Liev Schreiber covers the July issue of Esquire. The editorial really captured his gritty kind of vulnerability and I love the photo of him with the pit bull. He’s promoting the fourth season of Ray Donovan, which premiered this Sunday and has started out strong and entertaining as usual. Without giving spoilers, I’ve seen the first two episodes (Showtime PR is awesome they send it to us ahead of time) and I really like the direction they’re going. It’s rare for a show to be this consistently good, and as this piece explains that may be due to Schreiber’s influence. He’s an executive producer as well as the star and he has a lot of control over production. The interview and profile are thoughtful and fair, which is a relief as Esquire used to publish snarky pieces on celebrities which seemed unnecessarily negative. (Several journalists did this, so I can only assume it was an executive decision.)

The piece draws parallels between Schreiber’s Ray Donovan character and his own struggle with darkness, but it’s like they’re either only scratching the surface or he’s just a stand up guy. Liev talks about how he met and fell in love with his partner, Naomi Watts, and how she made the first move by giving him her phone number. (Outlets will run this like it’s new, but they actually told this story to Ryan Seacrest at the Golden Globes in 2014.) He seems frustrated without his family and kids around, and he smokes a lot and works long hours, apologizing for the moments he gets a little grumpy and bossy. Also they talk about his difficult childhood. He was raised alone in NY City by a single mom who was an eccentric artist. They were poor and he stole things at a young age but learned his lesson. His brothers and half brothers stayed with his dad. (You may know his half brother, Pablo, as pornstache from Orange Is The New Black.) I would recommend you read the full piece if you’re a Liev fan like me and here are some highlights:

Liev and Naomi on how they met
“She said [after the Met Gala in 2005], ‘What are you doing later on—you want to go dancing?’ And I was like, yeah. So I went down to this club that she told me to meet her at, and of course she was there with Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro, and I’m kind of standing around like a bump on a log, waiting for my turn. I think I was nervous, and I felt very embarrassed being there, and self-conscious, because all these movie stars were hovering, and I felt … awkward and out of my element. And I wasn’t going to make a good impression. So I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I gotta go home.’”

What happened next Schreiber calls very ballsy: “She chased me outside and said, ‘Don’t you want my digits?’”

“It was the first thing that came to me,” Watts recalls. “I’ve never said those words before in my life and never since.”

The following day, they went out for cupcakes. “It was very silly—very romantic. And we had a kiss—not a big kiss, but it was a kiss that was like, ooh. Then she went back to L. A. and I wrote her all the time. Lots of emails. I think that was it—seduced by email.”

The meeting was a time he can point to when his life changed. “I decided I was going to make a family with this person. For better or for worse, I stepped into a partnership with somebody. We were gonna bring kids into this world and try to love and respect each other.”

On how he is on set
Soon he will start shooting a scene in a dusty abandoned nightclub. It will go awry; the script has gaps in logic. He’ll take the writer aside and firmly say, “You wrote this episode—take control,” and then the following day he’ll explain that he regrets doing that in front of the crew. This is a frequent conflict: needing it to be right but also being mindful of people’s feelings. He will keep shooting the scene until the early hours of the next day.

He is also a producer on the show, which means he reads every script and is involved in a multitude of decisions. He directs, shapes scenes, consults writers, talks with editors, puts in sixteen-hour days, all for a character who separates him from his own children. And then there’s the overwhelming compulsion to get it right…

There is a giant monitor on which Schreiber watches himself as Ray, and then he gives instructions. Occasionally, he’ll jump off the couch and point to the screen. “That dissolve is too Hitchcocky,” he says pointedly. They try it again. And again. Until it’s right.

On missing his family
“I underestimated in the past how hard this show is to do. This season—not having my family with me—has really made me feel the isolation of Ray a little bit more.”

Home is New York but the series shoots in Los Angeles, and he’s now at the end of four months without his family. “I need intimacy,” he says. “Part of the thing about being famous, being on a television show, is that there’s this weird sort of film between you and everybody else. And it’s so nice when your kid jumps up on you and you feel his breath on your cheek.”

On growing through adversity
“Adversity can be a powerful learning tool. It is a beacon for some people,” he says. “And that can be habitual. When you’re in a bad situation, you’re accustomed to growing through pain, so you’re always willing to wade into the worst part, because that’s how you learn.”

He worries about his kids growing up sheltered by his success. That perhaps the insulated life they have, with wealth and privilege, isn’t exposing them, as he was exposed, to hardship, and they will miss out on the tools necessary to grow from overcoming it.

“But I think adversity will find them. The best we can do is prepare them for the inevitability of that…

“I’m trying not to seek out the adversity just because it’s of value,” he says. “You asked what I need? To have patience with myself, and to be gentle with myself.”

[From Esquire]

We’ve heard that Liev and Naomi are having problems and the way he talks about her is more about commitment and family than adoration. I like to think they’re okay though, and that this is normal couple stuff after ten years. It sounds like he’s struggling balancing his family and career and with his past somewhat. Ray Donovan could relate. Everything Liev brings to the character must be part of the reason it’s such an incredible show. That and the fact that his acting is superb.

Photos credit: Esquire, WENN.com and FameFlynet. Also there are photos from the Ray Donovan Season 4 viewing party from 6-26-16. Thanks to Eric Charbonneau/Invision for Showtime/AP Images