30had,” he says. “In many ways, they will
always be the most important people
in that most important experience in
my career. So yeah, if they did a re-
union, I would absolutely love to do it.”
Over the past few years, though,
Krasinski’s onscreen persona has de-
viated from Jim Halpert’s. He starred
in the military drama 13 Hours and
Amazon’s CIA series Jack Ryan and
directed a film that some consider an
allegory of conservative ideals, so a
narrative started to develop around
him. In August 2018, BuzzFeed posted
an article titled “John Krasinski Wants
to Play Red-State Heroes Without Get-
ting Political,” and in November 2019,
an old video of him saying, “The CIA is
something that we should all not only
cherish but be saying thank you for ev-
ery single day” was heavily criticized.
“That narrative is certainly not the
narrative I intended to put out there.
When people look for something that
they want to see, I can’t stop them
from a subjective belief in something,”
says Krasinski, who cohosted a fund-
raiser for Elizabeth Warren’s senatorial
campaign in 2012. From his perspec-
tive, his decision to star in 13 Hours—
about the attacks on the American dip-
lomatic compound in Benghazi—was
not a political one. “I have 11 aunts and
uncles and cousins who have been in
the military or still are in the military.
So it was a big thing on my list to get todo a military movie or show or some-
thing,” he says, noting that the film was
about the individuals and the events of
that night. Not politics. “As far as Jack
Ryan and the CIA, I always say it’s
about the people. I’ll always respect
people who put their lives on the
line for people like me, who they’ve
never met.”
And as for his CIA comment last
year, Krasinski says he meant for it
to refer to the men and women of the
CIA, not the agency as a whole. “If
you start breaking down every single
CIA event, do I respect and honor all
those? Of course not. Do you respect
and honor every facet of every single
president? Of course not.”
Once A Quiet Place Part II comes out,
he plans to go right into production
of the third season of Jack Ryan. After
that, he’s open to exploring more sto-
ries in the Quiet Place universe, and of
expanding that world, but he’s also up
for something new.
I ask him if he’s heard the rumors
that he’ll be playing Mister Fantastic
whenever Marvel gets around to tack-
ling Fantastic Four again.
“I was just about to walk into the
worst pun ever: That’s a fantastic
role,” he tells me. “Marvel wrote the
playbook on secrecy. I am not com-
mitted to the role or anything. But if
and when they do it, I would love to
talk to them about it.”Krasinski’s commitment to his family should be evident to
anyone who’s watched A Quiet Place, which is very much about
what someone will do for their child. Though the movie de-
buted to almost universal acclaim (95 percent on Rotten Toma-
toes), some people didn’t read it that way. This included The
New Yorker’s Richard Brody, who considered its depiction of
a silent white family with guns protecting their home from in-
vaders to be “conspicuously regressive.” Krasinski maintains
he didn’t write it with a political slant.
“I never saw it that way or ever thought of it until it was pre-
sented to me in that way,” Krasinski tells me. “It wasn’t about
being, you know, silent and political. If anything, it was about
going into the dark and taking a chance when all hope looked
lost—you fight for what’s most important to you. Again, my
whole metaphor was solely about parenthood.”
And Krasinski says that he wanted to elaborate on this idea
in the sequel. “If the first movie is about the promise that you
make to your kids that I’ll keep you safe no matter what—that’s
inevitably a false promise,” he says. “The second one is about
growing up and moving on and dealing with loss,” he says. “For
me, this whole movie is about who you trust and the power of
relying on other people in dark times.”
Krasinski majored in playwriting at Brown University, but
that’s not what inevitably kick-started his career. That was,
of course, The Office—the beloved NBC sitcom about mid-
level grunts at a drab paper company. Still, he ultimately hoped
to make movies. Krasinski used his first check from The Office
to obtain the rights to David Foster Wallace’s short-story col-
lection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. He wanted to make
it into a movie, but he had no one to direct it.Years later, he was talking about the project with his Office
costar Rainn Wilson, who suggested that Krasinski should just
direct the film himself. “I thought, Wow, I don’t know. I can’t di-
rect,” Krasinski remembers. “And he was like, ‘Why not? Just
do it.’ So I did.” Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009) was a
strong directorial debut that gave him the confidence to helm
a few later-season Office episodes. In fact, the TV series was
such a monumental experience that he says he’d 100 percent
do a reunion.
“The Office was absolutely everything to me. I mean, it is my
beginning and my end. I’m pretty sure at the end of my career
I’ll still be known as Jim. It was the first creative family I’ve ever“DO YOU RESPECT AND HONOR
EVERY FACET OF EVERY SINGLE
PRESIDENT? OF COURSE NOT.”Rule No. 856
BUT YOU PROBABLY SHOULD.Rule No. 855 YOU DON’T HAVE
TO WATCH THE SHOW EVERYONE IN
YOUR OFFICE IS TALKING ABOUT.CULTURE&STYLE