Readers’ Choice 2024: Jeff Daniels in ‘A Man in Full’

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Actor Jeff Daniels accepted the role of Charlie Croker in Netflix’s new series A Man in Full. Here, Daniels talks about changes in culture and racial relations since the novel’s 1990s publication.

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Throughout his long career, Jeff Daniels has always found a way of sliding under the skin of his various characters. Yet when it came time to play the central role of Charlie Croker in the new Netflix limited series A Man in Full, it took a while for Daniels to find his bearings. The character is an imposing one to say the least. “He’s complicated and larger than life,” says Daniels. “He is the star of his own show, and everyone he meets is his audience — and loves Charlie almost as much as Charlie loves himself.”

Based on Tom Wolfe’s celebrated, sprawling 1998 New York Times bestselling novel, A Man in Full, premiering May 2, is a satirical follow-up to The Bonfire of the Vanities from 1987. Set in Atlanta, it’s the story of Croker, a former Georgia Tech football hero and now a real estate big shot who is facing an unexpected bankruptcy. As his empire starts to fall, many around him look to capitalize. 

Other characters in the series include Raymond Peepgrass (Tom Pelphrey), a loan officer at Croker’s bank whose path crosses with Charlie in ways he could never predict; Conrad Hensley (Jon Michael Hill), who has a run-in with a police officer and winds up in jail; Roger White (Aml Ameen), a lawyer at Croker Industries; Wes Jordan (William Jackson Harper), the current mayor of Atlanta running for election; and Martha (Diane Lane), Charlie’s ex-wife. David. E. Kelley is the series’ showrunner, writer and executive producer, while Oscar and Emmy Award-winner Regina King is also an executive producer and directs three of the six episodes. 

As the series opens, Daniels, as Croker, is called into what he thinks is a refinancing meeting, only to find his bank telling him he owes $800 million. It’s a wake up call. 

“He is completely overextended financially, using other people’s money to build countless skyscrapers in Atlanta,” says Daniels. “The problem with Charlie is that he wasn’t just spending money on buildings; he was buying a private jet, a quail plantation and a few other things.” 

It is the performer’s job to convey all that Croker is trying to deal with. “It is this descent of a man’s man, the male ego too big to fail — all that stuff gets blown right out of the water. The challenge was the complexity of that descent and trying to make a character that on the surface seems unlikable, at least likable enough that you care what happens to him. Also — he needs to be funny.” 

Daniels took the part because he trusted Kelley’s writing and the directing of King and Tommy Schlamme, but he had no idea initially how to mold the character. “I didn’t know how to play him. I said yes, and that is the challenge at this point of my career — that I am risking failure. You jump off the cliff and start flapping your arms and hope to hell you fly. That is what this was. I had to get the accent down, which had to be larger than life. It had to be an accent that isn’t specific to anything in Atlanta now. The accent had to be as large as Charlie is.”

The cast and crew filmed in the area from August to November a year-and-a-half ago, and much of the city, from Midtown to Buckhead, is showcased. Atlanta has as much presence as any of the principals, and its characters all are proud of where they live. “It’s a big city in its own right,” says Daniels. “It’s an important city, certainly to people like Charlie Croker. They don’t really care about New York and Los Angeles. They have Atlanta, thank you very much, and don’t talk to [them] about Dallas.”

Daniels made a name for himself in the ’80s in films such as Terms of Endearment, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Something Wild and has become one of today’s most versatile actors. He’s also found success on TV with Emmy Awards for The Newsroom and Godless, as well as onstage, most recently in Aaron Sorkin’s Broadway version of To Kill a Mockingbird, the highest-grossing American play in history. 

Daniels has filmed in the city before, including Dumb and Dumber To and Allegiant, and was actually born in Athens but was only there for a short period of time. 

As soon as he was hired to play Croker, Daniels read a Man in Full and was taken by the late Wolfe’s detail. “Man, he could write — and you get into some of the paragraphs. I enjoy reading novelists like that who can take you on a ride page after page after page. I remember loving the descriptions; they seemed to flow.” 

The series does differ from the 700-plus-page book, however. “David based the show on the book, but I wouldn’t say it was exactly like it. Much of it is, but he went off in some other directions as well,” says Daniels.

Although the series has a present-day setting, much of the book’s themes still resonate more than 25 years later; the racial divide is still present. “The way Conrad is treated differently [from] the way a white kid would be treated is in there. Trump is in the news because he claims he is worth more than he really is. Charlie Croker had the same problem. If Donald had read A Man in Full in the late ’90s, he wouldn’t be where he is now.” 

Despite its popularity and acclaim, though, the novel had its share of criticisms, including accusations of racist behavior from some characters. It was also not kind to Buckhead. The Buckhead Coalition, led by former Atlanta Mayor Sam Massell, disinvited Wolfe to an annual meeting when they heard how Buckhead was depicted. 

The ’90s were a different era, says Daniels, and Kelley has given Croker a bit more humanity and some goodness near the end that may not have been in the book. “I think the culture is changing in a good way. The door is opening wide, I hope, for everyone, which it was not in the ’90s. White blindness is a thing. I think the show speaks to it more than Tom did in the book. That is where we are now, and where we should be.”

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Jim Farmer is the recipient of the 2022 National Arts and Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Theatre Feature and a nominee for Online Journalist of the Year. A member of five national critics’ organizations, he covers theater and film for ArtsATL. A graduate of the University of Georgia, he has written about the arts for 30-plus years. Jim is the festival director of Out on Film, Atlanta’s LGBTQ film festival, and lives in Avondale Estates with his husband, Craig, and dog, Douglas.