Two years ago, Mike Faist arguably became one of the most famous people in the world for a summer. Then, he was gone.
Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers took summer 2024 by the balls, literally and figuratively. Its soundtrack became synonymous with sweaty hedonism. GIFs of its stars in bed together became shorthand for the ménage à trois. All over red carpets, social media, and TV screens, Zendaya was confidently leading a press tour alongside her two slightly more wide-eyed co-stars, Faist and Josh O’Connor. She went on to be the leading lady du jour, while O’Connor juggled Letterboxd-loved indies with Netflix blockbusters next.
Faist, meanwhile, was making the transition from his theater roots to the big screen, and all that comes with it. The Ohio native (who lived on food stamps in a McDonald’s parking lot to pursue acting in New York at 17) originated the role of Connor Murphy in the stage production of Dear Evan Hansen nearly a decade prior, earning a Tony nom and a Grammy award, as well as the admiration of Steven Spielberg. The director, as the story goes, went backstage to personally invite Faist to audition for 2021’s West Side Story remake and later considered delaying the entire production in order to ensure the actor enlisted. Faist ended up playing the much-lauded Riff, leader of the Jets, no delay necessary.
But Challengers was a different kind of feat. Here, Faist was playing a loved-up tennis pro, putting on 30 pounds of muscle for the role instead of working on his grand jeté. As the film flits between past and present, the actor alternates between sweet teen and withholding man. The important bit, however, remained: Faist is a captivating performer.
Whatever that thing is that makes someone hard to look away from, he has. Spielberg could see it from the orchestra seats. Guadagnino and his right hand costumer, Jonathan Anderson, could both see it, as they quickly made Faist a central face in their growing cinematic and fashion universe. (In 2024, Anderson put Faist in both a Loewe campaign and on the Met Gala carpet in a custom look.) Certainly, everyone else could see it too. Jeff Nichols dropped his already completed Bikeriders film featuring Faist as a soft-spoken reporter just in time to catch the end of the actor’s explosive summer. And then, nothing.
Interviews at the time, or perhaps his subtle disinterest in them and the other trappings of fame, provide a clue into the sudden dropoff. “I love the press interviews for Challengers when he gets fed up,” wrote a fan online. To AnOther magazine, who traveled home to Ohio to profile the actor, he admitted, “I have a strange relationship to acting: I really love it, but at the same time I get so exhausted by it. And I fall in and out of love with it on a pretty regular basis. It’s just the truth of the matter.”
When I speak with him in September 2026, well outside the whirlwind of his Hollywood entrée, he’s come back around. “I love being an actor,” he assures me. “I love telling stories, and I love investigating characters and excavating everything that I can out of myself.” He’s decided to do so again in this year’s East of Eden miniseries, based on John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel of the same name and written and produced by Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of Elia Kazan, who directed the famed 1955 film starring James Dean. Faist plays Charles Trask, a quiet farmer who’s dangerous when provoked, brother of Christopher Abbott’s Adam, and sometimes lover of Florence Pugh’s Cathy Ames. Faist slinks onscreen in the first minute with a shotgun, looming over Pugh and Abbott. And there are the wet eyes and set jaw that audiences have come to know so well.
If fans (or reporters) were surprised to see him pop up in Netflix’s marketing materials for the fall, he doesn’t seem to mind it, meeting the question of his prolonged hiatus at the height of fame with an almost bemused brush off: “You know, there really isn’t a lot of thought.” The topics of what he’d like to return to, or what might have caught his attention during his time away, he likewise doesn’t seem keen to prod. What he doesn’t say—because he’s still a bit too humble or just doesn’t enjoy Zoom calls—that remains apparent, is that Faist sees the ineffable quality within himself, too. Acting is it. Whether on stage or screen, in bursts or stretches, we’ll be seeing him bare it all for some time to come. “Unfortunately,” he relents in our interview, “I’m doomed to do this.”
I’d love to start by hearing how this project came to you. What made you sign onto this one?
Well, It was, honestly Zoe and Florence. Florence was a producer for a few years, and her and Zoe were the ones that were spearheading everything and trying to put all the pieces into place along with Netflix and the Fifth Season. I got a call one day from Zoe, basically saying, “Do you want to do this?” and that was pretty much it.
I had been a fan of the films, and of course, moving to New York at 17, it was one of the movies—East of Eden, and all of Elia Kazan’s films—that I would study as a young actor and try to learn from. Honestly, it was a bit overwhelming. It kind of floored me when they asked me to be a part of it. I described it as both simultaneously one of the most exciting things that has come across my table, and also probably one of the more dreadful ones as well, because that means that you actually have to go and do it.
So your familiarity goes back to the film as opposed to the book?
That’s correct, yeah. As a young actor, the film is pretty important. I joked with Zoe that her doing this was a little meta, in that sense. We joked about that for a minute, and then the two of us got coffee and we were talking, and it became very apparent that she had a very specific vision in mind for what she wanted to do. I found it to be quite exciting.
You’ve got a pretty stacked roster of collaborators here, between Zoe and Christopher and Florence. What was it like being on set with them?
It was a dream come true—it’s the truth. At least for me, all I ever want to do is to be given the opportunity to really roll up my sleeves and get down in the muck with the best of them. This felt like a real opportunity to do that. At the same time the bar is very high, and you want to just be able to make sure that you’re bringing everything that you got.
Are you able to just be in the moment? I’ve read an interview of yours where you were talking about working with Spielberg and having this “transcendent” experience. Are you able to get there still?
It’s hard to talk about the process of being an actor, because it can sound “woo-woo,” which is the word I like to use. The reality is, when you’re given a character with such depth, and richness, and nuance, it becomes very easy to allow yourself to give yourself over to the project, and to the character when it’s so well-written. Zoe did such an incredible job with this adaptation and with this character. It was hard because there’s so many things that are up against you in a creative way—in order to make your days, and shooting and dealing with all of the capabilities, and with the scope and size of what this project was, the sheer epicness of it. There’s so many moving pieces that it’s hard. But I feel very lucky, because at the end of the day, the writing is so good, and the characters are just so rich that it doesn’t become a job. It becomes very effortless.
Is there something in a character, when you get sent a project, that makes you think, I could do a really good job with this. This feels right for me?
[Laughs] I don’t think I ever feel like I can do a good job. But … there’s a fear that kicks in. There’s a feeling of dread, a real dread, and I think it is just because you start to feel that you actually care. The other tiny voice inside of you goes, Oh, don’t do that. Don’t jump into the volcano. Stay up here where it’s safe. But, that’s the thrill of what we get to do. These are moments in your life that you say, I can’t pass this up. I have to jump in.
I think that’s true. Sometimes you do your best work when you don’t know if you can do it.
I never know. I think it’s important that you look at the job of every actor as to prepare as best as they can, and then when it comes time, you have to let everything go and you just stay open.
You’ve been away for a little while. It’s the first time seeing you onscreen since you were in these back to back projects with Challengers and The Bikeriders, what I imagine was an explosive summer for you. Did you feel like you wanted to take a beat before getting back into it, or were you waiting for the next right project to come along? I imagine after that you’re thinking about what the next move might be.
You know, there really isn’t a lot of thought.
You’re just being bandied about by Hollywood?
No, I think that for myself, and for everyone, it’s very easy to get swept up in noise. It makes it difficult for me to really listen, just being able to hear myself think, and feel what is right for me. Yes, maybe there was an aspect of trying to tune everything out and, looking back, it was two years [without acting]. Maybe there was an aspect of me just trying to say, I’m going to pull back from all of this, and allow things to be quiet. The truth is that Challengers was a lot. It was very overwhelming, and it was an intense summer, things did change for me, and the dust had to settle a little bit. That was something that I needed to just allow myself to acclimate [to]. What could the next step actually look like and be? Oftentimes, I’ve said that I don’t really know how much control I actually have over any of this.
The bigger story with this, I like to think, is that years back now, playwright Tony Kushner was putting together a reading celebrating John Guare, who’s a great playwright. It was his 90th birthday, and they were doing a concert series of readings of various plays of his. Tony asked if I would read a monologue from House of Blue Leaves, one of his plays. In this little reading vignette that we were doing, was Zoe Kazan and Paul Dano.
I remember I was going to Lincoln Center Archive, where they have archives of pretty much every stage play done since the late ’60s. There’s three different tapings of House of Blue Leaves. There’s the original off-Broadway production. There’s a Broadway production that happened in the ’90s. And then there was another one that happened in 2010 or so. When I was watching that production, the actor who was playing the character that I was given, I thought, This guy is the first performance that actually started to click and make sense for me as to what to do with this. I used that as a launching point for myself, and that actor was Chris Abbott, but I didn’t know it at the time. Things kind of find a way of happening.
You’re talking about a lot of fellow theater people. Do you feel like theater is your natural register? Is it something you’re looking to do more of?
I would love to go back to the theater at some point. Absolutely. It was the thing that I immediately fell in love with. That made me want to do all of this to begin with.
You’re like, “It’s what got me into this giant situation!”
It is totally what got me into it, into all of it, and I’m pretty sure the desire to do it again is absolutely still there. I remain open and optimistic that I’ll be able to find my way back. I haven’t been back on an American stage in close to 10 years.
Looking back, you were talking about the summer that you did Challengers. Now you’re some time out from it. Was it a little bit of a whiplash situation? How are you feeling going back into what I imagine is a number of interviews, including with me, and getting back on the screen?
It was very jarring. It was a whiplash situation. It’s something that I wasn’t very prepared for, and I’m not sure if any of us were quite ready for it—for that film to do everything that it had done. I ultimately really love what I do. I love being an actor, I love telling stories, and I love investigating characters and excavating everything that I can out of myself in order to serve the role. So, I knew that it was gonna come back around at some point. I just didn’t know when or in what form or shape, and I was very fortunate Zoe and Florence came to me.
I read that you’re a big Gene Kelly fan, these classic old films. It does feel like there’s an element of that here, in the classical storytelling style. When you look ahead, are you thinking of doing something in that Challengers-esque world again? You might be in a position here, where you get to pick and choose what you want to do, which is a space that a lot of actors dream of finding themselves in one day. And it seems like you’re taking your time there.
You know, whether it be theater, or film, or television, or genre, or what have you, I’m not beholden to something in my head. Honestly, probably foolishly, I’m not looking that far ahead. I’m kind of just allowing that when the opportunities come, I probably am trusting that I will know whether something is actually right for me or not. It’s kind of like dating—it’s like, when you know, you know. You just run with it. You trust that this is the right thing, and it’s scary, and it’s exhilarating, and it’s super fun, and I feel very lucky and grateful that it’s always how I dreamt that I would want to approach this industry. I would really try to listen and pay attention as to what it is that I want to do, what excites me.
That makes sense. I’m just interested in what you’re interested in, and what those inspirations are.
I have no idea. [Laughs]
Well, looking back instead of looking ahead, is there an experience that you most enjoyed? A project that you worked on where you were just thrilled to be on set, or a moment that felt like what you’d been working towards?
It’s really funny because, if I look back at all of the various projects that I’ve done, I have felt that way about every single one of them. Whether it was when I was in Dear Evan Hansen on Broadway or West Side with Steven, or Challengers with Luca, or this, East of Eden with Zoe and Florence. I’ve always felt that sensation that you speak of, exactly. But it always hit me right in that moment.
Is that sensation that you’re describing what you expected it to be? Is it how you imagined?
I always knew I was gonna do this in some sort of capacity. I didn’t know exactly what, or how, but I knew that I wanted to move to New York. I knew that I wanted to study acting, I knew that I wanted to do theater. I wanted to be on stage, and I knew that I wanted to do these things. I was gonna try and figure out how to do it, no matter what. I kind of said, “I think, unfortunately, I’m doomed to do this.” But also, it was very exciting, and it’s the only thing that I ever wanted to do, and I feel really lucky that I do get to be able to do it. This show is the gift that keeps on giving, honestly.
Can you tell me about the moment when you felt the character come together?
I don’t know if there was [one]. It was this funny thing where you read the book, you go over the scripts, you do all of this work in preparation for this moment, and then you’re on the day, shooting this one scene, and all of these expectations or thoughts or things never go according to plan. But that’s why you prepare, so you can always zig and zag. At the end of the day, I can come with an idea to do something, and then Florence is gonna show up, and she’s gonna do her thing. It was great because I really saw it as my job to make her feel as uncomfortable as possible while we were housing her in this series. I think the tension is exciting.
I never knew what was going to either come out of her or come out of myself when we were filming any of those scenes. I really felt like I met my match. I met the person who’s really gonna test me here. So I better really bring my A-game and throw it right back at her. For me, that’s like the moment that I live for as an actor. There’s nothing more exciting than when you can get two actors together, and they’re just gonna throw down.
My last question for you. I read that you have spent some time writing. I’m wondering if you’ve been up to any writing over the past two years, if there might be some things that you’re working on?
Maybe, I don’t know.
What have you been up to the past two years, is really my question.
It’s a great question. [Laughs]
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