Sneaky Pete is a new Amazon TV series co-created by Bryan Cranston. It sees recently released convict Marius (Giovanni Ribisi) attempt to escape his dangerous past by taking on a new identity, that of his still incarcerated former cellmate Pete.
Marius’s skills as a conman are thoroughly tested as he’s thrown into daily life with Pete’s estranged family, attempting to convince them he’s returned after an unexplained twenty year absence. He soon gets drawn into tracking down criminals for the family bond business, run by the Pete’s grandmother Audrey (Margo Martindale) and Pete’s youngest sibling Julia (Marin Ireland).
We got exclusive access to three of the show’s lead cast members in Los Angeles, Giovanni Ribisi, Margo Martindale and Marin Ireland.
RELATED: Here’s a look back at five of Giovanni Ribisi’s most memorable roles.
What was the initial draw for you Sneaky Pete?
Margo Martindale: Bryan Cranston and David Shore called me and talked to me about it and sent me the script and that was enough!
Marin Ireland: And I was like, anything to get to work with Margo Martindale! When I got to audition I was blown away by the list of people who were already involved; Giovanni Ribisi, Bryan Cranston, Margo Martindale, Peter Gerety, David Shore. Honestly for me reading the script, the fact that this woman wasn’t just the girlfriend or a wife that she had a complicated past and as getting to go on all of those cool adventures, just like Giovanni’s character. That was pretty fun and exciting to me to imagine how that could be a series.
Bryan Cranston is one if the show’s creators, how much contact you had with him?
Marin Ireland: You know, I was kind of blown away by how accessible he was remotely. He couldn’t be there in person when we were shooting the pilot because he was very busy, but as soon as I was cast, he reached out, he wrote me this long email with all of his thoughts about Julia’s backstory. He said this is just going to be a stream of consciousness, these are all the things I’ve talked to the writers about, let’s make this a conversation. We had a lot of frank and honestly very exciting conversations via email and text while he was in London shooting and that was a pretty special indicator to me of the kind of hand he was going to have in the whole thing and how deeply invested he was.
So that was just the beginning and once we were actually shooting the season he was around as much as he possibly could be in person as well. At the core it’s about a family. It’s obviously about this outsider that comes in, but at some point it’s about how much we need family and what family does for us at the end of the day.
Margo Martindale: I think that’s great. That’s really what I think it is about. From my view point, my character will do anything to keep this family together. I will go to any lengths to keep this family alive. I will go to any lengths to keep all the balls in the air. I think that in the pilot, the scene at the dinner table is so powerful.
Does Audrey know he’s an imposter at the end of the pilot?
Margo Martindale: I tried to let the words speak for themselves.
Marin Ireland: What I think is great is the idea of conning and being conned, when you look at that on a bigger scale of how we con ourselves and part of that has to do with if you believe, as Audrey does, that she can read people very well, then she’s going to miss something because she believes that she sees everything. Julia believes that she misses everything because she’s been told that her whole life, then when she actually does see something she’s not going to believe that she sees it. So there are these ways in which we are tricking ourselves about our own identity and who we are and what we see and what we don’t see. But I also think that for me the show is a lot about identity and asks can we reinvent ourselves, can any of us? Can you leave behind parts of your past? Can you transform your identity?
I feel that’s partly how Julia and Marius connect on a very deep level very quickly, is that they’ve both recognised something in each other which is that they’re trying on this new life, we’re trying on this new persona. And we need it to work out for different reasons but it’s not really authentic to who we used to be, but is it still authentic to who we might be? Who is the real you? You know that’s a kind of a nebulous idea and to me that was always something that was thrilling to me about the show from my perspective, thinking about how Julia fits in. She’s trying on a new persona too, you know in a way. And she’s failing at it a lot of the time, but does that mean this new person is more her, or is that less her? How do we know who the real us is? Just because he’s sort of pretending doesn’t mean he isn’t having real experiences with all of us that feel like family. So that’s hard to know, is he less our family because he’s pretending? I don’t know.
Margo, can I ask you about the matriarch you play, an intriguing part in Sneaky Pete. How has playing a powerful figure like this changed for over you career?
Margo Martindale: Yeah, people started giving me powerful women to play and I think I delivered. I think that that is why this part came along for me. Has it changed? Yeah, as I got older, I got better. I guess I was always what I was, but I mean I was given more opportunities.
How far is Marius going to take his new identity as Pete in terms of being involved with this family as the series goes on?
Giovanni Ribisi: I think all of us are going to find that out, how deep that relationship goes, that is ultimately the primary premise of the show, which I think was based on a documentary called The Imposter. It’s essentially about a family in Texas who lost their son and some vagrant, or orphan in Spain, who ended up being a conman, found out about this family in this small town in Texas, showed up at their door and convinced them that he was their long lost son and lived with them for years. And an interesting book is The Confidence Game, where they talk about cons and the institution of conmen conning people and how important the factor of the believer is in all of that and I think that speaks to every character in the show.
We all have our secrets and lies, but I think to a greater or lesser degree we all want to believe in the reality that we’re projecting to them. For my character specifically I think it kind of becomes distilled down to a very simple thing, he just wants to be doing everything he can or everything he’s doing for his brother to liberate his brother from the vice on his character. What I think is really incredible and speaks to the writers is how complicated they’ve managed to make that and you have this character who because where he came from and his background. When he looks at a situation he doesn’t think let’s just talk, he thinks manipulate and lie, and how can I control this situation so that I can get everything I can. There’s a certain fun quality. Why be a criminal if it’s not going to be fun? There’s a game, there’s a chase.
The whole question of reinventing ourselves, is that actually something that’s possible in real life?
Margo Martindale: I think you can reinvent yourself. I’ve always thought that when I hit a wall I could become somebody else and then if you just act that way for long enough maybe you’ll become that. I’ve always loved the idea that there’s another way in or out. I mean if a door didn’t open, I’d find another way to open it through another version of myself. I think these people don’t quite know who they are, so they play at what they are a bit and maybe they become that, what they wish they were.
Giovanni Ribisi: I think change is absolutely possible. You know you’re speaking to actors and even if it is on a professional level rather than a personal one, our job to a greater or lesser degree is to reinvent our viewpoint, our outlook, our life and situations and imagine being in a certain situation. So I think even if it’s more out of desperation, I would say yes it is possible to reinvent yourself.
How does having several different directors across season one affect things, including Bryan Cranston on episode 8? Also, if it goes to a second season would you like to direct an episode yourself?
Margo Martindale: It’s interesting having different directors, it’s like ‘did you like him?’, ‘did you like them?’, ‘did you like that one?’ We all kind of get together and see who we like most and Bryan was right up there! Everybody was good. I would not like to direct. I have no interest in directing. I bet Giovanni does have interest in directing…I hope so.
Giovanni Ribisi: A very strong interest in directing. I haven’t really thought of the idea of acting and directing, or even being able to do that, so I don’t know if I would do the show, but maybe. I’ve seen Bryan be very successful at that. And I would concur with Margo, optimistically speaking it provides a variety to a show and I think it’s a new voice every time and they have a certain take on something and with some people their work is flat out inspired, Adam Arkin was amazing. I loved Michael Dinner.
Marin Ireland: The great thing about the experience of working with different directors on any show is that as we are getting clearer on who are characters are you have someone fresh on the scene and they’re asking you questions that nobody so far has asked. Each time they’re coming at it from a different angle and it’s sort of testing the ideas that you’re coming up with and even those great moments that happen. And I think sometimes the some of the best feelings on the show is when a director asks a question and you realise you know more than you thought you did because they are coming to it fresh.
Have any of you ever been conned?
Giovanni Ribisi: Yes. A large amount if money. Lesson learned. Don’t trust anybody!
Margo Martindale: Oh, I’m certain that I have.
Marin Ireland: Me too!
If you had an opportunity to step into somebody else’s shoes like Giovanni’s character does in Sneaky Pete who would you want to be?
Margo Martindale: I think I would like to be a doctor. You know give shots or something all day!
Marin Ireland: The first person I thought of was RuPaul! I just love RuPaul and I also feel that right now at this moment in time, that’s an individual who brings so much inspiration and joy and has such a great following of people that’s all about him spreading love and joy. It’d be fun, fun, fun! That’s my fantasy, RuPual for one day!
Giovanni Ribisi: I thought of a goat herder in New Zealand or shaving vinyl wall or something like that.
Do you think you’d be easily conned in a scenario like the one on the show?
Margo Martindale: I don’t think my character has got to ‘this isn’t Pete’ yet, but ‘who is he?’ and ‘what the hell has he been doing?’ and ‘who did my little grandson turn out to be?’ That’s probably where I’d start too.
Marin Ireland: I think my frame of mind as Julia is ‘why the hell would anybody want to join this family?’ Why would some stranger think that would be such a great idea? If this isn’t him, good luck, you picked the wrong family!’ My personal family is estranged in terms of cousins and I remember at my grandfather’s funeral this woman came up to me and was like ‘I’m your cousin Holly’, my first cousin Holly and I didn’t even know there was someone named Holly in the family. Even though she was my age, I didn’t even know that person existed. It didn’t occur to me that she would be conning me, and I don’t think of my life as that glamorous frankly, and she wasn’t asking for anything. She is my cousin; I’ve now hung out with her and her mother. But at the time I’d never even seen pictures of this person. I mean theoretically she could’ve been just some person off the street who walked into the funeral home. At the time I thought, I guess you are my cousin because it’d be such a weird thing to do, because I don’t think of my extended family as having something somebody would want, so it would feel like what a lot of effort to go to for no reward, but obviously it’s possible.
Giovanni Ribisi: I’ve seen people that I legitimately did not recognise from my childhood because of weight that was put on, or a beard or something, so that it took me five minutes to kind of go ‘oh my gosh’. But so much of what a conman exploits is a necessity for their victims to believe and I think that applies to all the characters. I think that everybody wants to have some reinvention of themselves or some reality that they can project on to the world and I think a good conman is able to intuit that and go ‘ok these are the buttons I’m going to press’.
Marin Ireland: That’s what is so great about the documentary Giovanni mentioned earlier, The Imposter. It’s very easy to look at a story like this and think I would never fall for that, but so many people do.
All ten episodes of season one of Sneaky Pete will stream from January 13th on Amazon. What do you make of that format and are you a binge watchers yourself?
Giovanni Ribisi: I’m a huge fan of the format, it’s sort of the modern day format of reading a novel. I think it’s wide open right now and before it becomes bureaucratic or dies, there’s so much opportunity to improve and go deeper and to tell amazing stories. It is its own medium I think. It obviously came from the mini-series. But now I think the reigns are off for some reason. Netflix and Amazon and HBO and other networks, are saying we have to be radical, we have to rattle the cage right now. So you have a chemistry teacher starting a meth lab. The last thing I binged watched was ‘The Night Of’ and ‘Stranger Things’ I really liked stylistically.
Season One of Sneaky Pete is available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video.
Sneaky Pete Synopsis
A con man (Giovanni Ribisi) on the run from a vicious gangster (Bryan Cranston) takes cover from his past by assuming the identity of his prison cellmate, Pete, “reuniting” with Pete’s estranged family, a colorful, dysfunctional group that threatens to drag him into a world just as dangerous as the one he’s trying to escape – and, just maybe, give him a taste of the loving family he’s never had.
