For many, actor Jeremy Strong is best known as Kendall Roy, the so-called “eldest boy” in “Succession.” But notably, he’s also taken on a handful of Jewish characters throughout his career. In “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” he played Jewish American activist Jerry Rubin. He was Irving Graff, the patriarch of a middle-class Jewish family living in Queens in the 1980s, in “Armageddon Time.” Onstage, he portrayed Jewish philosopher Baruch de Spinoza in the Off-Broadway play “New Jerusalem.” He plays Donald Trump’s anti-communist Jewish lawyer Roy Cohn in “The Apprentice,” for which he was nominated for an Oscar. And he’s slated to play Bruce Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau in the forthcoming Boss biopic, “Deliver Me From Nowhere.”
All this Jewishness in his career begs the question: Wait, is Jeremy Strong Jewish? Thus, it’s time for an investigation.
If you’ve been following along with our previous investigations of this nature, you know that we’re looking to check at least one of two boxes. Does Jeremy Strong identify as culturally or religiously Jewish? And/or, does Jeremy Strong have Jewish ancestry? If the answer to either of those questions is a resounding yes, he’s a member of the tribe!
Let’s start with the first question: Does Jeremy Strong identify as culturally or religiously Jewish? The answer seems to be no. “I’m not a religious person,” he told The New Yorker in 2022. However, in a profile with the Hollywood Reporter earlier that year, Strong had answered “yes” when reporter Seth Abramovitch asked if acting was his religion. “I think [acting] is a sacramental activity expressing a faith, if that’s what a religion is,” Strong explained, adding, “I feel wary of saying that because religion is religion and I don’t want to diminish what religion is. But for me, certainly. Theaters have always been a place that feel kind of holy. And the communicative and healing power of film is completely profound and mysterious. So, yeah, I’m a devout devotee of that.”
But when it comes to Jeremy’s ancestry, that’s a different story.
“I’m a Jew. I want so badly for you to be a Jew, but I can’t make you a Jew,” Marc Maron said to Jeremy Strong during an interview for the film “Armageddon Time,” in which Jeremy plays a Jewish character. “My father’s Jewish,” Jeremy conceded. “And my grandfather was Jewish.” He then went on to share that his grandfather was a plumber in Flushing, Queens and that the pair were close. Strong also recalled attending Passover seders in his grandfather’s basement when he was young.
As a bonus, if you need help visualizing what young Jeremy Strong looked like, we got you:
Verdict: Yes, Jeremy Strong has Jewish ancestry on his father’s side of the family. However, he does not seem to identify as Jewish.
