Michael Cera’s Hollywood Takeover Was the Best Part of 2023

I don’t care what Time magazine says: 2023 was the year of Michael Cera. Despite Person of the Year Taylor Swift’s chokehold over our every waking moment, no one’s career moves this year were more impressive or interesting than the actor’s.

Perhaps I’m biased, as a longtime Cera fan. (Please do not mock me for the life-changing—for me, anyway—interview I did with him once.) I’m always excited to see Cera in a movie or a TV show, especially as those opportunities have been fewer and farther between in recent years. But with his nine—NINE!—eclectic projects and appearances this year, 2023 proved that the sweetly nerdy guy people often mistook for Jesse Eisenberg in his heyday has re-established himself as one of the industry’s most fun, malleable, and talented figures.

The Year of Cera began, as years are wont to do, in January. Celebrity Jeopardy! was one of the TV season’s most entertaining surprises, with a random array of medium-famous people competing to answer prompts that we viewers actually knew the solutions to for once. Cera’s performance was both delightful and impressive, making it all the way to the quarterfinals, where he almost squeaked out a win to the final three. He even went briefly viral for his hilariously bad Final Jeopardy! answer that lost him the game.

It was fun to see him both for the first time in a while—he’d last appeared in the Hulu dramedy Life and Beth last spring—but in a completely different venue. With both his successful gameplay and dry humor that became Celebrity Jeopardy!’s defining trait, Cera made for one of the year’s biggest game show highlights.

Next up came what I think was Cera’s most interesting role this year: the lead in The Adults, written and directed by regular collaborator Dustin Guy Defa. The Adults got a small theatrical release in August, but I saw it at Tribeca Film Festival in April, where it wedged itself into my mind and hasn’t left since. Cera co-produced the film, in which he plays both to and against type as Eric, a gambling addict whose relationship to his younger sisters suffers from serious arrested development. (Ha ha.) Cera got the chance to show off the poker skills he’s honed since appearing in 2017’s so-so card-game thriller Molly’s Game, his last notable film role before this one. But he also embraced an outright goofiness that his comedic characters often repress, to our own amusement—a confidence that is both to his benefit and detriment.

Eric’s relationship to his sisters is defined by their shared history, full of little games and voices and songs that only the three of them understand. Watching Michael Cera do a surprisingly good Marge Simpson voice or Tony Soprano impression, to perk up the sister who he’s otherwise neglected in adulthood, made me laugh harder than maybe any other movie moment this year, as did several other similar scenes in the film—even though the sheer absurdity of it was so cringeworthy that I often hid my face instead of looking at the screen. But they also made The Adults feel lived-in, with Cera playing a character who felt more real than many of his best-known characters do.

Funny, then, that his most-watched performance of the year was the exact opposite of Eric. As Allan in Barbie, Cera played a living version of a doll, Ken’s one-time best friend. There are many Kens in Barbieland, but only one Allan, a fact that defines and disturbs him.

Yet Cera’s performance of a sentient commodity helped the character outgrow the one-note joke that Allan’s character could have been—a gawky beanpole among a sea of beefcakes. While the actor has long been known for playing put-upon or pitiable characters like this one, his portrayal of simmering bitterness for his position in life, and his ultimate rejection of it, revolutionizes the archetype.

In that way, and the fact that Barbie made over a billion dollars, Cera’s appearance in the film altered audiences’ impressions of him. It was a perfect role to do so: “In some ways, his take on Allan… feels like a culmination of his roles in several past projects,” I wrote in July, lauding Cera’s performance. “There’s a Scott Pilgrim-like naivete to him. His desire to be recognized by the Kens is reminiscent of his quest for high school normalcy in Superbad. But he also has an effortless, quiet charm to him—to the Barbies, at least.”

Around the time of Barbie’s premiere, Cera used that charm to slightly different effect in two small-screen roles: June’s new season of Black Mirror and July’s Command Z. Both are sci-fi stories where Cera’s character has the unenviable task of relaying some gobbledygook with a straight face.

Command Z features Cera as the disembodied AI of deceased tech billionaire Kearning Fealty. Kearning has enlisted a trio of working-class nobodies to participate in a program to travel back in time and influence powerful people, in order to stop impending disasters. Command Z isn’t the most accessible fare, literally and conceptually; director Steven Soderbergh initially released it behind a charity-based paywall on his website. But it is at its most entertaining when seen as a platform for Cera’s greatest strengths: His robotic line readings both betray Kearning’s desire for genuine connection with his charges and enhance the awkwardness of his failed attempts at making friends with them.

In Black Mirror, Cera’s the guy that explains to a woman named Joan (Annie Murphy) why there is a Truman Show-like program about her life. She’s not even Joan, he explains—she’s a fictitious version of the real Joan, meant to star in this program, whose likeness is based directly on Annie Murphy. The actor Michael Cera licensed his likeness for his fictitious version, too, he explains—a meta moment that’s funny no matter who the actor is, but somehow more so because it’s Michael Cera. Why would an actor known to be good-natured and inoffensive like him allow a grotesque program to use his face for one of its characters? Because it’s no longer accurate to reduce Cera’s work in those same ways. As Allan shows us, he’s refined a knack for imbuing an authentic kindness with latent fury, snark, or even duplicity.

November’s Dream Scenario also utilizes that talent. Cera is Trent, who runs a marketing company that works with influencers. He’s trying to help Nicolas Cage’s Paul Matthews capitalize on his literal virality, as he’s currently known as the guy who keeps popping up in everyone’s dreams. Unfortunately, Cera figures into the more disappointing part of Dream Scenario, when it devolves into a passé satire of cancel culture. But even with a role that serves more as representational than three-dimensional, he exhibits his talent for toeing the line of skeeviness. Trent wants a relationship with Paul because it seems like a great business opportunity—but after Paul becomes a social pariah for turning into people’s nightmares, Trent’s the only one who sticks by him. That’s gotta count for something.

Six different, sizable on-camera roles in one year—that’s an impressive amount, one that’s almost exhausting to catalog. His voiceover work was comparatively smaller potatoes, with one huge exception.

Cera’s guest spot in the animated comedy Praise Petey reunited him with Annie Murphy. He played a kid in a single episode that aired in August. It’s a cute appearance, and Cera’s one of those adult men who can convincingly voice a child; that’s all I’ll say about that. (I will add, however, that the quickly canceled Praise Petey was much funnier than its summer burnoff-status suggested.)

Under the Boardwalk was another animated project sent out to die, this one a feature film in which Michael Cera voices a hermit crab from the Jersey Shore. The movie itself is instantly forgettable, but I wouldn’t mind throwing it on for a child as background noise if I had to babysit. Cera is a shy land crab named Armen, who falls for a vivacious sea crab named Ramona (Keke Palmer). The pair get captured, Finding Nemo-style, when they venture onto the boardwalk that they’re meant to avoid. There’s also some turf wars between the land and sea crabs, a la West Side Story.

Don’t watch this one for the story, though. Watch it to hear Cera try and fail to do a Jersey accent. I have watched Under the Boardwalk’s trailer many, many times, because hearing Cera say, “The sun is shinin’, everybody’s out there havin’ fun,” never fails to make me laugh. When this movie went straight to streaming in October, we learned that The Adults was misleading—maybe Cera can do a Tony Soprano for a stint, but he cannot carry that for an entire movie. Armen only sometimes has an accent, and it’s more pronounced in some scenes than others. Listen: Cera may be Sicilian, but he hung out on the shores of Lake Ontario growing up, not Manasquan.

Michael Cera’s third voiceover role and final performance of the year was the one that affirmed for me that 2023 belonged to him. I’ve written about how excellent November’s Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is before, calling it a dream come true for fans of the graphic novels and film. But, ironically, one of the best parts about the series is how little Scott Pilgrim (voiced by Cera) appears in it.

The 2010 Scott Pilgrim vs. the World film starred Cera as Scott, who challenged viewers’ perceptions of the actor at the time. Scott’s immature, self-absorbed, hapless, and a skilled fighter—the latter of which was especially comical for Cera to do, considering this was the era during which Andy Samberg correctly referred to him as a “canary in skinny jeans.” (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, where that immortal line comes from, was kind of a precursor to Cera’s Scott Pilgrim role; I’ll save that for another article.)

By virtue of being an anime, Takes Off eliminates that and other parts of the film’s awkwardness. At the same time, it embraces the project’s excellent ensemble work and brings the entire cast of the film together. Sidelining Scott, and therefore Cera, was important to the story; like any male main character lacking in self-awareness, Scott could often suck up all the air in the room. But when Scott does appear, Cera’s voiceover improves upon what was already one of his most beloved roles.

It’s interesting to hear Cera return to a character he first played 13 years ago, as the writing seems to reflect the actor’s development too. Because he’s not playing a character hyper-fixated on getting one girl without losing another one, Cera gets to reflect a more thoughtful and, importantly, likable version of the character than he did in the 2010 film. Takes Off’s Scott is less selfish and more sweet here than in the movie, absentminded but not empty-headed. Most telling is that this version of Scott is rarely cruel, as Cera’s live-action Scott often came across. It made sense that a 22-year-old Cera would lean into the braggadocio when playing a character two-timing his girlfriend(s); at 35, Cera’s softer take on Scott feels more appropriate. Much like this is a more mature Cera voicing him, this is a more mature version of Scott he’s voicing, even if the character is the same 23-year-old loser as he was in the graphic novels and movie.

And here we are: If there’s another actor who got to show this level of breadth in just a 12-month span, across numerous genres and two mediums, I don’t know them. Not only was his 2023 jam-packed, but it was consistently excellent, unexpected, and fun—and, most of all, irrefutable proof that Michael Cera has long been one of our most underrated performers. As for 2024: I hope the dude gets some rest.