The best of Leslie Jordan: A look at some of the beloved comedian’s hilarious moments
Leslie Jordan is more than just a great actor: He’s a comedian whose talents are on full display on many of the best television series ever made.
Jordan has a gift for getting into character and making audiences laugh: Whether he’s wearing a trench coat and a fedora or just a pair of pants, he’s always believable.
His performances are often laugh-a-minute, but there’s also a subtlety to his comedic style which makes viewers want to know why the character does what he does.
“He really has that ability to go back to an idea he’s established and it becomes part of it that he really doesn’t even see,” says Scott Menzie, senior vice president of Original Content for Sony Pictures Television.
“He takes that element of, ‘What is this character thinking? What is this person trying to say?’ and he goes to the furthest depths,” Menzie says. “His work is so good because he can use it as an element in a narrative or a set of scenes.”
And there are lots of examples, like this one from his role as D’Brickashaw Ferguson on The Wire:
“We’ll watch as the character is kind of starting to unravel,” Menzie says. “From a comedic point of view, he’s really starting to be very, very unraveled. But as we’re watching his life unravel, we’re not really seeing it. What we’re seeing is him as someone who has to figure out where he’s going.”
Jordan’s work is even stronger when he’s playing a flawed character. “You can go as far as you can in the script and try to find something that’s believable, but once you get into that realm and you go beyond that, it’s really where he’s at,” Menzie says. “He is really the most flawed human being that we have ever seen on screen.”
Jordan first fell in love with showbiz when he was in second grade, and he remembers watching
