Jeff Goldblum: ‘When it comes to intimacy, you have to make sure everybody’s comfortable with it’

Hollywood’s most idiosyncratic star has fought aliens, fled dinosaurs, and transformed into a fly. Now, in Netflix’s ‘Kaos’, he’s playing God. He speaks to Olivia Petter about sex scenes, fatherhood, and the current state of his leopard-print carpet

‘I think Zeus has this sort of ego problem that people suffer from. None of us can be totally unfamiliar with it’ (Getty)

Jeff Goldblum is a family man. “This morning, I was working with River, the seven-year-old, on his daily routine,” the 71-year-old actor and musician tells me over Zoom, pointing to the electronic keyboard behind him. At the same time, his wife, Emilie, whom he married in 2014, was downstairs “working with” nine-year-old Charlie on the grand piano. And before that, Goldblum spent an hour practising himself. Later, he exercised and made his sons breakfast. “Our Oura rings said we both got enough good sleep, even though we got up at 6am,” he adds, proudly pointing to the multicoloured hoop on his finger.

It’s a far more disciplined system than you might expect from a wayward talent such as Goldblum. Though inevitably there are eccentricities. Like the fact that he tells me all this while sitting in a room with a leopard-print carpet on the floor. “This little guest house I’m in is getting a refurbishment, so the carpet may be on its way out,” he informs me. “I’ll send you a square if you like.”

Make no bones about it: Goldblum is hardly your average arty California dad, let alone your average man. Revered for his roles in classic films ranging from Jurassic Park and The Fly to Independence Day and The Grand Budapest Hotel, he’s one of the most legendary figures in Hollywood, with a career spanning five decades. Born in a Pittsburgh suburb in 1952, he trained in New York under the illustrious Sanford Meisner, founder of the Meisner technique, before landing his first role as “Freak 1” in the notorious Charles Bronson thriller Death Wish. This was followed by a series of small but notable gigs, including the delivery of a single line in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall: “I forgot my mantra.”

Fast forward to today, and Goldblum is one of Wes Anderson’s stalwarts, a Marvel star (see his turn as the Grandmaster in Thor: Ragnarok), and regularly leads rosters of A-listers in high-budget TV shows and films. He is also renowned off screen for being, well, quite the character: “You’re in your natural habitat!” is how he greets me, ostensibly thrilled by the sight of my living room, though I suspect he’s alluding to the fact that I’m casually dressed, not wearing any makeup, and my hair is in a topknot.

We’re here to talk about Kaos, Netflix’s eight-part comedy drama series rooted in Greek mythology. Goldblum plays Zeus, who, at the hands of award-winning screenwriter Charlie Covell (their credits include The End of the F***ing World), is one part power-hungry egomaniac with sociopathic tendencies, another part deluded, self-destructive toddler with daddy issues. “I love the unexpected things about him,” says Goldblum, who performs the role with his signature swagger, all lascivious drawl and grandiose gesticulation. “He has an overwhelming capacity for cruelty and violence, but also charisma and complication. I’ve always loved stories about how power corrupts and the abuses of power.”

The story Covell has dreamt up for Zeus is fairly straightforward. Having spent centuries enjoying life as King of the Gods, Zeus wakes up one morning to find a wrinkle forming on his forehead and becomes fixated on a prophecy foreshadowing his downfall. The drama unfolds from there, as Zeus becomes more and more paranoid; all the while, his former friend turned prisoner, Prometheus (Stephen Dillane), is secretly plotting against him with the help of a few unsuspecting humans on Earth.

I’m a freewheeling, expressive and even impulsive kind of fellow in my work. But at the same time, I like the challenge of using my words carefully

Unlike more predictable retellings, though, Kaos takes the grotesqueries of Greek myths, amps up the volume, and turns them technicolour. It’s a lot of fun. Poseidon (Cliff Curtis) is a cigar-smoking, lobster-gorging lotus eater who lives on a yacht. The Furies, the goddesses of vengeance, are a trio of biker chicks in leather jackets and bandanas. And Hera, Zeus’s powerful but perpetually scorned wife, turns all of her husband’s mistresses into bees. At one point, Dionysus tries to reunite a grieving widower with his late wife in the underworld. The only way he can do this is by taking part in a pub quiz hosted by the Fates – one of whom, naturally, is played by Eddie Izzard.

But amid all this high-octane silliness is a very relatable world with stark parallels to our own. Take the central tension down on Earth: the Trojans have been expelled from society, and despite efforts to integrate themselves, remain dehumanised and entirely outcast, in a manner that is almost impossible not to understand as a commentary on modern-day immigration laws.

“I don’t think it was specifically modelled after anything contemporary or ripped from the headlines,” says Goldblum. “But like the Greek myths, historically, they’re all meant to spark and enlighten something in us, and in our human plunges. But of course, what the show talks about has always been with us. For instance, Zeus’s character. I think Zeus has this sort of ego problem that people suffer from. None of us can be totally unfamiliar with it.”

Ego problem: Goldblum as Zeus in Netflix’s ‘Kaos’ (Netflix)

Standing at 6ft 3in and with a string of acclaimed roles behind him, not to mention having one of the most recognisable faces, voices, and wardrobes in the industry, Goldblum must surely be aware of his own power and status within Hollywood. But he doesn’t seem to spend much time contemplating his fame. “Well, I have my own modest version of that all along the way,” he muses, nonchalantly. “I’m happy that somebody has seen what I intended to put out there. And if some people like it, it’s always delightful and I’m happy to make contact with them. But like Zeus, there’s always the trap that you can think it’s not going to be very fleeting, and that it’s potentially superficial. So I think you can’t take it too seriously.”

Goldblum is tricky to interview. He has an unconventional turn of phrase that occasionally results in sentences spilling out without sufficient sense (“When Homo sapiens were just coming about, there was leadership and cooperation and conflict”) and is reluctant to be specific in any of his answers. When I ask about Trump, who seems like an obvious comparison point for Zeus, he’s taciturn: “I don’t want to get too off the beaten track.” And when I ask for his thoughts on the ongoing brouhaha around Marvel and Dakota Johnson’s withering takes on her own box-office flop, Madame Web, he swerves the question and instead brings up Suspiria, in which she also stars.

Body horror: Goldblum in the cult sci-fi movie ‘The Fly’ (Shutterstock)

This leads us into a conversation about its director, Luca Guadagnino, and I wind up pointing to a framed print behind me from his 2015 film A Bigger Splash. “Fantastic,” he remarks. “Look at you! We’ll talk at length at some point, I hope, because we’re both film buffs, I think.” It’s odd for a celebrity to speak to any journalist like this; it shatters the rituals of an interview in a manner that is as refreshing as it is jarring. Is it a power move? A tactic to make himself seem more relatable? Or is he just being friendly? With Goldblum, it feels oddly benign – “I’ve been reading about you, I’m glad we’re talking,” he adds at one point, before complimenting specific articles I’ve written – although this doesn’t make it any less disconcerting.

Having been in the industry for so long, Goldblum has been privy to some of its most seismic shifts. The introduction of intimacy coordinators that came about post-#MeToo, for instance. “I thought it was great,” he says of working with one such coordinator on Kaos, in which there are a handful of sex scenes. “When it comes to intimacy of one kind or another, you have to make sure that everybody’s comfortable with it.” Does it make him wish intimacy coordinators had been around for longer? “Well, yes,” he replies. “And I’m sad and outraged for all the things that were missing until they weren’t. You look back on things and you go, ‘I could do that better now.’ But I guess it’s good because I have a new way of thinking.”

Another relatively new aspect of the industry that’s become more prevalent since #MeToo? Cancel culture. Goldblum has previously sparked criticism over his comments around Woody Allen, who was accused of child molestation by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow. Allen has always denied any abuse, and an investigation by US state health authorities concluded that no abuse had taken place. But since the allegations surfaced, many Hollywood figures, including Colin Firth and Greta Gerwig, have distanced themselves from Allen. However, in a 2019 interview with the i, Goldblum said he “would consider working with” the director in future.

Seminal: Goldblum with Laura Dern and Bob Peck in Steven Spielberg’s ‘Jurassic Park’ (Shutterstock)

“You know, I think every human being on Earth is trying to make it work for everybody, hopefully. That’s my aim,” he says when I raise this. “And so every course correction that comes up, I’m trying to be aware of and contribute in the time I have here. I’m a freewheeling, expressive and even impulsive kind of fellow in my work. But at the same time, I like the little constraint and challenge of using my words carefully.” It’s an admirable way of avoiding the question of whether he stands by the earlier comment on working with Allen again. I put it to him once more, and am swiftly asked to move on by his PR team.

One of the subjects that often fascinates people about Goldblum is that he became a father for the first time at 62. He smiles with delight when I ask about the two sons he shares with Emilie, 41, a former gymnast whom Goldblum met in a gym. “It’s amazing,” he says of fatherhood, before asking if I have children. I tell him that I have a cat but that I’m not sure it’s the same. “Oh, it’s the same in some ways, I think,” he replies, lighting up as he goes on to talk about how wonderful he finds parenting. “Every emotion comes up, and you are forced to examine everything that you model and could be better at. It’s a great task and opportunity.”

Music man: Goldblum at the piano in 2018 (Getty)

Despite all his flairs and idiosyncrasies, Goldblum seems to have grounded himself within an industry that mostly drives people to do the exact opposite. Yes, there is fame. There is recognition. And obviously, there is also money. But none of that seems to bear much significance to Goldblum, who is surprisingly saccharine about the whole thing.

“You know, I wanted to be an actor in the worst way from 10 years old,” he says. “And I still pinch myself, going, ‘Gee, this is a miraculous opportunity. It’d be a shame if you don’t make the most of it.’ So I just try to show up to work and be grateful and appreciative of it all.”

‘Kaos’ is streaming on Netflix from 29 August