While his mother, Joyce Piven of Chicago’s acclaimed Piven Theatre Workshop, claims the character is nothing like her real son, one has to wonder. If nothing else, the role—now being reprised for the sixth season on HBO this summer—has taken Piven far from his former bestbuddy supporting roles and turned him into a leading man, albeit an unconventional one.

Later this summer, in what he calls the apex of his entire career, Piven stars in The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, a film written and produced in part by the comedy duo of Will Ferrell and Piven’s brother-in-law Adam McKay. We chatted about his acting origins, his outrageous new comedy and the fishy mercury- poisoning incident that won’t die down.

MICHIGAN AVENUE: When we talked to your mother, she said that you were more interested in football than acting as a kid.
JEREMY PIVEN: I just kind of climbed onstage with my family when I was eight years old—I was put into a Chekhov production, and I didn’t quite understand what was going on. I just knew that we were inside, and I really liked being outside because I got to play. But I didn’t realize that the type of acting I was doing at Piven Theatre was just as playful. That’s really what the work is about—being totally present in that state of play. The result of that is possibly what you’re seeing in my work now; it may seem improvisational when the reality is, it’s all scripted. It’s your job as an actor to continuously make it seem fresh, as if you’re playing it for the first time.

MA: Our May cover star, Kate Walsh, also talked about how your parents taught her to always be playing on the stage.
JP: It’s funny because I think with [my parents’] work they never delineated the difference between comedy and drama. Like life, things can be very tragic and funny at the same time. But my parents had very different styles. My mother has a great style where you do a scene and she figures a way to celebrate all the great stuff you might have done and then ask a bunch of “what ifs?” So you don’t even realize that you’re getting notes.

MA: Tell me about The Goods.
JP: When this script came my way I knew that Adam [McKay] had written another movie about car salesmen that’s been stuck at Paramount [Pictures] forever. I thought, This is so in his wheelhouse and I think he’d really get it. So I sent it to him, and then I got to do the lead in a really big comedy, and my brother-in-law did the rewrite on it and produced it. We had a screening of it last night and it’s just genuinely funny and original, and it’s not a movie that’s derivative of anything I’ve ever seen. The last time I worked with Will [Ferrell] was Old School, and this feels like that kind of energy in terms of something really fresh and funny.

MA: It’s been way too long since you’ve made a slapstick comedy, and this time you’re the lead. What’s that like?
JP: To carry something is what I’ve been working toward for a really long time for many reasons. When you’re kind of doing a lot of the grunt work—which I’ve been doing as an actor for many, many years— you’re playing small roles and trying to figure out ways to open them up and make them a little more layered or interesting. I feel like I’ve been apprenticing for this for my entire creative life. This is the fruition of many years of work.

MA: I’m a big fan of Will Ferrell comedies like Talladega Nights because you can see that movie dozens of times and it’s still funny every time.
JP: The thing about their movies is they’re always really fun and silly and lowbrow and insane and give you belly laughs. It also works on other levels whether you notice it or not—and whether people get the jokes or not. Talladega Nights is about a very crazy, self-consumed, privileged, USA No. 1, jingoistic character [named] Ricky Bobby. There are a lot of people who are like that.

MA: So what’s the very funny setup in The Goods?
JP: This is very much in the tradition of Will and Adam movies. You’ve got the character Don Ready that I’m playing, who has been on the road his whole life—he’s very content to eat breakfast in strip clubs, sell cars and move to the next town. And he’s living the dream and it all comes crashing in on him during the movie. He hires this renegade group of car salesmen, and they get some celebrity to come onto the lot, to do whatever it takes to move these cars. Unfortunately, that celebrity is Bo Bice’s cousin, who doesn’t show up, and madness ensues.

MA: As you enter the sixth season of Entourage, are you still loving the role of Ari Gold?
JP: That’s the great thing about the role and the show and HBO and all that stuff. You get to continue to explore where all these characters are going. It was inevitable that the boys have to evolve at some point, and that’s happening this season. One of the things we were missing with some of the characters is, What do they really care about? Ari brings in this character played by [Chicago actor] Gary Cole and he turns his life upside down. You get to see yet again how much his family means to him.

MA: Let’s talk about the mercury-poisoning controversy. When I read about it, I knew you wouldn’t have dropped out of Speed-the-Plow unless it was serious, because your mother was so proud that you were on Broadway.
JP: Anyone in Chicago who has ever been to our theater or seen any of the stuff that I’ve done knows that we really put everything we have into it. We’re an American theater family. We have the utmost respect for the space you occupy on the stage. To finally have a chance to perform on Broadway was a dream and the show was incredible, and to get to do a revival of the great David Mamet, who my father had a great relationship with.… To break all box-office records and to perform Mamet on Broadway is why you act. And then to fall that hard was not something that I had planned.

MA: Can you explain what happened?
JP: Twenty years of eating fish twice a day accumulated so much mercury. When your adrenals are blown and you have a resting heart rate of 47, and you wind up with complete exhaustion in the hospital and they say you have to stop, that’s when you listen. You also have to understand: This is a man-made problem. And I won’t get into what actual mercury toxicity is, but the Obama administration came out and they said the number one chemical problem in the world is mercury. There will be a lot of documentaries coming out showing what happens when you have too much mercury in your system: It leads to early Alzheimer’s, heart attacks, blindness.

MA: Are you still eating fish?
JP: I haven’t had a piece of fish since the moment I had my blood test the first week of rehearsal. I went to them from that first week and said, You guys, I apologize, I don’t know what’s going on with me. It felt like… the only thing I can equate it with is the heaviest bout of mono that you could possibly have where you literally can’t get up. You can’t move. You have no focus. You have no energy. You’re completely crippled on a neuromuscular level. This is what I was battling with throughout the entire rehearsal process. I’m not looking for anyone to pity me, but it’s just the journey was like no other.

MA: I only know this because I had dinner with you a long time ago—and I remember that you follow a very restrictive diet: We were at an Italian restaurant and you told them to hold the cheese on your pasta.
JP: I haven’t eaten red meat, dairy or chicken products in 20 years. All my protein came from fish. And so I was overloaded completely with mercury from all this fish. You know, it sounds like some crazy rich-man’s disease. Like I ate a piece of sushi and, you know, it’s like, I didn’t want to go on because I wanted to see that last episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. I had tennis elbow, and I couldn’t make it. I’m lactose-intolerant, I will not be performing tonight! You could say it all. || MA

BY SUSANNA NEGOVAN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEVEN LIPPMAN
STYLING BY ANAHIT MINASYAN
GROOMING BY HELEN ROBERTSON FOR REDKEN/CELESTINEAGENCY.COM