The Late Ray Liotta Gives a Stellar, Heartbreaking Performance in ‘Black Bird’

The first time Ray Liotta appears in Black Bird, it’s sad. That pain may initially stem from knowing that this will be the last TV role the late actor ever completed. But as the scene continues, that sorrow transforms as you’re swept up in the grief of a dad who wanted everything for his son but was left with disappointment and self-resentment. That was the spell Liotta, who passed away in May of this year, was always able to cast, consistently giving performances that were far greater than the characters written on the page. In the aftermath of this loss, his performance in Black Bird stands as a testament to what made this late actor so extraordinary.

From Shutter Island’s Dennis Lehane, Black Bird tells a fictionalized version of a story that seems too insane to be believed. After being arrested, the newly incarcerated James Keene (Taron Egerton) is given a deal. If he can befriend one of his fellow inmates and discover proof that Larry DeWayne Hall (Paul Walter Hauser) committed the murders many think he did, James can walk free.  On the sidelines of this psychological chess match is Big Jim, James’ former cop father.

In a lesser actor’s hands, Big Jim could have felt contrived or even forgettable. That isn’t how Liotta approaches the character. Instead, he delivers a conflicted father from a different era, a loving soul who’s constantly at odds with a decidedly masculine expectation to appear tough. Big Jim first appears to visit his son in jail. As they talk over the phone, there’s a lot of mumbled starts and stops before he finally gets out the words he wants to say to his son. “I never wanted this for you. I wanted a totally different deal,” Big Jim says, still cryptic even in his vulnerability.

Repeatedly, James pries his father, trying to understand what he means. When Big Jim finally pushes himself to spell it out, his entire demeanor changes. He stares at his son with an intensity that makes it difficult to even look at the screen. “A wife. Kids. A fucking dog to play frisbee with. A steady paycheck. Pension at the end,” he says. Throughout this entire revelation, he never blinks.

It’s this honesty lurking beneath his gruff demeanor that always made Liotta’s characters and his work stand apart. When Liotta was acting, you didn’t get the feeling that his tough men were hiding their sweet, sincere hearts. Rather, Liotta at his best intertwined these two identities, creating hardened men who still had room to be loving fathers, partners, and friends. You never doubted that Liotta’s characters were tough or that they cared. It was just that they had a hard time putting the latter into words.

Those are the sorts of dualities Liotta was able to effortlessly blend, and they appear in Black Bird in other ways. For example, in the miniseries’ second episode, there’s another stilted conversation between this father and his son. It’s only after Big Jim has finished his monosyllabic grunting that his wife (Robyn Malcolm) calls him out on his emotional distance. Since James has gone to prison, she reveals, Big Jim temporarily went blind in one eye and sometimes has trouble walking. Those were real things he needed to tell his son. But for some unnamed reason, he either won’t or can’t.

What could be a depressing revelation about the fragility of a father’s mortality becomes a funny one as he tells his wife to “Just stop.”

“Me and my son have a shorthand. We say things without having to say them,” Big Jim says. His wife knows that isn’t true, and it’s highly likely that her son would agree with her. But with a frustrated swig of her wine, she allows him to maintain his fantasy. What starts as a heartbreaking revelation descends into marital bickering, infusing levity into cracks you didn’t realize existed.

It takes a true actor to convincingly portray the full range of human emotions. But it takes an artist to capture the hypocritical complexities of life while creating something entirely new. Ray Liotta was an artist. Though his death is a loss to Hollywood as a whole, it’s comforting to know that his last TV project lived up to his stellar reputation.

New episodes of Black Bird premiere on Apple TV+ Fridays.