Is Steve Carell Jewish? His Collected Character in FX on Hulu's 'The Patient' Is

Sep. 13 2022, Published 10:17 p.m. ET

So you get right into a scuffle with a stranger at a bar, or perhaps a screaming fit with fellow customer at a high-stakes Black Friday sale. Once the drama is over and done with, you pass house and omit it ever happened. But what if the opposite individual is nonetheless fuming, fascinated with how they have got supposedly been violated, humiliated, or wronged? Said random stranger thinks about the come upon till they're blue in the face, until they are able to't help but plot your inevitable death.

This is how the brain of Domhnall Gleeson's (Ex Machina) character, Sam Fortner, thinks in FX on Hulu's chilling series The Patient. The series' synopsis reads as follows: "The Patient is a psychological thriller from the minds of Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg (The Americans) about a therapist, Alan Strauss (Steve Carell), who's held prisoner by a patient, Sam Fortner (Domhnall Gleeson), who reveals himself to be a serial killer." Why is he retaining him hostage? Well, it is easy: Sam demands that Alan help him clear out his homicidal urges by way of licensed therapeutic tactics.

As Alan lives his days out in Sam's middle-of-nowhere house — chained to the floor like an animal — he reflects on his own lifestyles, pondering away at the demons that haunt him, which come with his deceased spouse and estranged Orthodox Jewish son, Ezra (Andrew Leeds). In fact, Alan's personal Jewish religion has a significant role in The Patient, his character is even tormented by vibrant visions of the Holocaust. This begs the query: is Steve Carell (The Office) Jewish?

Is Steve Carell Jewish?

No, Steve himself is not of the Jewish religion/tradition, but The Patient creators Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg are, and their upbringing no doubt influenced the character of Alan. Interestingly, Alan wasn't firstly deliberate to be Jewish, however because the creative enterprise opened up, his faith turned into an issue of pastime.

"The part of what interested us was there was a character who is a therapist and his whole identity is bound up in being on the solid emotional footing, and in being able to parse these things through and build good relationships because that's what he does," Joel, the son of a rabbi, advised Newsweek in an interview. "And we're interested in that character struggling with his own personal failings and ultimately facing them in these trying circumstances."

Now how does this relate to Judaism? Well, first of all the creators strived to offer Alan a sense of individuality, to present him traits that added color to his backstory, and it wasn't lengthy before it changed into clear that Judaism introduced extra in terms of a completely fleshed out character.

"[The Jewish faith] that was initially just one of the constant efforts you make when you're creating characters to add specificity and dimension and things that make them more individual," Joe explained.

"But I think as soon as we had that idea for this guy we pretty quickly realized, as two Jews, it was giving us a window into certain aspects of his psyche and his personality," he endured.

"I don't think we would have immediately said 'this is going to start tapping into images and feelings about the Holocaust that you have inside of you somewhere if you're Jewish,' but that was one of the many places that it went."

Considering actors are often met with backlash once they play characters that constitute faiths, races, gender identities, and sexual orientations that differ from theirs (let's no longer fail to remember when Scarlet Johansson was cast in 2017's Ghost in the Shell, or when she nearly played a transgender guy in the now-canceled film Rub and Tug), the creators introduced their opinion on the matter.

Though they know others really feel in a different way, Joel and Joe's “feeling has always been as television writers that [they are] kind of in a space the place people are pretending to be other folks." For them, it's as simple as that.

Overall, as storytellers, the duo "is seeking to enlarge our common humanity," which is a mission they really feel Steve aids in with his quietly painful portrayal of Alan.

New episodes of The Patient are launched each Tuesday on Hulu.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pbXSramam6Ses7p6wqikaKhfnsBuv9OerZ5lk5a%2FprjLZqGer5motQ%3D%3D