the right and wrong answers were. There was no time for a moral discussion. They would find a [temporary] solution before going right back into the control room, but there was just no time to do a proper analysis of what was right and wrong.
Nowadays, I still don’t think there has been much analysis of these questions. Do we show fires burning down people’s houses? Do we show kids being pulled from rubble? Do we show someone being shot on live TV? After September 5, 1972, [the media] realized that the sensation of it all leads to ratings, and at the end of the day, getting clicks and eyes on something seems to be what’s more important now, especially with 24-hour news cycles. So I don’t know if those questions were ever solved, but Geoff and his team asked the questions.
Following September 5, you and Sarsgaard both worked on Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!. Can you share a morsel or two from that experience?
Peter was kind enough to recommend me to his wife [Gyllenhaal] for The Bride!, so I had a really good time shooting it last spring. It’s a wild movie. It’s very different than The Lost Daughter, Maggie’s previous film that she directed. It’s like a mix of a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie, Young Frankenstein, Frankenstein, Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands. It’s just a wild, fun ride, and at the helm is Christian Bale and the amazing Jessie Buckley. It’s something that people haven’t seen before, and I’m really excited to get it in front of an audience. It’s bonkers.
Sarsgaard’s endorsement reminds me of when Todd Haynes went to bat for you with Kelly Reichardt, and like you mentioned earlier, First Cow has now turned into three movies with her. So, a kind word really goes a long way.
Because of the Cleveland in me, I just show up and work hard. I try to do the best job I can, and that means something in this business. It’s a very weird business, and it’s ever-changing. Sometimes, the bad in this industry gets honored because, once more, sensationalism gets eyes on things. But the great artists out there appreciate what it means to be a hard worker, and that goes a long way. So I think that has helped me on this journey, and hopefully, it continues to help me have the wind at my back.
I’ve been watching The Agency, and it’s mighty impressive how stacked that ensemble is. A big name will pop up for just one scene per episode. I also don’t know how you had time to shoot it in between all your film work.
I’ve been going nonstop, but I’m trying to take a break now. Covid was such a real trauma for so many actors and so many people in this business, and having two years where we weren’t able to work really shakes you. When that ended, I just wanted to keep working, and then it was compounded by the strike right away. So I’ve been saying yes to a lot of things, and luckily, it’s been really great stuff.
In fact, a film [Omaha] that I did right before The Bride! is premiering at Sundance this week, and I have another film [K?ln 75] that is premiering in Berlin this March. The Agency then came along right after The Bride!, and I was like, “Should I stay home?” But I had a window, and the cast was great. Joe Wright was also directing, with Grant Heslov, George Clooney and David Glasser producing. So it just made sense to go do it, and I’m really thankful that I’m a part of that amazing cast and that I get to go back for the second season.
I feel very fortunate because I am hearing about so many of my peers and colleagues who aren’t working due to the contraction in the business after all these events. I’m constantly hearing about below-the-line grips and gaffers who can’t find work. Now, we have these fires in L.A., and L.A.’s film industry has already been so ravaged. So I feel very lucky to keep working, and that’s why I’m always excited to jump at opportunities. I know how tough this business is, and I know that it’s only getting more and more difficult.
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September 5 expands nationwide on Jan. 17.
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