Video interview with Jeremy Piven (“The Performance”)

Jeremy Piven is ready to wait. Just look at his new film “The Performance”: The 59-year-old, three-time Emmy winner (for “Entourage”) has spent the last 15 years overseeing the project from sourcing the short story to screenplay to film adaptation to accompany him – and he has managed it, there is now a lot to say about it.

In “Performance,” Piven plays an aspiring 1930s tap dancer who is hired to perform with his troupe in Nazi Germany. He initially went along with it Arthur Miller Short story over a decade ago by taking on the film adaptation of Miller’s daughter Rebecca. But despite Piven’s enthusiasm, the topic simply didn’t resonate with potential producers.

“If I presented to you, as I have done for the last decade-plus, what this movie is about, you would most likely laugh in my face,” he tells Gold Derby. “I am a Jewish tap dancer from 1937 who dances for Hitler. Yes, please check it and it will be done.”

But Pulitzer Prize winner Miller’s source material demands attention, and Piven says this was a new take on the Holocaust that he had never seen before. According to Piven, early audiences so far seem to agree: “I’ve never had the experience of being with an audience and having them gasp at certain points in the film and you know they’re on board with this film.” ”

“Performing” has always been a family affair for Piven, who first learned about the story when his mother (and longtime acting teacher) Joyce Hiller Piven passed it on to him and eventually to his older sister Shira Piven Co-author of the script (with Joshua Salzberg) and directed.

“She’s an actress and director,” he says, noting that her parents Joyce and Byrne Piven were also actors. “We grew up working.”

But he adds: “We had a few moments, I’m not going to lie to you. I forgot that I was the producer of the film because I’ve been an actor my whole life. We had a moment… I could have just said, ‘Shut up!’ (But) it was a dream. We’re lucky to have each other.”

One of those moments occurred when he broke several ribs after falling during a scene. Shortly after picking up the script, Piven began learning tapping and stuck with it throughout the long process of making the film. However, that didn’t stop him from getting injured.

“(Shira) was the adult in the room and said, ‘You don’t have to do that.’ “You have a stuntman,” he remembers. “She and I disagreed about how I wanted to execute this dance sequence. And everyone in my troupe, all the actors, they’re all British actors and they grew up in a system. … I was the challenged one in the group even though I was supposed to be the leader.”

Now he says the injury has improved his performance. “Ironically, breaking my ribs allowed me to master the final sequence in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to (otherwise), where you can use all of my dances and everything in one take,” Piven explains. “So I’m telling you that I sacrificed my ribs for the film. Everything works out.”

However, not necessarily for Piven’s character Harold May. Things become extremely difficult for him in the film, also because – as he puts it – he was a Jew in National Socialist Germany, but had been “passing” as a non-Jew in America for years, which made him too the conviction that he is inviolable.

“It was very important that my character was blonde so that he really felt like he wasn’t vulnerable to the Nazis,” Piven says. “That’s life when you strive for something, obsess over it, and really focus on getting it done at all costs – you justify a lot of things.”

Meanwhile, Piven is clearly excited about the film’s limited premiere in Chicago in December (to make it awards-worthy) and a larger theatrical expansion in January. And he continues to knock even after the film is over.

“It’s really annoying when people are around me,” he says. “Because when I’m standing there and there’s a hardwood floor, it tells me, ‘Oh, that sounds good acoustically.’ So I keep my ankles loose in case my number is called. You gotta stay ready so you don’t have to get ready, man.”

SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with the latest predictions