“I think his contribution to my life personally and emotionally is ineffable, it’s something I can’t really describe,” said Wolff, who stars in the eight-part series alongside Norwegian actress Thea Sofie Loch Naess. “Any time I try to put words to it I feel I come up short.”
The series, which debuts on Crave Friday, chronicles the fabled love affair between Cohen and Marianne Ihlen, a relationship that inspired several of Cohen’s most famous songs from his early albums, notably So Long, Marianne, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye and Bird on a Wire. The singer met Ihlen, a Norwegian woman, on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960. They were part of a community of bohemian artists living with little money but apparently no shortage of alcohol consumption and extramarital activity. That’s the scene depicted in the first two episodes of the series, which were screened Tuesday.
“The simplest way for me to put it, and I think a lot of people feel this way, is I needed Leonard, I really needed him,” said Wolff, who appeared in Oppenheimer and whose band Nat & Alex Wolff (with his brother) will be opening for Billie Eilish on her tour, which starts Sunday in Quebec City.
“I felt there was a big hole in my life since I was young and I think only he has been able to make me feel more complete as a person,” added Wolff. “It’s just as simple as, I needed him and I love him and I’ll always love him. And I feel the luckiest human being in the world not to just play him but to go on the journey to get closer to what he wanted and getting closer to the truth, and his truth. I feel like (saying), ‘Thank you, Leonard, thank you so much,’ because I don’t know what I’d be without him. I really mean that from the bottom of my heart and soul and I think a lot of people feel that way.”
