Well, mostly it’s through showering. It’s mostly a bathing interaction. This is not actual water, like the Hudson, but there was that great spa, Aire, that has water underground. I went there a couple of times. What other water interactions have I had? I’m a pier kind of guy. I enjoy the piers. But I haven’t spent a lot of time, admittedly, on the Hudson itself. Maybe farther [upstate], but not here. Sorry to disappoint.

I’ve done two now. I did a film before that and then I did [ Ambulance]. The first one that we did is a very intimate movie, but it was in a more scary time. We filmed in Los Angeles when it felt like we were really peaking in terms of cases. It was full of its own anxiety for many different reasons. I feel like New Yorkers forget that this is a water town. What are your defining water experiences here? Do you run along the river? Have you had a hilariously bad date on a ferry? What is your version of aquatic New York? Often in such campaigns the character you play might reflect some version of yourself. This guy in the Prada windbreaker on the red boat—what do you share with him?

Well, the bag of chips, I think, has been our go-to over the past year and a half, most likely for everybody. [ laughs] There’s something nice—even now, even though we are interacting virtually—about people coming out into the world. I’ve heard from lots of people in this time that they've engaged with nature in a whole new way. It’s so important for us because, in the time before this time, the culture of convenience was winning. I don't think it will lose out, but I do think we’ve had a hint of perspective on our connection to nature. I was thinking the other day, there are just more birds—or, at least, I hear them. That’s a refreshing change of pace from the peak pandemic months, which had so much static energy. It’s like you were saying about the bag of chips: a shortcut to some other means of expression. Oh, it’s definitely wish fulfillment. There’s no reason to be an actor if you don’t have that, I think. The reason why it was so enticing when I knew Johan was doing it was because he doesn’t suffer fools and he doesn’t really like bullshit. He’s just worked with such incredible talent that he knows when someone's being real. I could trust that, even in this big, dramatic world, he was going to find a behavior that felt honest. It seems surreal that the Tony awards you’re nominated for are for plays that predated the pandemic. Do you see those two projects— Sea Wall/A Life, which you appeared in, and Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play, which you helped produce—as strangely prefiguring this year? Do you want to revive them even more now?