Billy Crystal on Why He Wanted to Star in ‘Before’ TV Show

The Billy Crystal-starring Apple TV+ series Before is not only a dramatic turn for the actor-comedian but it also marks a rare TV-starring gig for the veteran performer known for his roles in movies like When Harry Met Sally and Analyze This.

Crystal, who also executive produces the show, had been working on the project with screenwriter Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, Killers of the Flower Moon), exploring the idea of a “pediatric psychiatrist dealing with a troubled kid whose trauma is something unexplained,” Crystal said.

But it wasn’t until Roth brought on writer Sarah Thorp, who would go on to serve as showrunner and an executive producer, alongside Roth and others, on the series, that Crystal thought of playing the psychiatrist character Eli.

“When she pitched her vision for Eli and his world and what the world might be, I instantly said, ‘Sarah, stop, I’m going to do this. I want to play him,’” Crystal told The Hollywood Reporter at Before‘s New York premiere in October. “I wasn’t thinking of playing him until I heard her description of where she wanted to go and the rules that Eli was going to break in his pursuit of finding the truth. So it was a chance to live in a world that I hadn’t lived in before.”

As for why a TV series was the right format for Before instead of a film, Crystal said, “It felt like we could really create cliffhangers, that there would be 10 episodes. We wanted the audience to follow and hang on every episode. And why give it away in an hour and a half when you can build the tension over time? That’s really what it became.”

The resulting series follows Crystal’s Eli as he deals with the recent death of his wife Lynn (Judith Light) and tries to help a young boy (Jacobi Jupe) who seems to be connected to Eli’s past.

Before also stars Rosie Perez as the foster mother of Jupe’s Noah, which wasn’t the role she was initially offered but, given her real-life experience in the foster care system, she said, she “really wanted to make sure” whoever took the part “would do it justice” and through her conversations with Crystal they ultimately realized that she was the best person for the job.

In terms of what she hoped the series got right, Perez said, “If you’re going to care for a child — specifically a child that is in the child welfare system, in the foster care system — you have to come from a place of love. You have to come from a place of pure selflessness because they’ve been through so much crap. They’ve been through so much trauma and so much pain, and I know that personally and I wanted to portray that in the most positive, loving way. But I also wanted to show how hard and difficult it is, so I brought a nervousness to the character of Denise, so it wasn’t like ‘Oh, I know all of the answers and this is how you should do it.’ It’s just the way to do it is to come from love and be selfless. That’s it.”

Perez called the role a “difficult gift to accept.”

“I knew I had to go to certain places I was hesitant to go to but I’m glad I did,” she added, crediting Crystal and the support she and the other actors received from the “executive staff” on set.

“The amount of support that all of the actors got was not common. And I’ve had it a few times in my career but this was a very delicate and heavy subject and they were there for everyone,” Perez said, adding of her performance specifically, “If I had not worked on myself, on my mental health, years ago, I don’t know if I would be able to pull it off. I know that without the support that I had gotten from the executive staff and the directors, the cast, it would’ve made my job a lot harder.”

Like Perez, Light was drawn to Before both because of Crystal and Thorp’s writing.

To understand her and Crystal’s character’s relationship, much of which happened before the series begins, Light recalls having a “long conversation” with Crystal and Thorp at the former’s house.

“And we had a long conversation about all of these things and the dynamics and what happens in the story and how Lynn is part of what compels him to try to deal with himself and transform himself and open himself up to this different world that is not just science and facts, which Lynn kept trying to get him to understand,” Light told THR. “His wife tried to get him to understand that there was a world elsewhere. And he comes to see that in some very remarkable ways.”

All 10 episodes of the first season of Before are now streaming on Apple TV+.