In 2011, when actor Arian Moayed turned 31, Robin Williams threw him a surprise birthday party. At the time, the two were starring in the Broadway play “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” and their dressing rooms were next to each other. Moayed noticed that Williams arrived at the theater early every day.
“He would show up an hour before anyone else ever showed up,” says Moayed. “He was rehearsing. He was saying his lines. He just wanted to work on it over and over and over again, until the last day.” Many nights, after the show, Williams would also do sets at the Comedy Cellar.
That discipline was, and remains, an inspiration to Moayed. “Keep working, working, working. I believe in that hard work,” he says. It shows.
It seems that in the past year, Moayed hasn’t been doing anything but working. He’s one of the leads on “Inventing Anna,” Shonda Rhimes’ new miniseries for Netflix. He plays the craven-but-honest Stewy on HBO’s megahit “Succession.” He was also a recurring character on HBO Max’s anthology series “Love Life,” in which he gave relationship advice to William Jackson Harper’s Marcus. Moayed even dipped his toe into the Marvel cinematic universe, playing a federal agent who interrogates Peter Parker in “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”
Oh, and Moayed is also the creator of “The Accidental Wolf,” a thriller series on Topic, which was just renewed for a third season (to be released this summer). On top of it all, he helps run a theater company called Waterwell, which he co-founded in 2002, that creates socially conscious work.
Along with Williams’ influence, Moayed attributes his work ethic to his parents. He was born in Iran, and his family immigrated to the United States when he was a baby. “I know immigrants very well,” he says. “We hustle. We work hard. We want to do well. We want to make sure that this was worth it for our families, to give up our cultures.”
David Giesbrecht/Netflix/Sarah Shatz/HBO Max/Peter Kramer/HBO
That same thinking is why Moayed has been very particular about the roles he takes on, and very vocal about those that seem one-dimensional or culturally damaging. “So much of the roles that were out there [when I was starting out] were terrorists or victims—scraps, mostly not in English,” he recalls. “It was a lot of years of saying no to people and challenging some of the pieces that were happening. Not in a confrontational way, just in an honest way, [saying,] ‘None of this is real; we don't behave like this at all.’ ”
Moayed stuck to theater for a long time, playing meaty roles in prestigious plays like “The Humans” on Broadway; he earned a Tony nomination for his work in “Bengal Tiger.” He also began producing his own work.
“The Accidental Wolf,” which stars Tony winner Kelli O’Hara as a housewife who disrupts her life to search for a woman who may be in danger, was originally financed by Moayed and Waterwell. Moayed hustled to make the project happen, enlisting his friends in the New York acting scene. “Laurie Metcalf came in between Saturday performances of ‘Three Tall Women’ on Broadway,” says Moayed with a chuckle. “We shot [her scenes] in 40 minutes.”
“The Accidental Wolf,” which began as a web series, started to gain popularity through word of mouth. It went on to receive an Emmy nomination (for O’Hara) before it was purchased by streaming service Topic.
Just as that was happening, Moayed landed the role of Stewy on “Succession.” It was supposed to be a two-episode gig. Now, he’s part of the main cast, and his lines and facial expressions get memed across social media.
How to Get Cast on ‘Succession’Years of stage acting have taught him to be “on,” even when the camera isn’t directly on him. It’s also given him the foundation to make improvisational acting choices in the moment (such as sniffing a sprig of lavender while Brian Cox is delivering a monologue).
“We’re shooting on three cameras that don’t do traditional setups. Sometimes we are shooting and we have no idea where the cameras are,” explains Moayed. “If it’s a five- or six-page scene, sometimes we just shoot that all at once. We move fast. It feels spontaneous, because it feels like everyday we’re doing a little one-act play.”
Moayed’s newest project, “Inventing Anna,” is based on a New York Magazine article about Anna Delvey, the woman who pretended to be a German heiress. Delvey successfully scammed banks, hotels, and New York’s elites out of $275,000. Moayed plays Anna’s lawyer Todd, whose commitment to the case causes tension in his marriage.
Moayed admits it was difficult to get a handle on the character, especially on why Todd would agree to defend someone like Anna (played in the series by Julia Garner). But once he read the court transcripts from Delvey’s trial, he recognized a fellow hustler. “It sounds crazy, but Anna’s an immigrant,” Moayed explains. “I latched onto the fact that maybe she wasn’t doing it all correctly, or even legally. Obviously, she wasn’t. But she was doing it. There’s a drive. There is something about what she can do that I could understand.”