08-05-2025
Mark Duplass on exploring the ‘dark underbelly of the hero complex' in Hulu's ‘Good American Family'
"I was able to look more closely at what hero complexes are and what people's desires to help people are really all about," says Mark Duplass of his role as Michael Barnett in the Hulu limited series Good American Family. "Why did Michael and [wife] Kristine feel like they needed to adopt this girl? Was it really because they wanted to help her or were there other things involved?"
Good American Family tells the story of Natalia Grace, a Ukrainian-born orphan with a rare form of dwarfism, whose adoption takes a dark turn when her new family begins to question her true identity. Duplass and Ellen Pompeo play her adoptive parents, the Barnetts, and newcomer Imogen Faith Reid stars as Natalia.
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Duplass admits he was initially hesitant about the series. "I read some headlines," he tells Gold Derby. "I had seen a little bit of the this came about, I had this snap judgement of 'Why are we doing another ripped-from-the-headlines story? Do we need to do this story? Has it been told yet?'"
However, after meeting with showrunners Katie Robbins and Sarah Sutherland, Duplass was convinced to join the project. "They walked me through their vision of telling the story over eight episodes. They walked me through the hundreds of hours of research they had done on the complexities of these characters. They told me, 'This is a story about perspective and this is a story about bias. We're going to do this by doing the Rashomon trick. We're going to do this from different perspectives and weave in and out. Your character of Michael Barnett is going to be at times seen as a lovely father who cares for his children with the best of intentions — to someone who's very manipulative, someone with serious mental health issues. All of these things are going to exist within this plane.'"
For Duplass, the ambitious storytelling approach sealed the deal. "I thought, 'That's a big swing for one of these marquee Hulu miniseries and I want to be a part of this ship whether it sinks or sails.'"
Playing Barnett required a careful balance for the actor. "I haven't played a lot of real-life figures on screen," he says. "Knowing that Michael Barnett was a very public figure because of the documentary, I felt like I needed to watch a bit of the documentary to understand the ways of the character — mannerisms, means of speech — and make a decision on how much I wanted to lean into or out of that."
"The showrunners made it pretty clear to me that we were going to be making the character of Michael Barnett — 'inspired by'," Duplass continues. "That freed me up a little bit to bring some of my own skills into the character."
SEE 'I just wanted to make her feel seen': Imogen Faith Reid on portraying Natalia Grace in Hulu's 'Good American Family'
The actor was also able to find commonality with Barnett. "There are a lot of things at the core that I identify with. This character has a lot of mental health issues and I've dealt with a lot of that in the past. That helps me to understand the desperation with which someone would operate and how much he wants to cling to his marriage. How much you might allow yourself to be manipulated and how you might manipulate others to keep your life on the rails."
Duplass calls working with Pompeo one of the highlights of his Emmy-winning career. "I love Ellen and I love what she brought to this whole process. She is arguably the biggest television star of this generation with Grey's Anatomy. She was nervous. I love that she was questioning if audiences would reject her because they just want to see Meredith Grey. We talked about all that stuff. It was so beautiful that she shared that with me. She's got a very high integrity meter. We had a blast together."
Another welcome surprise was working with Reid, who was starring in her first-ever speaking role. 'She's the real revelation," Duplass says. "She's not speaking in her native dialect, she is figuring out an entirely new form of physicality — throw everything at this girl that you possibly can. She was such a light of positivity, grace, and gratitude. For all of us who have been doing this for so long, it was a reminder that, 'Oh yeah, right! This job's f--king awesome. We should all be grateful to be here.''
Michael Barnett's narrative is fraught with emotional challenges, particularly the dynamics among him, Kristine, and Natalia. "The character of Michael is stuck in between them," Duplass explains. "I really enjoyed a lot of those scenes. There's the simplicity of a love triangle, but there's a deeper level — this character really believes that Kristine has saved his life. He wouldn't be here today if it was not for her. He is so desperately afraid of disappointing her or losing her. At the same time, he's so desperately attached to Natalia and the idea that he could parent her in a way that would save her from some of the horrible childhood misery that he felt he had. What more can you ask for to play dramatically?"
Duplass says Barnett's own childhood greatly influenced his portrayal. "That's a huge piece of it for me. He's trying to right the wrongs of his own childhood and he's using his family to do that. It's not fair to anyone, but it's not the worst intention in the world."
In the end, Duplass feels that the Barnetts suffered from an extreme case of "hero complex." He questions, "Was Kristine doing it because she thought her husband needs this to help bring him out of his depression? Was she doing it to prove to herself that after she fixed her son that she could fix this girl? She'll be better than her mother was to her? Was Michael trying to find something to glue the family together? To keep Kristine within his reach so he wouldn't end up alone on a bridge somewhere? The darker underbelly of the hero complex and ego were really fascinating to me."
All episodes of Good American Family are currently streaming on Hulu.
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