Original subtitles

I know this was a movie that was in the works for a long time.

How did the script find its way to you and what attracted you to your respective roles?

I was doing Equus on Broadway when John Krokidas, the co-writer and director

came to see the show

and, yeah, he sent me the script after that.

And I loved it immediately.

It was such great writing.

It was such a complicated story, yet it was very immediate

and hit you in a very emotional and visceral place.

And then on meeting John,

a question that I've been asked a lot over the last few days is,

"Did you have any trepidation before working with a first-time director?"

No. Because when you meet John,

it was so clear immediately that he had such a vision for this film.

And one that he had lived with and refined for a long time already.

And that was five years ago.

Yeah. He was somebody that was very easy to have immense confidence in very quickly.

I was sent the script by my agent.

And always when you read a really great script, it's such a rare find,

and such an exciting thing.

And the role, it was like, read the script and look at the role of Lucien,

who's also like this incredibly complicated, incredible person

and had a lot of elements that I felt like I hadn't really done before in my roles.

So then I flew to New York, and read with Dan and with John.

And, yeah, luckily that went well.

And here I am.

This whole ensemble, you guys all have such great chemistry together.

Was the chemistry between you guys instantaneous?

Was it developed on set?

Not just with you guys, but with Jack Huston and Ben Foster?

Yeah, it was, I think, a combination of both.

We didn't have a whole lot of time to make the chemistry before we got onto set.

We did have a week of rehearsal.

The director took us through a bunch of improvs and stuff.

It kind of felt like being in drama school again.

But it was really helpful and he threw us into intimate situations from the start,

where we really had to trust in one another.

Dan and I hit it off from the start in terms of friendship and stuff like that.

It wasn't like we were battling to like make a love for one another happen.

But that process definitely helped. lt aided in that chemistry.

I think everyone who was involved in the film

really came to it with an attitude ready to give of themselves,

and all kind of pitch in and work together,

and engage with each other and have fun, try to recreate some semblance

of the camaraderie of the original Beats.

Also, I think, John, the director, does definitely deserve a lot of credit

for doing things like organising a first night party as it were,

just for everyone to meet and get together and trying to...

These things only work

if everyone makes an effort to hang out and engage with each other.

And we were lucky on this film. We had a great group of people who all did.

Was there any particular scene that was difficult for you

either logistically orjust emotionally?

Logistically, they were all difficult.

We shot it in 24 days.

In terms of scenes that were particularly tricky,

one scene that I thought was going to be tricky

but actually ended up not being,

was when we actually came to film one of those scenes that we'd done for the audition,

the goodbye scene,

'cause it had been the scene that I did when I auditioned,

and then it was the scene that Dane had done when he'd auditioned.

So we both had done it a lot and knew it really, really well.

And I always worry about that.

And you think, "lf I'm having this emotional response to it every time I read the script,

"will I then be able to keep that fresh for when I'm doing it?"

And John did this fantastic thing before we started the scene.

He asked the crew to leave the room and he just took me over to one side and said,

"Your goal in this scene is to not let him leave, whatever happens."

And he took you to one side and said something to you.

And he just asked us to improvise the scene away from the script.

And within seconds, we were both sort of... Floods of tears.

And there was something incredibly powerful about that

and I'd never really had quite that level of intensity of feeling.

'Cause I never quite believe it when somebody says,

"I just became that character."

You didn't become a different character. Nothing happened.

But what you were was completely, emotionally open and honest

and available to somebody else.

And that isn't something that happens all the time.

And when it does happen, in that context, it was just thrilling.

For you?

Yeah, well, like Dan said,

all the scenes kind of presented their own challenges 'cause of the time constraint,

but for instance, the scene that we shot on the steps of the library,

when I'm leaving and Dan comes up to me and convinces me to not leave,

we shot that scene in 12 minutes.

And it's a pretty emotionally tight, elevated scene.

And also we were, at the time, getting a lot of pressure from the security of Columbia

to get off of campus

because they wanted to go to bed.

And it was just time for us to go

and we had to get the scene.

Yeah, and then I spent an entire night naked in the Hudson River,

which presented its own set of challenges.

Yeah, and there was not a word of complaint.

He was stoic. It was fantastic.

You guys did an amazing job.

Congratulations again.

- Thank you so much. -Thanks.