A few words of appreciation for Shea Whigham
A talent that often gets overlooked or taken for granted.
Early on in Jeremy Rush’s under-appreciated Netflix film, Wheelman, the title character picks up a couple soon-to-be bank robbers. Each carry an extra ounce of sketch, but one of them takes it the extra mile. His name in the credits is literally “Motherfucker.”
The minute he settles into the backseat of a too flashy for its own good BMW, he leans into Frank Grillo’s already irritable driver, asking for his name and reaching for his lunch bag in the front seat. He’s purposely in the movie to make the protagonist’s life a little extra difficult by being talky and pushy, existing to give shit. His ridiculous name is essentially a pseudonym, given by himself during a tense encounter with Grillo.
“You’re the Wheelman, and I’m a motherfucker.”
That guy is Shea Whigham, one of the hardest working today. He’s so good you sometimes don’t even realize it’s him, something that Ryan Gosling will never achieve (he has Kenough anyway). You won’t see him on every talk show and magazine cover promoting his award-nominated performance, but nobody at the Oscars got in as much work as Whigham in 2023. The guy was everywhere, and very good wearing many different character hats.
He voiced a famous John Wayne interview from Playboy Magazine that played on a podcast. He was Frank in the Fancy Dance, a Lily Gladstone (who will be nominated for an Oscar) starring drama that finished a festival run in November. He was Jim opposite Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie in Neon’s Eileen.
Whigham voiced George Stacy in the beloved sequel, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and had a role four television shows: Waco: The Aftermath, The Righteous Gemstones, Perry Mason, and Lawman: Bass Reeves. There was also another podcast.
Whigham works and works, with the proof in the pudding being an IMDB page with 99 acting credits on it. He’s been going since 1997 when he scored a one episode role on Ghost Stories, a supernatural television series narrated by Rip Torn. He broke into the film world with Jonathan Demme’s Tigerland. While Colin Farrell was the talent that got noticed with that film, Whigham made a key connection.
Martin Scorsese was looking for someone to play a cop in his new film, and was told about Whigham’s work in Tigerland. But the studio didn’t want to hire him, and the actor let the legendary director off the hook on a key phone call. You let someone understand that it’s not either of their faults that a bad thing happened, but sometimes shit falls and we get wet. Whigham turned that first class act into a bigger role ten years later when Scorsese produced Boardwalk Empire for HBO. Here’s the whole interview with Rich Eisen where Whigham dished on working with Scorsese.
Whigham played the lead’s brother, and things changed for him after that. Like Wheelman and most of his roles, he may just show up for a few scenes and convince you that person may exist somewhere in real life. Like his big role as Steve Buscemi’s brother on Boardwalk, he was Bradley Cooper’s brother in Silver Linings Playbook.
He’s also someone I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing, albeit briefly for a rock solid indie film called Small Engine Repair. As expected, Whigham came off as a cool fella who could still walk into a bar and have a couple drinks without being mobbed. Unlike another cast member on that Zoom call by the name of Jon Bernthal, he still enjoys a life of tempered luxury.
However, I am sure as rain that from time to time, someone comes up to him and says, “you’re that one guy, right?” They can’t place the name together with a face, but he made enough of a dent to perform a small form of inception on their movie brain.
When I see or speak with him again, I’ll only scream one thing at him.
“Hey motherfucker!”
Thanks for reading.