From ‘Speak No Evil’ to ‘Nightbitch,’ Scoot McNairy’s Big Moment Has Been Long Overdue

In Always Great, Awards Insider speaks with Hollywood’s greatest undersung actors in career-spanning conversations. In this installment, Scoot McNairy reflects on the road to what might be his biggest year in movies yet, from helping lead the horror hit Speak No Evil to taking on a small but pivotal role in the upcoming A Complete Unknown.

“This is a big, big year.” Scoot McNairy has just returned home from his first screening of A Complete Unknown (in theaters on Christmas), the Bob Dylan biopic led by Timothée Chalamet and the fourth and—presumably—final film starring McNairy to hit theaters in 2024. McNairy plays Dylan’s mentor Woody Guthrie, who’s battling Huntington’s disease in his final days. “The movie’s so good, Timmy’s so good, Ed Norton is so good,” McNairy says over Zoom from his sunny backyard, unable to contain a boyish grin. “I was just driving home, like, I’m so glad that I’m a part of the Bob Dylan story. Twenty-five years ago, I never would’ve thought that possible in a million years.”

Playing Guthrie is the kind of gig that McNairy has come to perfect: a small role in a pedigreed project, trading dialogue with a big star and tasked with making an impact. He’s done it opposite Ben Affleck in Gone Girl, Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Nicole Kidman in Destroyer. But in A Complete Unknown, McNairy faced a unique challenge on top of the limited screen time: He couldn’t get to speak. “[Huntington’s] is very similar to dementia, and my mother has dementia, so I spent some time just watching her—and then I went through all of Woody Guthrie’s photographs at that time and looked at how he cocked his head,” McNairy says. “I had my hands tied behind my back. All the tools that I had in my bag of tricks over the last 25 years of acting were taken away.”

Those tools have been developed gradually, with broader audiences just starting to get a feel for McNairy’s idiosyncratic work. Now, at last, larger roles in buzzy movies, like 2024’s Speak No Evil and Nightbitch, have stopped feeling like exceptions to the rule.

Born in Dallas, Texas, McNairy left for college in Austin before going on to Los Angeles to pursue acting in his early 20s. He snagged small early parts in the likes of Wonderland and Herbie: Fully Loaded, but found success on the TV commercial circuit. “I had a commercial agent who’s still my manager today—I’ve been with him for 20 years—and he’d sent us on so many castings,” McNairy says. “I’m talking three to eight a week, tons of them.” McNairy learned what kind of actor he was through that process, experimenting with characters in stuffy casting offices and trying not to repeat himself from job to job. But even as he made a name for himself as a colorful auditioner, and even when a director wanted to hire him, he struggled to land film work: “I was in that position where they’re like, No—find somebody else that’s recognizable.”

McNairy came close to securing the part of a lovelorn technician in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind before losing out on it to an actor fresh off of a massive, Oscar-winning franchise. “I really wanted that job and Elijah Wood got it,” McNairy says. He got closer to playing opposite Matthew McConaughey in the studio comedy Failure to Launch, perfecting a dopey-idiot archetype through to the audition room, where he showed up wearing one shoe and one sock.

“I told them, ‘Dude, man, I had a crazy morning: I ran out of the house, I thought my shoes were in the car and they weren’t!’” McNairy recalls, vividly acting out the memory. “I was in the running, and it would’ve been my first studio flick. Then Paramount said, ‘Who? No way. Get me somebody else.’” Justin Bartha ended up in the role. “I saw Justin in the movie and he was great,” McNairy says. “I thought Elijah Wood did an incredible job too. I still watch Eternal Sunshine all the time and have never, ever once thought, after seeing it, I wish I got that role.”