Mr. Happy

Kieran Culkin as electric an actor as he is a constitutionally ambivalent one-anchors the dark comic indie A Real Pain, and is leading Glengarry Glen Ross to Broadway. It's a lot to process.

- Mattie Kahn

Kieran Culkin beats me to the steakhouse and receives word that without a reservation which neither of us has made we will not be able to walk into 4 Charles Prime Rib for dinner. "Bad news," he tells me when I meet up with him on a tree-lined stretch of the West Village. "We have been refused." But his spirits are not dimmed.

Actors must get used to rejection, but few metabolize it as Culkin seems to: with a zip of pleasure. Be honest, he prompts me. Isn't it kind of fun to be rebuffed? We slide into the car he has reserved and consider our options: There's The Grill, that Midtown temple to excess where he once filmed a scene for Succession; Bowery Meat Company, which specializes in "large-format roasts"; and Keens Steakhouse, home to the largest collection of churchwarden pipes in the world.

Culkin's driver, who has taken scores of people to The Grill, tells us that the restaurant has a dress code. Culkin is wearing a black short-sleeve shirt and sneakers. He has a bandana looped around his wrist. I have on a jean jacket and Birkenstocks.

Culkin clasps his hands together in anticipation-another rejection! We debate the merits of elite restaurants. Yelp is consulted. Interiors are compared. "I'm not a decisive person," Culkin tells me as tabs proliferate on his phone. Fifteen minutes later, we walk into Keens.

A fondness for minor humiliation is, of course, a quirk that Culkin could have borrowed from Roman Roy, his obscenely impish character on Succession. Roman was an all-consuming role for Culkin, and his performance was met with viral fervor and rapturous praise. He has not been onscreen since the finale aired in 2023.