Warning: This article contains spoilers for Don’t Look Up.
Adam McKay’s sci-fi satire Don’t Look Up has one of the most star-studded ensemble casts in recent memory. Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence lead the cast as a pair of astronomers who discover a planet-killing comet headed straight for Earth (an allegory for the climate crisis).
The movie is rounded out with hysterical ing performances by A-list talent. The cast includes both established comedy stars, like Tyler Perry and Jonah Hill, and dramatic actors showing off their rarely-seen comedic abilities, like Meryl Streep and Timothée Chalamet.
Timothée Chalamet As Yule
Timothée Chalamet doesn’t show up until midway through Don’t Look Up, but he makes a lasting impression when he does. He plays Yule, a pretentious millennial who starts dating Lawrence’s character when she moves back to Illinois in the film’s second act.
Chalamet channels his equally hysterical turn as a similarly irritating know-it-all kid from Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird in the role of Yule.
Mark Rylance As Sir Peter Isherwell
One of the world’s many problems lampooned by McKay in Don’t Look Up is amoral tech billionaires. Sir Peter Isherwell is a tech mogul in the mold of Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk. Mark Rylance’s reputation as a sensitive dramatic actor made him a hilariously subversive choice for the part.
Rylance is just as nuanced and softly spoken in Don’t Look Up as he is in The BFG, but in Don’t Look Up, he plays an unscrupulous businessman who gladly risks the lives of everybody on Earth to expand his profit margins.
Rob Morgan As Dr. Teddy Oglethrope
Rob Morgan gives a ing turn in Don’t Look Up as the head of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office who s the media tour after the comet is discovered.
Unlike a lot of the characters in Don’t Look Up, Morgan’s role isn’t a wacky caricature. He’s one of the most sensible, level-headed characters in the movie. Instead of playing up the absurdity, Morgan makes a great deadpan foil for the absurd characters around him.
Leonardo DiCaprio As Dr. Randall Mindy
Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t appear in a lot of comedies, instead opting for Oscar-caliber dramas, but he’s always hilarious when he does star in a comedy. In Don’t Look Up, he plays one of the two astronomers who discovered the comet.
DiCaprio is famously confident, but he plays nervousness and neurosis brilliantly in this movie. His character is constantly on the brink of a breakdown as he’s faced with the enormous pressure of going on live television to tell the human race that they’re doomed.
Tyler Perry As Jack Bremmer
Tyler Perry gives a hysterical turn in Don’t Look Up as Jack Bremmer, co-host of The Daily Rip and a satirical portrait of every TV host who likes to “keep things light” under the guise of political commentary.
This kind of character can come off as tired or one-note, especially after so many similar gags, but Perry plays the part as a spot-on impersonation of phony TV personalities.
Ron Perlman As Colonel Benedict Drask
When the U.S. government launches a mission to destroy the comet before it reaches Earth, they hire Medal of Honor-winning war hero Colonel Benedict Drask to fly the rocket.
Ron Perlman is well-known for playing grumpy, curmudgeonly badasses in a bunch of Guillermo del Toro movies. He was a fantastic casting choice for the role of a far-right astronaut who jumps at the opportunity to save America with a space-bound suicide mission.
Meryl Streep As President Janie Orlean
Meryl Streep clearly had a lot of fun playing a wildly unqualified U.S. President who has doomed America with her reckless decision-making and conspiracy-spreading.
Streep is usually required to give subtle, nuanced turns in harrowing dramas. In Don’t Look Up, she relishes the opportunity to be brazenly unsubtle.
Cate Blanchett As Brie Evantee
Cate Blanchett plays Daily Rip co-host Brie Evantee. Like Perry, she captures the phoniness of TV personalities perfectly, playing Brie as the vainest and most superficial of the two. Blanchett throws herself into line deliveries like, “Well, the handsome astronomer can come back any time, but the yelling lady... not so much.”
The subplot involving an extramarital affair between Blanchett and DiCaprio’s characters is unnecessary and distracts from the movie’s primary satirical target. But it’s hard to complain because Blanchett is so hilarious every time she’s on-screen.
Jennifer Lawrence As Kate Dibiasky
Both DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are the headline stars of Don’t Look Up, but Lawrence’s Kate is really the heart of the movie. She’s the most outspoken one in their TV appearances, she’s the one who ruffles the most feathers at the FBI, and she’s the one who actually discovered the comet.
Lawrence’s performance works spectacularly, both as a more confident counterpoint to DiCaprio’s dorky astronomer and as a dry deadpan foil for just about everybody else.
Jonah Hill As Jason Orlean
As hysterical as Streep is in the role of President Orlean, Jonah Hill is even funnier as her incompetent son and Chief of Staff, Jason. An incisive satire of nepotism in the White House, Jason gives rambling political speeches that make no sense and has no idea how to deal with a crisis.
In both shady behind-the-curtain political discussions and freewheeling nonsensical speeches at rallies, Hill shows off his well-established gifts as an improviser. He gets the movie’s funniest moment toward the end when he tries to convince himself that his mom hasn’t forgotten about him and left him to die: “She’ll be back.”
