Audiences have been seeing a lot of actor Jason Clarke lately. The fascinating thing is, it’s hard to believe they’re seeing the same person. His three major roles—in Kathryn Bigelow’s movie A House of Dynamite, in Hulu’s miniseries Murdaugh: Death in the Family and in Apple TV’s The Last Frontier—couldn’t be any more different. The only commonality is that viewers are getting their best look yet at how intensely talented Jason Clarke is.

This isn’t a revelation, or at least it shouldn’t be. Go back to Clarke’s American TV debut in the Showtime series Brotherhood, which was itself before its time, and you’ll see an actor who was already taking control of the screen. His performance as Tommy Caffee was strong yet deeply flawed, creating a character who was almost painfully human. A few years later, The Night Agent‘s Shawn Ryan teamed with Clarke on the FOX police drama The Chicago Code, which went in the totally opposite direction. Clarke’s character Jarek Wysocki was a wild card in the best possible sense. His performance was the kind that audiences could rally around.

Fourteen years later, Clarke has built up an impressive resume, mostly on the big screen. He’s done the big-budget franchises (Terminator: Genisys) and the award-winners (Zero Dark Thirty). But this particular stretch of three projects, all coincidentally released so close together, is ensuring that the Australian actor gets in front of a wider audience. And the range of the roles he’s playing is itself so wide that it prompts viewers to appreciate just what Clarke is able to do. Actors and critics alike talk about disappearing into roles, but Jason Clarke has made that his particular gift. And it’s something he’s worked toward—he’s naturally talented, but audiences can see how much effort he’s put into his craft simply by eyeing up his recent credits.

A House of Dynamite got its limited theatrical release just five days before Murdaugh: Death in the Family premiered on Hulu. Clarke has a pivotal role in Kathryn Bigelow’s eye-opening film as Admiral Mark Miller, who oversees the White House Situation Room. Miller is introduced as Olivia Walker’s (Rebecca Ferguson) boss, but finds himself pulled away when it’s revealed he’s one of the select few with an evacuation order. At that point, Clarke forms an impressive double act with The Night Agent star Gabriel Basso that isn’t talked about enough.

Basso goes to another level as Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington, who’s thrust into more than one situation that he’s not at all prepared for—professionally or emotionally. Basso’s performance is so genuine and visceral, and Clarke provides the perfect counterweight to that, both in character and out. Miller is there to steady Jake as he’s on the phone with the Russians, telling him what to say and how to say it. And as Basso has to break his character down, Clarke’s performance is more measured, more understated, the wall against which he can lean. He’s a pillar in the beautiful chaos of A House of Dynamite, and it’s possible because Clarke has that natural gravity in his presence and the years of experience to know exactly what to do—or just as critically, what not to do.

He can throttle that intensity back and forward, and that’s particularly evident in roles like The Chicago Code and The Last Frontier, which had its Apple TV launch on the same Friday that A House of Dynamite arrived in theaters. In the Alaska-set thriller, Clarke portrays veteran U.S. Marshal Frank Remnick, who ends up matching wits with a former covert operative after a plane full of convicts crashes in his backyard. The series is much less layered than Bigelow’s film, and its appeal rests mostly on the shoulders of Clarke and actor Dominic Cooper (Preacher, The Gold), who portrays Remnick’s new nemesis Havlock. The cat-and-mouse game that The Last Frontier wants viewers to buy into wouldn’t work without anyone else in those roles.

The Last Frontier starts strong, but flags under the weight of a story that gets more convoluted as it goes. On paper, Frank Remnick comes across as a typical TV procedural hero: great at his job but with a tragic past and a troubled family life. Audiences know the beats his character is going to hit, such as Frank’s wife telling him to choose between the case and them. But that predictability becomes irrelevant because of Clarke’s ability to create an obvious duality in Frank, and the juxtaposition that allows the audience to consider. A scene in which Frank opens up to CIA agent Sidney Scofield about his family’s loss works because of how quietly Clarke plays it. His facial expressions and body language say even more than the dialogue, but he lets the viewer meet him there. He doesn’t have to spill the character out into the open and turn the moment into melodrama.

In contrast, the scenes in which Frank is matched against Cooper’s antagonist Havlock show the exact opposite. Part of this is Cooper’s own talent for creating unique characters; his approach to Havlock is largely walking anarchy. But Clarke raises Frank to match that energy. The audience believes that Havlock can get away with pushing Frank’s buttons because Clarke shows that the buttons exist. There’s a simmering anger in those moments threatening to boil over, and Clarke walks up to that line only to walk back. Yet with only a few episodes left, audiences also know that at some point he’s going to cross over.

Which brings everything back around to Murdaugh: Death in the Family. This is not the first time Clarke has played an American public figure at the center of a scandal (see the 2017 movie Chappaquiddick, in which he portrayed Ted Kennedy). And when Clarke turns his intensity toward villainous characters, he can be downright disturbing. It’s a genuinely good thing that many of his roles happen to be in the good to grey area. But he’s already getting plenty of buzz for playing Alex Murdaugh, and with good reason: he’s the answer to the unspoken question.

The American obsession with true crime has created a certain predictable pattern in the genre: major crime, podcast, then TV show based on podcast. The Murdaugh family saga has already been the subject of several TV series, both scripted and unscripted, with Bill Pullman playing Alex in Lifetime’s Murdaugh Murders. So why do this again? What are audiences going to learn in a second dramatic retelling of a story that, in itself, has already been thoroughly dissected in the public eye? The answer to that question comes through Jason Clarke, whose take on Alex Murdaugh gets as close as anybody’s going to at understanding the man.

The why of true crime is its own impossible question. Knowing why is a chance at understanding something heartbreaking and horrible, and if one can understand it, then there’s a further opportunity for closure. But as seasoned detectives will tell you, many homicides will make no sense. Murdaugh: Death in the Family walks audiences through all the facts of the Murdaugh saga, yet what it adds is that opportunity to guess at the intangibles—most notably how Alex Murdaugh could murder two of the people he claimed to love most in the world. And what separates him, or doesn’t, from all of the other homicide cases where victims are killed by people they loved?

The real-life Alex Murdaugh maintains his innocence even after his conviction, as Death in the Family‘s postscript indicates. But Clarke’s take on Alex in the Hulu drama’s finale is a jaw-dropping unraveling of a human being. It’s a lot to take in, as it should be, because it feels so out of control. Scenes that could be rote (the murder suspect on the witness stand emotionally professing their innocence) work because Clarke just throws himself into them. At one moment he’s painfully earnest and in another he’s sharp, on the verge of starting an argument with the prosecutor. Again, one can see his experience at being able to navigate tone and tenor, this time to extremes.

Jason Clarke as Alex Murdaugh is using every ounce of his presence. He’s disturbing when he ought to be, yet able to turn that round and be powerful when he needs to be. There’s no middle ground. And viewers of Murdaugh: Death in the Family won’t walk away having changed their opinion on Alex Murdaugh, but thanks to Clarke they’ll have a sense of how he didn’t just deceive other people—he deluded himself. Alex quotes the infamous “tangled web” line on the stand, and Clarke does his best to untangle it.

In the span of a little over a month, audiences have watched Jason Clarke play a hard-edged U.S. Marshal, a perfectly put-together leader in the White House and one of America’s most talked-about true crime subjects. He’s been a clear villain and two clear heroes. He’s gone from the wilds of Alaska to a prison cell. It’s unique to see one actor in such different roles in such a short span of time. But all of that added up is proof positive that Jason Clarke is an incredible actor—one who will hopefully see awards recognition for at least one of these parts. He’s proven that there’s nothing he can’t do, and do in a way that leaves a lasting impression.

A House of Dynamite and Murdaugh: Death in the Family are currently streaming on Netflix and Hulu respectively. The Last Frontier streams Fridays on Apple TV. Photo Credit: Hulu and Apple TV.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.