WASHINGTON — He rose to fame as Otter in “Animal House” (1978) before earning more distinguished roles like his veep on “The West Wing” (1999).
Now, Tim Matheson gets a promotion to president, playing former U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the TV movie “Killing Reagan,” which airs this Sunday at 8 p.m. on National Geographic Channel.
“It’s a history lesson wrapped in a mystery-suspense movie,” Matheson told WTOP. “It’s our version of Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies like ‘Henry IV’ Part 1 and 2, ‘Richard II,’ ‘Richard III.’ It’s back in the royal palace behind the curtain, only we change sovereigns and kings every four to eight years.”
Based on the 2015 book by Fox News cable host Bill O’Reilly, it’s part of a larger best-selling “Killing” series that includes “Killing Lincoln,” Killing Kennedy,” “Killing Jesus,” “Killing Patton” and “Killing the Rising Sun.” In 2013, Rob Lowe starred as President John F. Kennedy in Nat Geo’s “Killing Kennedy.”
“There’s a clever premise for each,” Matheson said. “It’s about the assassin and the victim, and this is the first one that has gone beyond the assassination attempt because, in this case, Reagan didn’t die.”
In “Killing Reagan,” we once again see parallel action of two paths on a collision course. As President Reagan (Matheson) and first lady Nancy Reagan (Cynthia Nixon) settle into their first term in office, gunman John Hinckley Jr. (Kyle S. More) plots the assassination attempt on March 30, 1981, wounding the president and three others, most notably paralyzing Press Secretary James Brady.
“The Hinckley side of the story is about this bewildered, lost soul wandering around trying to find himself and his parents that just don’t know what to do; they’re at their wit’s end,” Matheson said. “You really feel sorry for him. You have a lot of empathy for this guy, which you wouldn’t normally think you would. But he was just so lost. We’ve all experienced days like that, but his life was like that.”
As for the 40th president of the United States, Matheson said it was a true honor to portray him.
“I came away with a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for who he was as a man and what he did for this country,” Matheson said. “He was the right guy in the right place at the right time. This country was in need of a certain kind of leader, a tonic at that time, and he provided that for this country and I think he was a good president. I wasn’t politically aligned with him, but I liked the man.”
How did he go about studying Reagan? The cast of the indie film “Southside With You” told WTOP they studied public videos and read biographies in order to portray President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. Did Matheson take a similar approach to recreating President Reagan?
“I read everything he wrote, every book by him, about him, for him, by his staff, by his wife,” Matheson said. “I listened to every audio tape and watched every video of him. So I just surrounded myself with him, and then a vocal coach was giving me classes and lessons on his accent. I did all that just so I could forget all that and just work on the thought process. What is he after? What does he want?”
He said he didn’t want to create a “Saturday Night Live” caricature, but an actual human being.
“The trap of this kind of a role is that you’re mimicking them, then it’s not a breathing, living person,” Matheson said. “I just went inside and tried to find the [man]. You know what was interesting about him? I saw so many behind-the-scene things on him … He was like a comic. … He always wanted to put people at ease, so he’d tell them a joke. He was always joking and he was casual and light.”
A giant part of the man was his love for his wife, played by Cynthia Nixon of “Sex and the City.”
“She’s great. She’s just one of those actors that you just look her in the eye and it’s there. You ping, she pongs. She was really wonderful to work with and I can’t say enough wonderful things about her,” Matheson said. “It’s a personal story. … It’s about his love story with Nancy. So it’s about the heart of the man, rather than the head. … You can’t act politics, but you can act passion and commitment.”
Of course, Matheson has plenty of experience playing politicians on screen. You may recall his role as Vice President John Hoynes, earning two Emmy nominations as the right-hand-man to Martin Sheen’s President Jed Bartlet in the early seasons of Aaron Sorkin’s “The West Wing” (1999-2006).
“I love Martin and I loved Jed Bartlet” Matheson said. “He was mean to me as my character, the vice president, but that was the story. I was sort of the LBJ to his JFK. I was this guy who was running on, ‘I should be the president, you putz. You shouldn’t be the president.’ Yet he was really a noble, righteous man. That was the president we dreamed that we would love to have. It was such a popular series.”
Of course, most of us remember him as Otter in National Lampoon’s “Animal House” (1978), the ladies man of the Delta fraternity at fictional Faber College. The side-splitting comedy was recently voted by Bravo as the funniest film of all time and the No. 36 funniest by the American Film Institute.
“What’s so great about that movie is that every semester it becomes the go-to movie,” Matheson said. “You’re going to college? You gotta see this movie! And it holds up. My kids are just out of college, my son just graduated a year and a half ago, but it was a rite of passage to see this movie.”
Indeed, you’ll still find the film’s posters, DVDs and “C-O-L-L-E-G-E” sweaters on campuses today.
“It was groundbreaking comedy at the time, totally different from anything that had been done,” Matheson said. “It was one of those synchronistic things where they got the right cast, the right script with the right director at just the right moment, and it just turned out better than we’d all hoped for.”
Matheson starred alongside Donald Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, Tom Hulce, Karen Allen and, of course, John Belushi, who gives a hilariously misinformed pep talk referencing, “When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor,” to which Matheson turns to his buddy and quips, “Germans?” “Forget it, he’s rolling.”
“Just a wonderful spirit, actor and man,” Matheson said of Belushi. “We shot that movie so fast. We could never do more than one take because the studio wouldn’t allow us. … We’d do a take and the director [still rolling] would go, ‘Do it again, do it again!’ It was a very loose, free set and you just got a sense of how to play off each other. … We got used to each other and we got close to each other.”
As for the filmmakers, they formed a Mount Rushmore of ’70s and ’80s comedy: director John Landis (“The Blues Brothers”), producer Ivan Reitman (“Ghostbusters”) and screenwriters Harold Ramis (“Vacation”) and Douglas Kenney (“Caddyshack”). If you love those movies, thank “Animal House.”
“Harold was amazing and so was Ivan,” Matheson said. “They hired Landis because he had just done ‘Kentucky Fried Movie.’ … He had a great sense of silent movies. In fact, he shot the parade sequence in a little place called Cottage Grove, Oregon, where Buster Keaton had filmed ‘The General.’ He screened that movie for us before we went to Cottage Grove! It was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s this landmark film and we’re in the same place!’ He underscored the importance of what we were doing.”
Now, in “Killing Reagan,” Matheson is no general, but a president. He’s not The Great Stone Face like Keaton, but rather The Great Communicator from a bygone era of politics where civility reigned.
“He would fight tooth-and-nail all day long against [Democrat] Tip O’Neill, who was House Speaker, then have him over for drinks at 6 o’clock at night. They were a couple of Irishmen sitting down and talking. They would leave all that behind because they had respect for each other. I think we need to get back to that. What’s the big picture here? … The lesson I got out of the whole thing is, ‘Just because I don’t like your politics, doesn’t mean I can’t like you.’ That’s the message we need to hear.”
Certainly, that’s a valuable lesson for our current heated, polarized, mudslinging 2016 campaign.
“Our politicians today [should] follow that lead on both sides of the aisle,” Matheson said. “We’re here to work together to solve the problems of the people in our country. That’s our job. We’re not here to shut down the government. We’re not here to take a toll on the other side. It’s just like a baseball game: tonight we play at the Nationals stadium, next Monday we’re at Dodgers Stadium, so tonight you get to bat last and next week we get to bat last. You’ve got it for four years, next we’ll get it.”
Click here for more information on “Killing Reagan.” Listen to the full conversation with Tim Matheson below:
