Christopher Walken

Everyone thinks they can do the Christopher Walken voice. That New York lilt. That round, honeyed purr, like a cat with plans. Try it yourself. Go on. Speak from the back of your throat. Elongate those vowels. What you shouldn’t do, though, is try it in front of him. In Severance , the Apple TV+ Rubik’s cube that’s currently in the midst of its second, head-spinning season , employees of a mysterious biotech company have their lives split in half: one side of themselves exists in the world as we know it, with families, loved ones and hobbies; the other exists only within the walls of the workplace. Ne’er the twain shall meet – or even remember anything from the other’s space. But for ostensibly platonic colleagues Burt and Irving (played with such sweet, mature longing by Walken and John Turturro, both of whom received Emmy nominations for their work in 2022), something ambiguous hangs between them – either a romantic attraction that already exists on the outside, or something they want to make real on the inside. Walken is talking to me from New York, dressed in a black blazer and navy shirt, his hair grey, coiffed and tall, like he’s been electrocuted. We’re speaking before Christmas, our conversation taking place more or less with an Apple-branded dart blaster aimed at us: I’ve seen five episodes of the long-in-the-works second season at this point but have been forbidden to talk about their specifics. Today, viewers will know that Burt has been largely absent since the show’s return, existing solely in the real world following his retirement. Irving, meanwhile, has been left heartbroken in the wake of discovering that Burt’s “outie” – as opposed to his workplace “innie” – is married to a man who isn’t him. They’ve been kept apart until this week’s episode, which saw the pair finally meeting in the real world and Burt inviting Irving to eat dinner with him and his husband (a cryptic John Noble). It was a lovely reunion, albeit with strings attached. Their scenes remain some of the show’s best: tender, romantic, unexpectedly, well, erotic. It’s the “nice” part that he finds most surprising. “Because it’s much more up my alley than all those other parts I’ve played,” he says. Meaning the psychopaths. Remember when he pushed Michelle Pfeiffer out of a high-rise window in Batman Returns , or played the Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow ? And that’s just two of many. “Oh, it started way back,” he laughs. “One of the first things I did was Annie Hall , where I played this guy who wants to drive into traffic. Then I made The Deer Hunter , where I shot myself in the head. And then I just got identified with, you know, people who are troubled… to say the least.” Deeply unlike him, he insists. “The facts of my life are that I’ve been married for over 50 years, I pay my bills, and I live in a house. I’m a very normal person.” He doesn’t even get upset very often. Especially when he’s on set. “It’s rare to work with someone you don’t like,” he explains. “It’s happened once or twice, but it’s rare. Actors tend to get along. We’re like a tribe, a family. Every once in a while there’s somebody you’d like to push down the stairs, but…” Now there’s a bit of classic Walken villainy, I tell him. “I swear it’s only ever a passing thought.” Spend just a little time with him and you find yourself wanting to crack the Walken code. Not because he’s got walls up, but because no one else is really like him – he’s otherworldly, surprising, a little mystical. Sean Penn once remarked that attempting to define Christopher Walken is akin to “trying to define a cloud”. And the privacy only adds to that. He’s been a pop culture staple since the Seventies, but he retains a degree of mystery. Did you know that his name’s not even Christopher? “It’s a Severance kind of thing,” he laughs. “I’m Christopher, but to a small group of people, I’m Ronnie.” Those people include his closest friends and his wife, the former casting director Georgianne Walken, who