Actor Liev Schreiber visits WIRED to answer his most searched for questions on Google. What’s the correct way to pronounce Liev Schreiber’s name? What are his thoughts on his time playing Ray Donovan? Does Liev Schreiber play hockey? Who is he in ‘Scream?’ Has Liev Schreiber been in a Broadway show? Will Liev Schreiber return as the mutant Sabertooth in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Liev answers these questions and many more on the WIRED Autocomplete Interview.The Perfect Couple is available to stream exclusively on Netflix.
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00:00I'm Liev Schreiber, and this is the Wired Autocomplete Interview.
00:05[♪ dramatic music playing ♪
00:08AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!
00:09Was that the point of that one?
00:11Or did you want to know if I was in-screen?
00:12[♪ dramatic music playing ♪
00:16Oh, here. Here's what you asked.
00:19How...
00:21Oh.
00:23How to pronounce...
00:24Liev Schreiber.
00:26That's how you pronounce it.
00:28Liev Schreiber.
00:29I don't remember the last time I've heard my name said correctly.
00:32That might have been at my mom's house.
00:34Liev Schreiber is a Jets fan.
00:37Liev Schreiber is a Jets fan.
00:38Sadly, Liev Schreiber is also a Giants fan.
00:41Liev Schreiber is a fan of pretty much every team
00:44that has ever done a Hard Knocks show,
00:46because you get to know these guys
00:48who are at this inflection point in their careers,
00:51and it's moving, and you start to follow them,
00:52and you start to care about them.
00:53I think that's why the show's good,
00:55and I think that's why I'm a fan of so many NFL teams.
00:59Liev Schreiber awards.
01:01Just too many to list here.
01:04Liev Schreiber, Ray Donovan.
01:06I really liked that show, so I enjoyed being a part of it.
01:10Those were all friends of mine who were in it,
01:13and they remain friends of mine,
01:15and, you know, when you do something like that
01:18for seven or eight years, those people become your family.
01:20I mean, I'm used to it, because I was a theater actor,
01:22so you had this thing where you work for three months,
01:25get very close with people, and then you leave,
01:27and I didn't realize that was one of the things
01:29about television is that you work with people
01:30for a really long time if the show's successful.
01:33I miss all of those people very much.
01:35There's another Ray Donovan good show.
01:40Okay, let's see what else you want to know.
01:42You want to know.
01:44Liev Schreiber, Scream.
01:46Ah!
01:47Was that the point of that one?
01:49Or did you want to know if I was in Scream?
01:50Ah, it's probably more like it.
01:52Yeah, I was in Scream.
01:53I was in Scream 1, Scream 2, and Scream 3.
01:56I had met the producer, and as a favor
02:00to whoever my agent was at that time,
02:02he gave me this part in it.
02:04All I had to do was walk up and down some stairs,
02:06and they would give me $20,000,
02:08and at that point, I was like, oh, yeah, and so I did,
02:11and then next thing I know, it's like this zeitgeist hit,
02:14and I'm in the second one, and I'm in the third one,
02:16so I actually owe Scream a lot for my career.
02:19Does Liev Schreiber play hockey?
02:22Very badly.
02:24I learned to play hockey for Goon
02:25because I had to play an enforcer,
02:28and there aren't many enforcers
02:31who are great hockey players,
02:33so it kind of made sense
02:34that I wasn't a great hockey player,
02:36but I had to look like I knew how to skate,
02:37so they sent me to hockey camp for five weeks,
02:40which is one of the amazing things
02:41about being in the movies is you get to learn things.
02:46Liev Schreiber, Asteroid City.
02:47Yes, I was in Asteroid City.
02:50Being on a Wes Anderson set is like,
02:53I don't know if you ever saw the show Captain Kangaroo.
02:56It's like that.
02:57YouTube it.
02:58Liev Schreiber as a kid.
03:00I grew up in the Lower East Side of New York.
03:03I was a little blonde kid with hair down to my butt,
03:08and I wore, for some reason,
03:10all the kids in my neighborhood called me boots
03:13because I wore cowboy boots
03:14that were like three sizes too big,
03:17so hopefully that encapsulates my childhood.
03:20What else do you guys wanna know?
03:23Liev Schreiber, Broadway.
03:25Yes, I've been on Broadway a number of times.
03:28I've even got a Tony, actually.
03:30I mean, I don't have it here with me,
03:31but I have one in my possession.
03:34There's no comparison.
03:35It's just a completely different animal, and I love it.
03:39It's hard.
03:40The schedules are hard.
03:40You get paid a lot less,
03:42although Broadway can sometimes be a little more lucrative.
03:45There's something about the theater,
03:47and this sounds really corny,
03:49but it's my equivalent of church.
03:51It's about the audience.
03:53It's about the community.
03:54It's about 500, 800 people in the dark communing,
03:59and it has much less to do with the actors than you think.
04:04There are laughs in the theater
04:06that don't exist in real life.
04:08There are laughs of acknowledgement
04:09where an audience sees something, and they go,
04:11and that laugh is meant to communicate
04:15to the other people in the room
04:17that they share something with this story
04:19or this idea and this theme,
04:21because what you're doing on stage
04:22is really putting something up
04:26for them to become closer to each other,
04:28for them to become closer to themselves,
04:30which I suppose cinema does the same thing,
04:32but what I love about the theater
04:34is it does it in this very visceral, real way,
04:37that they're sitting next to each other doing it,
04:39and it's happening,
04:40and they walk out feeling,
04:42if it's good, profoundly different.
04:44Liev Schreiber talked too much about the theater.
04:47Liev Schreiber, everything is illuminated.
04:48Yes, so I wasn't in that.
04:49I directed that,
04:50and I adapted it from Jonathan Safran Foer's book.
04:54It was the beginning, for me,
04:56of my fascination with America
05:00as a nation of grandchildren.
05:03It's part of why I'm so interested in the war in Ukraine
05:07and part of why I started Blue Check.
05:11And part of why I think we have to be so vigilant
05:13about our democracy,
05:16that it's something that we do owe a debt
05:18to our grandparents for,
05:20and it's something that we do have to,
05:22unfortunately, every once in a while
05:24perform some maintenance on.
05:26No, Liev Schreiber is not Wolverine,
05:29but I was in a movie with Wolverine,
05:32and I played his brother who was Sabretooth,
05:35Victor Creed.
05:37And no, I'm also not Nicole Kidman,
05:41if that isn't blatantly obvious to all of you,
05:44but I was finally in a show with Nicole Kidman
05:48called The Perfect Couple,
05:50which was really, really fun,
05:51and she is a remarkable actress,
05:55and surprisingly naughty,
05:57and I really enjoyed acting with her.
06:00What else?
06:01Okay.
06:02Mm-mm.
06:03Will Liev Schreiber return as Sabretooth?
06:07It's possible.
06:08I mean, that was a lot of weightlifting and eating chicken,
06:13and I'm not sure I'm up to that,
06:16but if someone had a great idea, I'd be in there.
06:20Why was Liev Schreiber with Usyk?
06:23Because he's probably the person I admire most
06:25in the world right now.
06:26I'm a huge boxing fan,
06:29but it's not what I love about Alexander Usyk.
06:32What I love about Alexander Usyk
06:34is his principles and his values,
06:37and who he is as a person.
06:39And, you know, fighters always talk shit
06:41about each other before fights,
06:43and Usyk just smiles,
06:45and is always kind, and is always respectful.
06:48There's something about his work ethic.
06:49The average boxer has, you know,
06:5230, 40 amateur fights.
06:54Usyk has 330-something.
06:57He practices that idea that Kobe used to say,
06:59I can't take a shot unless I've taken it
07:00a thousand times in practice.
07:03Usyk does that with boxing,
07:04and it's a work ethic.
07:07It's a respect.
07:08It's an integrity.
07:09The fact that he's also Ukrainian,
07:11and he's representing the strength and resilience
07:14of his people, and not just his people,
07:16but all of us, what we're capable of,
07:18if we put our minds to it.
07:20He's extremely special to me.
07:22So when he invited me to do the ring walk with him,
07:26I was very flattered, and extremely nervous.
07:30I was so freaked out that I was gonna jinx him.
07:33But thankfully, he is who he is, and he won.
07:36He's the heavyweight champion of the world, by the way.
07:39Leo Schreiber voice acting.
07:41Yeah, I've done that a couple times.
07:42I did Spider-Man movies.
07:44I did My Little Pony, Isle of Dogs.
07:48So yeah, I've done a little bit of voice acting.
07:50Leo Schreiber beard.
07:51Yeah, I have a beard.
07:53I mean, I wouldn't call it a beard.
07:54I'd call it stubble.
07:55It started with Ray Donovan, and then as I got older,
07:58I was like, you know, my face is pretty fat.
08:00So we call it Slavic fat pads in my family.
08:03And I thought, with the stubble,
08:05my face looks a little less fat.
08:06Stubble helps, guys out there.
08:09What are they called when guys do that?
08:10They give grooming tips?
08:12Stubble helps with Slavic fat pads.
08:15Oh, really?
08:16There weren't any like, that's, come on.
08:17People wanna know other, more awful things.
08:21I think the number one thing is probably like,
08:24does he have kids?
08:25Is he married?
08:26They wanna know all that stuff.
08:27I'm kind of disappointed.
08:28I have three.
08:29I'm not convinced that those are the top questions
08:32the internet has about me.
08:33I think that the internet has a lot more awful questions
08:36about me that you're protecting me from.
08:38Somebody's protecting me from the awful questions
08:41that the internet has about me.
08:43But you know what?
08:43You can always just Google me.