After Billions and The Handmaid's Tale, Stephen Kunken Plays Another Shadowy Puppet Master in Kyoto

Stephen Kunken is no stranger to morally ambiguous characters. Whether as the calculating Ari Spyros on Billions or the chilling Commander Putnam on The Handmaid’s Tale, Kunken has a knack for bringing complex nuance to figures operating in the shadows of power. Now, he takes on another such role in the West End production of Kyoto, a climate change thriller by The Jungle scribes Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson, running through May 3 at @SohoPlace after an acclaimed engagement at the Royal Shakespeare Company, in a co-production with Good Chance Theatre.

Set against the backdrop of the historic climate negotiations of the 1990s, Kyoto, directed by Stephen Daldry and Justin Martin, explores the high-stakes political maneuvering that shaped our global environmental policies. Kunken plays the real-life figure Donald Pearlman, an American Reaganite lawyer and lobbyist working for Big Oil companies, who wielded quiet yet formidable influence in these negotiations. With little public information available about Pearlman beyond a 1995 Der Spiegel profile and his eventual obituary, Kunken has still managed to delve deep into the man behind the play’s antihero, crafting a performance that captures the complexity of a figure whose work operated largely behind the scenes.

In this conversation, Kunken shares insights on performing a British political drama as an American, navigating shifting audience reactions in an era of climate crisis, and how Kyoto speaks to our collective need to “rehearse hope” in uncertain times.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

How far back does your involvement go with Kyoto?
I read this play almost a year ago and sat down with Stephen and Justin and the Joes on Zoom to feel each other out and see if I was the right fit. It was one of those rare experiences where we were all on the same page and went quickly into a workshop. That was incredibly helpful because they work in this shotgun way. I don’t think we ever did a full read through of the play. We started with act two. It gets you going and puts it in your body in a visceral, unique way. I knew that I was doing Stratford, but everything else has been this glorious path, and all of us are in the process of figuring out where it ends and where it goes next.

As an American, what is it like to perform this British play in London at this moment, observing our political events unfold from afar?
It was wild to perform this play on the day that Trump announced he was pulling us out of the Paris Climate Accords. It plays differently now than it did at the RSC, because what was a warning or question of who we were going to be has somewhat been answered by the interceding time. It became a kind of “how do you pull yourself up from the ground and make something new from the ashes?” Certain things that were easier to laugh at have become more morose. And we’re not getting away from it. It’s going to get timelier with every storm, every flood, every fire.

There’s little information available about the real Donald Pearlman out there beyond a profile from 1995 in Der Spiegel and his obituary.
He intentionally lived in the shadows. I worked on this TV show called Billions and I played a compliance officer. I once asked friends of mine who are deep in the finance business, like, “Who’s the most famous compliance officer that I could build this character around?” And they said that if a compliance officer is famous, they’ve done their job terribly.

That’s a little bit like Don Pearlman. If Don Pearlman was the headline of the story, he would not be able to operate the way he wanted to operate, which was to basically be an actor behind the scenes and make things happen.

Luckily, the Joes had connections with Don’s children, Brad and Stephanie, and his wife, Shirley. I had great access to Brad, who was very helpful, and the whole family came to see the play at the RSC. I think they felt like we gave Don a fair shake; they said he was a complicated guy.

Part of what drew me to this play was trying to find my way to people whose opinions I find completely antithetical to my own. This was before the election, and I was like, “However this election goes, I don’t want to spend the next four years hating everybody who I don’t agree with. How do I find commonality with these people or try to understand them?”

Speaking with Don’s family was the best way to start, because you realize that they knew him as Dad or Grandpa. You begin to see that person differently from their vocation, and as soon as you can do that, you begin to ask questions like, “What did it cost him to live this kind of life?” I don’t think villains typically think of themselves as villains; they think of themselves as playing music that people don’t quite understand. But, you know, some people are complicated, and history is far less kind to them depending on where they stood on the issues as they evolved.

As an audience member accustomed to viewing political plays through an American lens, I found Kyoto particularly fascinating because it’s a British play tackling an international subject, as opposed to having a one-sided point of view.
They really took a lot of voices into consideration, and just by the nature of it being an international conference, it feels holistically driven, as opposed to being agenda-laden with a specific bent on it. There is something about it that is very equitable. I’m hoping it appeals cross-border.

I’m always tickled when everybody throws everything on Don as being the bad actor because nobody is behaving particularly great. Kiribati isn’t guiltless. Saudi Arabia certainly isn’t guiltless. The United States…Making the meal is extremely complicated, and it requires us to look at it and make a kind of peace with it.

How do you think American audiences would react?
One of the Joes, in a talk recently, said that this play is sort of teaching us how to rehearse hope again in a time where we seem devoid of being able to break the inertia. I love having that conversation. I loved having it with the people who lived locally to the RSC, and with the people who would come in on the weekends. It’s a different conversation with the audiences who come to see it at @SohoPlace in London, and I really do believe that it will be a fascinating conversation to have with people in the States.

There are times when art is a wonderful diversion, and then there are times when it gives voices to our confusion and rage. Right now, it’s art that is going to hold the moment accountable. It always does in these periods of real introspection.

I’ve done some British imports and I’ve sat wondering how American audiences will go with it. It’s not an easy calculus. But I do think audiences would want to go see a play that was about something, as opposed to just trying to forget the world.