Andrew Garfield pops onto our video call for an interview for Little Gold Men casually dressed in a baseball cap with a very calm look on his face. “I’m very, very relaxed,” he tells me. “I’ve just been in life, so you’re just kind of catching me midlife.”

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After working almost nonstop for the past couple of years—going from shooting Tick, Tick…Boom! to filming his ultra-top-secret role in Spider-Man: No Way Home to spending almost six months working on Under the Banner of Heaven to making it through a very busy and long Oscar season as a nominee—the 38-year-old actor is enjoying his first long break (in between a few press interviews, that is), hiding out in Malibu for a little while where he can finally unwind.

It may not last long, however, as his work on Under the Banner of Heaven (which can be seen exclusively on Hulu) has brought him back into the awards conversation—and possibly on his way to his first Emmy nomination. In the seven-episode miniseries created by Dustin Lance Black and adapted from Jon Krakauer’s best seller, Garfield plays Jeb Pyre, a Mormon detective whose own faith falters as he investigates the murder of a Mormon mother and her baby at the hands of extremists from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It’s, as he calls it, a slow burn of a role, as Pyre’s emotions are often revealed by the most subtle of looks, leaving Garfield responsible for showing all the turmoil that’s brewing below the surface.

Responsibility seems to be something the actor thinks a great deal about, whether it was making sure he spoke to as many Mormons and ex-Mormons as he could about their perspectives about the Church or thinking more deeply about what bigger topics his current projects allow him to discuss. Or even what his next steps will be. But for now, he’s focused on sitting with the unknown. “That feels like a very vulnerable place to be, because we’re taught that we always have to have some kind of knowing about where we’re supposed to be walking and how we’re supposed to be living,” he says. “But then once you fall into the not knowing and you allow yourself to be in the not knowing, that’s when deeper images come, that’s when deeper ideas come, and something more sincere might emerge.”

Listen to the interview with Andrew Garfield on this week’s Little Gold Men, which also includes a conversation with Euphoria star Maude Apatow. You can also read a partial transcript of the interview below. Subscribe to Little Gold Men on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Vanity Fair: How did Under the Banner of Heaven first come to you and what was your first impression of it?

Andrew Garfield: I had read John Krakauuer’s book when it first came out and I found it just very, very interesting. And how he, so elegantly and fascinatingly connected the founding of a kind of newish religion of Mormonism with this terribly gruesome, ego-driven murder that occurred in the Mormon community in the eighties. The writing is so marvelous and his way of connecting these unseen threads was just astounding to me.

Then Lance called me and said, “I think I've cracked this book. I've created a fictional character that has been the breakthrough for me in terms of making the story thrilling and to give a kind of solid center in the middle of this very multi-dimensional, multi-narrative story.” I just found his writing so riveting and so honoring of Krakauer, but also honoring of his own personal experiences in this faith. I couldn't say no.

Your character is a fictional character, but how much research did you do into the Mormon religion to prepare for this?

I had to feel like I was Mormon. So my responsibility to play in the part was to simulate that for myself, create a cellular body relationship to a set of beliefs and rules and ideas that I was so fully invested in. So I got to study what it was to be a Mormon and I got to try to fall in love with that religion. And there was a lot to fall in love with like with any organized religion. What I found quite beautiful was a true sense of community, a family that feels inclusive — to white people — and supportive — to white people and men particularly — and, I am all of those things. I visited Salt Lake City in Utah, and I spoke to a lot of Dustin Lance Black's friends and lots of incredible people, ex-Mormons, police officer Mormons, cops who used to be Mormons who had a crisis of faith. Those were the people that I felt like I had to represent —the ex Mormons or, ex anything. People who were raised in a certain way who realized that this way was fundamentally dangerous.

How much time did you have after Tick, Tick…Boom! before you began this, because these characters are extremely different?

I finished Tick, Tick…Boom at the end of 2020. Then I went in the beginning of 2021 and visited a friend in Atlanta and had to make a movie there that I'm now allowed to talk about, but I'm still kind of weirdly like PTSD about — not talking about a thing that people know I'm now in. [Laughs]. So I went and did the Spider-man and then went to Calgary [for Under the Banner of Heaven] in July, 2021 until Christmas.

Is “visiting a friend” just the code word you used for shooting Spider-man for like two years?

That was what Lin-Manuel Miranda would always reference when he would be like, “What are you doing after this, buddy?” I'm like, “Oh, I've got to go and visit a friend in Atlanta.” And he was like, “uh huh.” And I was visiting a friend, but that wasn't the primary reason.

It’s pretty rare for someone to go through the very long Oscar season and then have to be right back in it for Emmy season. I'm curious for you, what's your perspective on that long journey that you have to participate in if your show or film is a part of that conversation?

It's a very, very lovely thing to make things that people like. I just feel incredibly lucky when I'm invited to those parties, and if I'm proud of the work, and if I feel like the work represents me and my longings of I want to express while I'm alive — Like Tick, Tick…Boom! does, like Under the Banner of Heaven does, and even like my small participation in the Spider-man film does — I look at those pieces of work and I go, yeah. I don't take it for granted.

I've had some time off and it's been great to just be able to reflect on this very question in this whole period of time: what are you going to do with the attention that you're given? That's a very liberating question for me because I want to make it about something bigger.

Has this time off allowed you to decide what’s next for you?

I think we're all somewhat addicted to work and there's a kind of never-enoughness that we feel a kind of this post-industrial kind of psyche of “you're only as valuable as however many units you produced.” This kind of modern-times notion that I think is a real missing of the mark in terms of our collective psyche. I love working hard, but I think in order to do it in a way that is soulful and effective, we have to be coming from a full cup.

I've been reading Thoreau and John O'Donohue and some David White and these kind of nature spiritualists and that's been enhancing my rest time, kind of reminding me that we all belong here — whether or not we're making good TV, you know what I mean? We're all worthy of the air we breathe. We all belong on this planet.