Jake Lacy breaks down Troy’s ‘clarity’ and ‘dissociation’ after that bombshell on ‘Apples Never Fall’ [Exclusive Video Interview]
[WARNING: The following story contains spoilers about “Apples Never Fall.”]
During one Jake Lacy‘s first meetings with the “Apples Never Fall” team, director and executive producer Chris Sweeney succinctly summarized one aspect of the Peacock limited series: He said all the men on this show think they’re crushing masculinity. Lacy plays Troy Delaney, the eldest offspring of a notable tennis family.
“I, as Jake, also thought Troy was crushing masculinity, which was uncomfortable to go, ‘Oh, that’s not everyone’s idea of killing it? Having a nice car and a big house and going to Stanford,'” the Emmy nominee tells Gold Derby (watch the exclusive video interview above). “And also it was — I don’t know — a moment of unrequested self-awareness to being like, ‘Oh, maybe what I think signifies success is a little external.’ But I think what it opened up was this idea that it’s the means by which Troy is trying to solve this problem. And the problem is one of not feeling loved. … It’s a joy to be in this project because there’s clear things, there are clear choices that Troy is chasing to try to feel better — unsuccessfully — or they worked to a certain extent, but they’re not sustaining. They’re not meaningful in the way that an honest, open, loving relationship is meaningful. I think that started those wheels turning.”
Troy is a microcosm of the Delaney family as a whole. They seem like they have it all — he’s a rich venture capitalist, the Delaneys are tennis royalty and just sold their successful academy — but dig a little deeper and everything is a mess. Troy cheated on his wife and is now sleeping with his boss’ wife. And he and his family have decades worth of secrets and resentment toward one another that start to spill out after matriarch Joy (Annette Bening) goes missing. With parents who are also tennis coaches, the four Delaney siblings — none of whom became pro tennis players, much to the chagrin of patriarch Stan (Sam Neill) — were raised to be competitive, not to talk about their feelings.
“They’re all hurting,” Lacy notes. “I forget which of the cast said this, but essentially, each of the Delaney children sees themselves as the black sheep. They all think they’re on the outside, which in some ways they are, and in some ways it’s a little self-obsessed. It’s a little like, why don’t you think about someone else rather than yourself and how does it affect me? How am I being put out?”
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While all four have complicated relationships with their parents, Troy and Stan’s is the most tortured. When he was a teen, Troy accused fellow tennis phenom Harry Haddad (Giles Matthey) of cheating (he was), leading to a fight that ended with Stan slapping Troy. Harry then dropped Stan as his coach and went on to become a Grand Slam champion. For 19 years, Stan blamed Troy for Harry firing him, so you can understand why, in the present, Troy believes Stan may have murdered Joy. But a flashback reveals that Joy was behind Stan’s dismissal as she had convinced Harry’s dad to fire him. She wanted to protect Troy, but she’s also the one who let her husband hold a grudge against her son for nearly two decades.
“We discussed the effect that that has on each of their lives leading up to this moment and then what it costs Joy to reveal that emotionally, how bad things had to have gotten for her to disclose that,” Lacy shares. “I went to Chris Sweeney, who directed it, beforehand, like, ‘What levels are we talking about here? Like how fraught is this? It’s a huge deal. He said two things. One is, ‘We have to see that it matters to you otherwise it won’t matter to us as a viewer. This has changed the trajectory of your entire life. Every foundational relationship you have … has been tinged with dishonesty. And now the person you thought you could count on in all of this is the root of it, who’s actually been the most dishonest in allowing these dysfunctional circumstances, relationship dynamics to exist for so long.’ We spent two days filming that scene. On the digital floor somewhere, there are a dozen takes where the levels are all over the place. I was really happy with the take that they chose because, to me, it feels like the clarity of Troy’s feelings around this are in that response and also his dissociation from his own feelings is also present.”
Contrary to what Troy thought, Stan did not murder Joy. No one did. She took off because she was fed up with feeling unappreciated by her family. When she returns in the finale, things aren’t fixed, of course, but it feels like they could start the process.
“I think the arc that you see hopefully through the whole series is this conclusion that the opening the door of honesty as to who we really are as people,” Lacy says. “Those secrets and shames kind of being put out in the open — those things in the closet aren’t as scary as they seem. Those things in the dark aren’t as horrible as they seem if they can be brought out into the light. We leave the Delaney family at the end with this opportunity to heal. We don’t find them completed. You find them going like, ‘Maybe therapy would be good.’ Everyone here is living unexamined lives, but it just starts the ball rolling.”
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