16 THENEWYORKER,SEPTEMBER21, 2020
Richard Jenkins
Faxon (eh). From behind the wheel, Sha-
ron brought up the actor turned alt-right
troll James Woods, who has several houses
in Rhode Island. “Is it me?” Jenkins asked
himself. “That’s a depressing thought.”
Jenkins, who is seventy-three, with
the unassuming air of an assistant bank
manager, is famous in a very Rhode Is-
land way: he’s appeared in more than
eighty films, but, even with two Oscar
nominations, for “The Visitor” and “The
Shape of Water,” and an Emmy win, for
“Olive Kitteridge,” he tends to slip under
people’s radars. “They say, ‘What have I
seen you in?’ You go, ‘I have no idea what
you’ve seen,’” Jenkins said. “I had a woman
tap me on the shoulder on an airplane
and say, ‘Have you ever been on “The
Bob Newhart Show”? Because you look
just like him.’ I turned around and said,
‘Are you asking me if I am Bob Newhart,
or are you saying you have to look like
him to be on his show?’”
The couple moved to Providence in
1970, when Jenkins got an apprentice-
ship at the Trinity Repertory Company.
Back then, he said, Providence was a
“burned-out mill town.” He grew up in
DeKalb, Illinois, the son of a dentist. Be-
fore starting his acting career, he made
pizzas, detasselled corn, and drove a laun-
dry truck for a company run by John C.
Reilly’s dad. (The two actors didn’t re-
alize the connection until they played a
father and son, in “Step Brothers.”) “We
figured we’d be here a year, maybe two,”
Jenkins recalled. Instead, he became a
Trinity company member. For a time, he
commuted to New York for auditions.
“That was back when the Amtrak was
about a four-and-a-half-hour train ride,
if you were lucky,” he said, bringing to
mind Biden’s Amtrak years in the Sen-
ate. “I would go for an audition, and I’d
have two lines, like, ‘Freeze! It’s the po-
lice!’ And I’d leave.”
From Sharon’s Volvo, he pointed out
low-key landmarks: the Providence Art
Club, the first Baptist church in Amer-
ica. He didn’t begin his movie career until
well into his thirties, with roles includ-
ing Woody Allen’s doctor in “Hannah
and Her Sisters” and a newspaper edi-
tor in “The Witches of Eastwick.”
This month, he appears in Andrew
Cohn’s “The Last Shift,” as an aging fast-
food worker, and in Miranda July’s “Ka-
jillionaire,” as the patriarch of a family
of small-time scammers. (“They’re just
awful at it,” he said. “They can’t make
two nickels.”) He wore a bushy beard,
which he’d grown for an upcoming Gui-
llermo del Toro film, “Nightmare Alley.”
Production shut down in mid-March,
but he had two days of shooting left, so
he’d been stuck with the beard during
the whole pandemic. “I can’t wait to shave
it off,” he said, a sentiment for which
Sharon expressed approval.
In quarantine, Jenkins has been play-
ing (socially distanced) golf and putter-
ing at home. “It’s like the movie ‘Marty’:
‘What do you feel like doing tonight?’
‘I don’t know, what do you feel like doing
tonight?’” he said. “Yesterday was our
fifty-first anniversary, and we drove down
to Narragansett. There’s a place called
Aunt Carrie’s, but if you’re from Rhode
Island it’s Ahnt Carrie’s. It’s this great
seafood restaurant—”
“When you say ‘seafood,’ it sounds
fancy,” Sharon said. “It’s chowder and
clam cakes.”
“You can sit indoors, because all the
windows are open and the sea breeze is
blowing,” Jenkins continued. The beard
has made him all the more anonymous,
even in Rhode Island; sometimes, to
Sharon’s dismay, he can’t even get them
a table at a restaurant. “When Tom Mc-
Carthy cast me in ‘The Visitor,’ he said,
‘I want somebody who could walk down
the streets of New York and not have
people stop.’ As soon as he said that, a
guy walked by and went, ‘Hey! Love
your work!’” He laughed. “It’s pretty civ-
ilized. I’m just a guy who’s an actor who
lives in Providence.”
—Michael Schulman
1
S TAYAWAY
BERMUDAWANTSYOU!
S
tate tourism boards have ceased their
siren calls in recent months, instead
offering tough love in response to the
pandemic. Colorado’s “Waiting to CO”
anti-tourism campaign asked that
would-be visitors, in lieu of actually com-
ing to the state, post pictures of “Col-
orado activities” that could be safely
enjoyed at home. Kayaking in the pool,
perhaps? Climbing the chimney with
1
THEPICTURES
WHO’STHAT GUY?
R
hode Island and Delaware are the
tiniest states, but they’ve had big
claims to fame lately. Delaware, of course,
has Joe Biden, who’s been campaigning
from his home, in Wilmington. And
Rhode Island managed to upstage all
the other states during the virtual roll
call at the Democratic National Con-
vention, thanks to a mysterious man in
black holding up a plate of calamari. The
Calamari Ninja, as some people called
him—he’s John Bordieri, the executive
chef of Iggy’s Boardwalk Lobster and
Clam Bar, in Warwick—may now be
the most famous person living in Rhode
Island. His competition, not counting
natives who’ve moved away (Viola Davis,
the Farrelly brothers) or celebrities with
vacation homes there (Taylor Swift, Jay
Leno), includes the character actor Rich-
ard Jenkins, who has lived in the state
for the past fifty years.
“I am not the most famous person in
Rhode Island, by far,” Jenkins said the
other day, as he and his wife, Sharon,
took a drive around Providence. He
named the former Providence mayor
Buddy Cianci and the former U.S. sen-
ator Claiborne Pell (both deceased) and
the pro golfers Billy Andrade and Brad
