Rose Byrne & Emily Blunt | The A24 Podcast

So, I am Emily Blunt. What's your name? I'm Rose Byrne. We're going to chat about our films. We are here to talk about A24 films. On the A24 podcast. Yes, yes. Can I just start by saying I wanted to scream directly into the pillow with you, watching you in this very slow-paced nervous breakdown, which is one of the most painful types of nervous breakdowns to encounter, that it doesn't happen all at once. It creeps in on you insidiously, and it was just extraordinary. You were so wild, so unhinged, so broken, and it's had such a lasting effect on me. It spoke to me on so many levels about maternal pressure and all the symbolism of the cord representing the umbilical cord. It was just beautiful. You were un-freaking-real. That is so kind and sweet. Oh, my gosh. I feel like this is going to turn into a festival of loving. Such a love fest. I loved The Smashing Machine. I thought you guys were extraordinary. And the movie was so not what I had expected. It was very intimate and it was very quiet in so many ways. And then obviously dispersed with the violence of what he's doing and then the violence of the relationship, the emotional violence of the relationship. But it is a kind of surprising movie. I think people are surprised. They think it's going to be a fight movie, and it's so fragile in many ways. Exactly. It's so delicate. And you guys have extraordinary chemistry. Oh, thank you. And I know you have a working relationship with the role. We can call him Dwayne. Does it feel strange to call him Dwayne? I'm going to follow your lead. He gets called DJ. I like to call him Turts just to really, really emasculate him. Are you the only person who can call him that? Well, my whole team call him that now, and I've also encouraged people on his team to call him that as well. So it's now just stuff, emblazoned. These are the insights that I needed to get. This is why we have great chemistry. Yeah, right. Yeah, you've got to just undercut all that The Rock. Wow, that's extraordinary. And I'm such a fan of Benny Safdie and his work. And so anyway, I have a million questions, and I'm very intrigued by the process you guys did. What should we start with? I have one question to ask you, which is like a question that I thought about when I watched the film, seeing what you put yourself through in such a high-octane sense. What was your car ride to work like, and what was your car ride back from work? My adrenaline was super high doing it, so I was just always on the brink, like a little bit just. And even maybe only later did I realise. When you're in it, you're just doing it, and you're in it, and I'm not wanting to mess it up. And we had had a good rehearsal period, which was lucky, so I felt like we'd had all the conversations. We'd had a million conversations, and so I felt… And some car rides home, I'm pretty hard on myself. I'm like, I didn't do this. I should have done that. You go through the reel in your head, and we had… I do that like three months after I'm done with something. I'll be driving, and I'll go, that's how you should have played it. It'll hit me. That's okay, though. Maybe it's good to keep investigating what we could have improved upon. I visit. But do you torture yourself, or are you like, hmm? Or is it like real self-flagellation? This one was tough. This one was me constantly… But you're so exposed in it. I mean, it is literally… Did you know how much your extraordinary face was the window into the soul of the movie? Did you feel it when you were shooting it? Did it feel like the camera was in your face all the time? I did. On the first day, the camera got closer and closer until it was here. There was no zoom lenses, so it literally was that close, and I could hear that it was 35, so I could hear it going… It's that whole thing of being hyper-aware. I said to Mary, are you going to get that close? Is that how close you're going to get? She was like, mm-hmm. Mary Bronstein, the writer-director. Then once I knew, you go, okay. Surrender. That's what we're doing. It was just like a technical, just pushing myself to the limit of this technical performance of what we do with the camera and what they would need. More importantly, what they didn't need when it's that close because often it would just be her eyeball. But it was so subtle what you did. I mean, truly the stress I felt watching you was rather unparalleled to anything I've seen before and the impact it had on me. It was lasting. It was lasting afterwards. I'm still thinking about it, about the pressure. I think Smashing Machine explores pressure as well. It's sort of an interesting thing to be in a movie that explores it on such an unrelenting level. It's such a window into the inadequacies maybe we all feel as mothers a lot of the time. It was painful watching you go through it because it's such a mirror. It's such an amplified version of probably what we all feel like when we're on the last rung on the ladder for keeping it together. You have to be calm and the together one when you're deeply white-knuckling it most of the time. Absolutely. Did you feel playing her that you related to her? I was sort of intrigued by because this situation she's in is so specific, right, and most mothers or fathers for that matter won't go through it, right, to have this very specific horrible illness that's happening. It's such an intense connection that they have. You know, 99% of parents won't go through this. But I was sort of obsessed with like why is she reacting like this? Everyone's going to react differently in a crisis. Sure. Why is she doing this? Like what is it about this person that is crumbling under this right now? Not to say that I wouldn't crumble or whoever wouldn't crumble, but like why is she responding exactly like this? What happened before? Who was she before? Yes, I wondered that too. I was like what's the shadow of her life and therefore is this that line between high stress and mental illness and it exposes that and explores it? And it did make me wonder like who was she before she had a kid with this terrible condition? Totally. And that was like that's the question we ask, right? Like what happened to this person before? And it's the homework and you don't want to see the homework. Sure. Like, you know, you just want it to feel lived in. She was so lived in. She was like so lived in. Like it was really, really visceral. Well, I felt the same for you guys and I was so I was intrigued. Like did you guys rehearse? Like what's Benny's process? What's Duane's process? Sure. Like, you know, what the? I mean, Benny is so wonderfully collaborative, you know, and he's known for these, you know, that his movies have this unrelenting at times suffocating energy but based in being terribly human and Benny's got such beautiful humanity to him that he's so interested in people's brokenness, you know, and we shared our souls with each other in the few weeks we had leading up and endless conversations on the phone, voice notes back and forth to each other. So we were so intertwined by the time we started partly because I think we all felt we had to do our homework with the real people we were playing and we all spoke to. And they're no longer together. They're no longer together but they are good. And they share a child. They share this beautiful child together and they've done an amazing job co-parenting him but that relationship is so volcanic and so it broke my heart in speaking to them because I think they really did strive for a happy medium but they both struggled with so many demons that they could never find it. And they were addicted to chaos, hazard. Their love language was that kind of passion and had an addiction to that codependency. You know, she was codependent. He was controlling. It was just such a recipe for disaster when they couldn't live with each other, couldn't live without each other. Did she attempt on her own? It did. Wow. And I talked to her about it. You know, she was nervous to talk to me at first because there was a documentary that the movie was based on and I think the film didn't really reveal the full spectrum of Dawn's story. I think it focused on Mark and I think she was villainized a little bit as the creator of his undoing and I think anyone who's had addiction will own it and say that's not true. It is on me. And so she was so nervous about the movie and when I first started speaking to her I could see that I needed to really advocate for her in the film. And I said, I know I'm playing you during this incredibly volatile time in your life and I would hate it if someone made a movie about one of the more tumultuous times in mine. But I said, I'm going to advocate for you. I will take care of you. And I said, so if you tell me the full weather system of your story, I'll make sure it's in the movie. And one of the first things she said was like, I know that it's not for the faint of heart and it's not everyone's love story, but it was mine. And it killed me. I was like, oh, it just moved me and it is. And I'd never had this gift before. I don't know if you've had this experience where you're playing someone who's alive and you get to absorb them. Normally you're building it from the ground up and it's your invention of someone. Particularly someone, yeah. But to have like the person where I get to ask her, tell me about your childhood. Tell me about your relationship with your mother. What were you marinated in? Why are you this way? It was unbelievable. It was such a gift. Have you ever had that where you've played someone who's still with us? I did a film that has not come out yet called Toe and I played a real woman and she was really candid with me and very open and it was very, really cool. It is funny though because you do feel like you're interviewing them. Totally. It's so personal. Would you make up after? Exactly. She was like, we would make love. I was like, got it. I don't know how you feel but you work and you work and you do your work prior and then but once you're there you sort of have to just jump in. You have to kind of let it go and I said that to her as well. I said, this is my version of you. I wasn't a fly on the wall and I'll watch you. I'll learn your mannerisms. I'll listen to you. And I did like a stalker. I watched her every morning as I went to work just staring at her. Wow. I just watched her and watched her and watched her and spoke to her as much as I could. The boys didn't speak to Dawn. We all spoke to Mark but Benny was so collaborative. Anything she shared with me I would tell him and he would put it in. Somehow he'd find a way to funnel it in somehow even in a blink. It's such the heartbeat of the film because it's so intimate and it's an insight into how he relates and his performance was so interesting. Isn't it astonishing? Yeah, it was really. Obviously he looks so, it's him but it's not him and that work with the prosthetic, right, he was wearing. It was beautiful. Yeah, it was like 14 little prosthetics including the cauliflower ear and it was mainly the brow, the nose, eyebrows, the ear and then longer in prosthetics if he was in a fight with swelling, bruising. I mean he is the most patient man on earth. I've never met someone more patient and someone better at sitting in a prosthetics chair. That's the talent. Unbelievably chill. That's not for everybody. It really isn't and he would just sit there quiet, quiet as a little mouse and was not very social and we're pals. Yeah, right. He didn't talk to me in the make-up trailer. He was in a zone. Yeah. And we were opposite ends of the trailer and I feel that DJ's, I don't think DJ knew what his process was until this movie. Ah, fascinating. I think he had always played these invincible characters. I mean I have to say I loved him in Pain and Gain and I loved him in like these other movies where you've seen glimpses of like this ranginess that I think he has and I remember when I met him on Jungle Cruise, he was so the antithesis of what I had imagined, quiet, contemplative, so wise, so kind, soft-spoken, quite shy. Yeah. And I was like, my God. And I said to him one day, I was like, I think The Rock is the performance of a lifetime I'm realising now. And I said, how did you make that character The Rock? That's a self-generated character. Wow. And he said, no one's ever spoken to me about The Rock as an acting performance. I said, but it is. But there's such theatricality to wrestling, right? So theatrical, completely. I mean it's just larger than life. It's the ultimate, yeah, theatre. So I kind of thought, well maybe he could be an amazing character actor in this kind of enormous frame. There might be like endless bonkers characters that he hasn't unearthed. So when he walked in for the first time as Mark and he had the makeup on, he had the clothes, and we did the camera test, it was, he did change the air in the room. Wow. Everyone was like. And I almost cried because he was, it wasn't just a physical transformation. This is what was so spooky about it. It was an entire demeanour shift. Yeah, interesting. Like an immersion, like I hadn't really seen before. And he stayed it that way for the whole film. Wow, he was really just sort of in it. In, in it. And still so fun and we would laugh and, you know, we definitely, after some of those scenes, we'd all have a tequila and try to like, you know, have therapy on the bathroom floor. Like after the bathroom scene, we did just have, we sat for an hour and a half trying to come down. It was awful. Really. And I didn't anticipate it. So I was very like knuckling when I was watching. You know that feeling where you have a fight that just snowballs out of control. I mean, their version of out of control is probably more than ours. But I know what you mean. You do feel that, you just feel it. Yeah. And like even when he's like trimming the cactus and that kind of weird exchange. That awful tension. Yeah. And what was it shot, what was it shot on the film? It was 35. Because it had such a great. A graininess and a look to it. It was so beautiful. Like very, yeah. Kind of a nostalgic feel. Yes, exactly. It felt like that. I felt yours had that too that, you know, sometimes when you watch a movie, which is so high def and it's so clean. Yeah. I don't feel I get held captive by it as much. I feel it pushes me away. It's very presentational. The graininess and the full kidnap of yours was like, I just felt pulled inside your soul. It was so intimate. Like I shouldn't be in your head. I shouldn't be that close to you. You scared me. This is deeply uncomfortable. It was deeply uncomfortable. And I'm so curious about when you watched it for the first time, were you unnerved by it? Yes, I was. I was at the offices in A24 and I had been avoiding seeing it. Mary Bronstein, the writer-director. Do you always avoid seeing movies? This one I did, this one. Why? I'm a huge fan of, I'll watch it. But it's not until sort of years later that I can watch it and really watch. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. I just wasn't comfortable with it. But this time Mary was like, are you ready? And I'd be like, yes. And then I'd be like, maybe in a few weeks. Are you ready? Oh, soon. And I was just scared. But why this one? You felt? I was so scared because it was just, it was all of me there. It was just like stretched to the limit, this one. And I was like, oh my God. So naked. And I just was terrified. And then I finally couldn't avoid it any longer. Yes. And I… Stomach in knots. Was totally, yeah, very nervous. Yeah, like yeah, so nervous. And then I just didn't move. I was like that. And almost forgot I was in it. You know those things where you're like, you forget you're in it a little bit. Exactly. That's a huge deal. Which is wild. That doesn't happen ever, right? No. That doesn't happen. And I, but because of the language she was using with the camera, the film she was making, and all the sort of, the feeling she was creating with the movie was sort of beyond my, I couldn't anticipate it. Yeah. I knew what she was doing. And I knew there was lots of different sort of genres and tropes, like the horror tropes and comedic kind of set pieces and stuff. And the tone is so wild that you don't feel preached to ever. Yes. Yeah. It's very, yeah. Because it's so bonkers that you self-examine watching it. I think, and it's been cool because friends of mine who don't have children or, you know, have totally responded to the film in a way that I couldn't anticipate. That they understand her. Get it. They get the feeling. Like you could be a caretaker. Yes. Yes, exactly. Or you don't necessarily have to be a parent, you know. But, or you could be an addict or someone who's trying to get out of a terrible situation. But the feeling she's expressing in it and sort of the existential kind of nausea around the film too, I think. Yes. That she's just running from herself more than anything else. And I think it's a wonderful thing to see, you know, because sometimes my issue with a lot of female characters in movies is that they're sort of held in this ideal that they have to be feminine and good and palatable. I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean? Or they're described as like, she's a badass. And I was like, I don't want to be a badass either. Badass, as I say in my accent. But because you don't want to have all the answers. I think I really related to her completely unraveling. Good. Yeah. Completely unraveling and being stretched so thin. Yeah. It was so relatable. Yeah. Oh, good. You know, I think back to all these women in the 40s and 50s who just went absolutely insane at the ironing board, you know, having to be the perfect woman and how much anger and rage and misplaced dreams they must have had. And it made me think of it when I watched your film, like, oh, this is a very exciting experience as a woman to watch this. And it's important for men to watch your movie and understand the pressures, not just watch it, but feel it. And your film is a film that you feel. You don't watch it. You experience something on a cellular level. The way yours was shot was so in your face. With Benny's process, we barely saw a camera. He shot a lot, long lens, kind of prowling, hiding behind walls. And he said, I wanted that spine. He said, I want it voyeuristic. I want you to feel like, oh, God, I shouldn't be in the kitchen with them. This is so intimate. I shouldn't be watching this. And for us, it was so freeing because you didn't feel anything technical around you. Whereas I've done that experience that you had. I remember it on Girl on the Train. The camera was directly in my face the whole time, claustrophobically. But then you're right. You get used to it. And it doesn't bother you after a while. But I think Benny felt, even with the fight scenes, with the ring, he wanted to be three rows back. Because if you're watching, looking up, that you're not in the ring with them. Yeah. So you miss stuff in quite an interesting way. You feel yourself looking around him to try to get around his back. And I loved that. He created that beautifully because I did feel like I was spying. I did feel like that. And at one point, I was like, did they know I'm spying on them? Do you know what I mean? I was like, did they know that I'm like a house elf? You know, it was very particularly in like the locker room and these sorts of little moments that was like that. And I loved your look so much, the hair. It was fun. It was just fun. It was so fun. And you're such a chameleon. I was like, wow. You know, I just love you always inhabit from one to the next in a way that is really singular. Thank you. It's wonderful. No, I loved it. And I was curious about that. Like, were you just really delving into her kind of archive? Yeah. Heidi and I, Heidi pulled lots of photographs of her. And there is so much footage of her. So it was like 97 to 99, that sort of era. So great. The music was so great. So good. So great. And I do need a physical transformation. I feel it helps me. It's the in. With her, it was those extraordinary nails. You know, those. I remember the first time I put those acrylic nails on, I was like, whoa. They were just so long. And as much white as there was beige, that 90s French tip. And when you speak to Dawn, she's handsy. She's like this all the time. And she talks with her hands a lot. And she's like in his face with them. And I saw on the documentary she would like touch his face with these nails. That was quite a big in. And then you get the spray tan and the wig and the Wonder Bra. The Wonder Bra. Oh, my God. No, it was sponsored by Wonder Bra. They were like two heads by the time Heidi. I had Wonder Bra and fillets in there. They were like under my chin. You could see every man on set was like that. Looking, not looking, looking, not looking. Yeah, just looking at your hairline. It was so overt and so overly glamorized. But I loved it that she was so glamorized, but their connection wasn't. Their relationship wasn't. It was so messy. And yet everything she did about the way she dressed, looked, all of it, it was intentional. It was deliberate to draw him to her. So I even found that quite vulnerable. She was so freshly blown out and done. And it was all to bring him to her. Yeah, right. I know. And I felt that was so, you know, the big final scene where she's just, where she's sort of confessing all that stuff. And he's like, it was really just vulnerable and just like heartbreaking. And I felt like so, I don't know. I just was, yeah. So I felt so, because finally see, you know, what she's trying to do and what she was trying to like. Yes. And I think she really desperately was trying to save his life and be there and be the center of his universe. And I think it's a very complicated thing when you're married to a fighter whose life is on the line in the ring, but his life is on the line in the rabbit hole of his own addiction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she didn't have all the tools, given the givens, to save him and catch him because she was struggling so much herself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was so exciting to play a relationship that wasn't kind of movie-fied. It was sort of very untidy. And I don't know. I think it's, again, it's Benny is unafraid of that, that he wasn't. And I've never been concerned about being likable in a movie. It's sort of the worst word on earth because you do just want to be exposed. I wonder if actors get asked that, male actors. Never. Right, yeah? Never. Or if they're like, you played a pretty complicated character. Oh, yeah. I'm just wondering if they do. I have found that with Dawn that, in my experience, promoting it and everything, women really understand her. And it's not to say that every man does. A lot of men really, really understand her and they do see her as the victim. But a lot are really scared by that. Yes, yeah. Because she's not always nice. She doesn't always say the right thing. And she's not always there for him. And yet I think there's such a free pass for male characters to be unhinged, behave poorly. I would go further. Yes, and then they're like, but, you know, he really came through for his kid at the end. I was like, okay. Or like, but he's really funny. Or I don't know. Or whatever. But he's like, and it's fascinating because, you know, when you play a character that it's more polarizing as a woman, I just think the scrutiny is people are very uncomfortable. Have you found that especially on this one? Oh, yeah. I was really curious about what kinds of questions you've had on this that have been irritating. I mean. That's what I want to know. Yes, yeah. What question has irritated you? You know, it's sort of a quiet sense of deep disapproval that I find in there that's intrinsic that is fascinating to me. From men and women or everyone? From both, I would say. I think for me young people have been brilliant because young people are just so brave. They're so much braver. Like they've asked the best questions and the bravest questions and they're not as kind of, I don't know, cynical or conditioned or whatever yet. But I've found that, yeah, that sort of constant thing of like, why are you drawn to a character that's so and I'm like, what do you mean? Why wouldn't I be? Why wouldn't I want to do that? I mean, that's the beauty of it. You are so exposed on a human level and those are the people you want to play. Yeah, of course. That's what you want to gravitate towards. That's what you run to. Exactly. So it's always, it seems I don't know how to answer that question when people ask. I'm like, why wouldn't you do it kind of thing? But I do think there is an inherent distrust of a woman who is misbehaving. I agree. You know, that is kind of it's tough to ignore. I totally, totally agree. I'm sure you've come across that. You've played a lot of complicated women. I've played a lot of, and I've played a lot of women who, you know, I completely understand, relate to. I might not always agree with what they do, but I don't really care if I agree with them or not. No, that's not the point. No, it's not the point. That's not our job is to like, yeah. And it's also not a morality play. I'm not sort of, I don't want to take a moral standing on someone and how they behave. It's that these people exist. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's parts of all of us in Dawn and there's parts of all of us in Linda. Yes. There are. We have all done that to a certain extent. Or thought about doing it. Or thought about it. You know, and that's the difference is. I was intrigued. So you brought this, how did this one come together? Because you guys obviously had your relationship from Jungle Cruise. Yeah, so we've been friends for like, well, a few years before this came up. So DJ had apparently brought the documentary to Benny in like 2019. They loved meeting each other. But then COVID happened. People's schedules happened. And it sort of just drifted. And then I was shooting Oppenheimer with Benny. And we were in the makeup trailer getting our old people makeup on. Sitting there for hours. Getting prosthetics on. And he said, you're friends with Dwayne, right? And he said, please tell him. I cannot stop thinking about Smashing Machine. And will you reconnect me? Can you give me his direct number? So I called DJ. And I was like, were you going to work with Benny Sabtor? You have to do this movie. And then I watched the documentary that night. And I called DJ. And I said, you have to do it. And you have to do it now. It's like the full wingspan of what you're capable of. And they reconnected. And then a few months later. I mean, deep down when I watched the documentary. I was like, I would quite like to play Dawn. But I didn't want to muscle my way. You hadn't had that. No, no. So initially I felt like I was like a matchmaker. Right, yeah. And then a few months later, Benny called me and said, I really would love you to be Dawn. And I was like, okay. Because I loved in the documentary that relationship. I was like, God, there's so much to mine there. And it's never done a relationship like that. Never played a character like that. And I wanted that exploration of something and somebody. And a relationship that was so broken. Yeah, yeah. And precarious. So when Benny called, I was thrilled. And then I think it was like six months later we were making it. Wow. And you guys are from such different worlds. Totally. And we're like best friends. I mean, we are so colourised. And we do laugh about that. We should be like chalk and cheese. But we're not. We are pals. And I just adore him. And he's become this incredibly wise, profound friendship in my life. And someone who I have learnt a lot from. You know, I learn a lot from DJ. I think he's got an amazing life as well. And so much struggle, so much pain. And, yeah, he was always playing the guy who had all the answers. And I was like, oh, it would be so cool to see you unravel. Yeah, yeah. And be so vulnerable and so fragile. And I think that this part was, I think, cathartic for him. Yeah, right. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really, really cathartic. And that's partly why I almost cried when I saw him as Mark for the first time. Because it was like seeing someone – seeing relief wash over him. Oh, wow. He came and he looked so calm. He must really trust you. I think he does. Right? I think so. To be able to go there. I think so. And he really trusted Benny as well. So, like, the three of us were like the musketeers. We were so connected. We really shared a lot of our own souls. I was wondering how much you guys talked beforehand. So, Mary Bronstein and I – she has become a great friend. And this story is, you know, based on what she went through. Really? Yeah. So, not entirely, obviously. Yes. She doesn't, you know, do what my character does. But she's spoken about this, that her daughter was ill and she had to go to California for treatment. Her husband lives in New York. I mean, they live in New York. Her husband had to work. And so she went for this treatment and was told it would take eight weeks. And it took eight months. And she was living in this, like, hotel room with her daughter, like two demented kind of roommates. Driven insane by the beeping machine. Exactly. That was, like, a big character in her life. And she – you know, her daughter would go to sleep every night and she would go into the bathroom and, you know, eat junk food and wrote the screenplay. And just to be alone as well. Totally. To, like, finally have that time. And so it was born of a place of real, you know, experience. Yes. And I think it's reflected in the film. It's, like, a very – Oh, it's so personal. You know, she really had something to say. And she was really candid with me. Really, really candid with me. And we had this great rehearsal period of about five weeks where I would just go to her apartment and we would – three days a week. And we would just sit there and go over the script. Wow. It was like preparing for a play. It was just every line of dialogue. How beautiful. Had you worked, like, in that way before on a film? Not – only on a play. Never – I mean, you don't get time. Have you had that experience before? No. The only longer time is if I was doing, like, a musical, like a Mary Poppins or something, a very long rehearsal. But you're learning all the dance numbers. You're learning, like – But that's how Rob Marshall works. But on Smashing, we would just talk a lot. Yeah. And I don't remember the last time I had rehearsals. Yeah. I agree. No, I – like, for TV, you don't get that. Like, if you're doing a series, it's very rare. So – but thank God because we shot the film in 25 days. Holy ----. Yeah. Did you really? Yeah. Like a runaway train. Two takes, maybe three. Oh, my God. You know. So – and Mary was hands off. She, like – because we'd talked about it, you know. Yeah. We would come to the set every day, go over everything, and then we would just go. We just didn't have time. So you felt great freedom in it. I did feel freedom. I was – it was a tightrope. It was just a tightrope. Because, like, too much, it would fall into being melodramatic. Yeah. Like, the trap is – it's just a screaming, hysterical thing. You know. And then – but too, like, sort of comic or I don't know, whatever, it would become not realistic. You know, it would be, like, sort of – But all the clever injections of bizarre, bonkers comedy, it all worked, because tonally and the way she shot it, it was like you were having an out-of-body experience watching something. It was – it was really captivating in that way that – you know when you watch movies and you feel like maybe the director or the writer has seen too many movies? Yeah. I didn't feel like Mary Bronstein has watched too many movies. It was such a singular voice, even though I'm sure she's watched every movie. But she had this singular, mad voice. Yeah. It's – she's a force. She pushed this thing uphill for eight years. And it's not easy to get a film made as, you know, like a dark script like this. And she, like, she fought, you know, every step of the way to get it made. But I was so curious. I wanted to ask you how you, like, how you choose your projects. That's a good question. I know that's, like, an annoying question. It's actually a great one. You have such a great, extraordinary – you have worked with extraordinary directors. You're so funny. And you've, like – I feel like you're such a true chameleon. Oh, thank you. And it's so – like, how do you anticipate it or don't you anticipate it? Like, what do you – I don't think I do anticipate it. I definitely, between projects, I'll sort of yo-yo between – like, if I've done – okay, so I did The Fall Guy before this and then I took a year and a half off because I just felt like I needed a breather from being on a film set. Which was so fun. So fun. And that was just a hoot and it was just, like, a giant blooper reel and just so fun. In Australia. Yes. And I loved it. And then Smashing seemed like the antithesis of that. So I think between projects, I will oscillate, you know, in tone so that I'm, I guess, excited and challenged and a bit terrified. I think I do want to feel terror. That's probably one of the things I look for. If I read something and I think, oh, I know how to wrap my arms around this, then I probably won't choose it. Or if I – maybe it feels derivative or to something I've done. And so I think that's a big thing. I think lately I look – I love all the genres, but I want a world builder and I want it in the writing that it's a unique world and a unique voice and what's the director's world? Like, what is it? And that's why your film spoke to me because you can't pin it down. It's carved out completely new space for itself. So I think I do look for that in the writing, like a freshness that is exciting to me. Are you good at reading scripts? I find them very hard to read. Yeah, I'm pretty good, but it's awful. If I'm not in in 20 pages, then I – You have a rule kind of thing? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, to try to – Yeah. And it's not fair. You should probably read the whole thing, but I think it's like if I'm not really immersed in it and if I don't see an in, whether it's the tone or whatever it is, like, listen, obviously if it's a smaller part and I come in later, I'll keep going. Go to the end. Yeah, I'll just flick through. Yada, yada, yada. There's me. Yep. Me, me, me, me, me. Me, me, me. But I do – I try not to anticipate the type of thing I'm looking for. I guess I just wait to be spellbound by something and it will be a really strange reason as to why I love it and I'll never be able to really explain it. Yeah, like an intuition. What about you? I mean, similar. I think that's why I use that word because I feel like you don't know what's around the corner. You know what corner you've just come from. So it's a bit like trying to stay open, trying to not anticipate it and, I mean, I'm just agreeing with everything you've said, but it's true if you go, I can do that too. I've done that. Yeah. You know, I don't need to – I don't need to do that again. Yeah, do I need to do it again? And then, of course, it's like director, right? Yeah. Like trying to seek out the people that are making those worlds that you speak of. Yeah, which is quite rare, you know, and I know that the movies we've been in this year, it's why A24 is so good at, like, you know, fostering these types of challenging, exciting, rare material that don't conform, you know. I'm always looking for movies that don't conform or subscribe to something. But they are rarer and rarer, you know. It's like so many numbers are crunched on will this movie deliver, like we need to have an action scene within 10 minutes of the movie, otherwise it's going to tank and it's like – it's just sad, you know, all of the hoops you have to jump through and so to get to do a film like The Ones We – the gift of these movies this year is rare and I know that and I don't want to feel like those opportunities are slipping through all of our fingers but I think the earth plates are moving with our industry and they're becoming harder to harvest and so – You have to relish the opportunities. Relish it when you have them because it's harder and harder. It's just harder and harder and it's just changing so much how people consume stuff and what they consume and all those sorts of things. So, yeah, when these opportunities come I always think this may never happen again. Yeah, like run to it. It could very well never happen again because all you have is the experience at the end of the day. I know. It's like that's all, that's ours. That's it, that's it and you can't really control anything after that which I kind of surrendered two years ago and I don't mind that relinquishing. It's kind of important otherwise the experience of the film will be curated towards how do we get bums in seats, how do we do this and I don't want to work that way. I wanted to ask you about Linda and what did you love about her? What did you feel for? Well, I was – she's brazen and she does not – she's anti-authority. She doesn't like being told what to do. She's the opposite to me. I don't have those qualities at all. I'll just get in line. I really don't. Like she's brazen. She's not – and that was challenging in those scenes, particularly like with James played by A$AP Rocky, who's this so great, so charming. Had he done a lot of acting before? He had done one other job and then after that he did the Spike Lee movie, Highest Aloft. Oh my god, he was so good. Wasn't he good? So good. I love working with people who haven't acted very much. I mean Duane and I were the only actors in it. So they were all non-actors then? They were all fighters like all from the MMA world and I think Benny loves working in that way. And what about the girl when you have your scene where you guys have margaritas? So was she – She's an actress. She was awesome. Okay, okay. I was also – I was like – I was wondering if she was from that world as well. She was an actor. Okay, yeah. But everyone else like the guy who plays Mark Coleman, he's a real-life MMA heavyweight. Great. The guy who plays Bas Rutten who plays Bas in the movie, who plays his trainer, he was Mark Kerr's trainer. So that was weird, you know, for him. Did Dawn come to set? No. She was really nervous. Did you want – do you want her to come to set? We actually didn't really want – I mean Mark came to set a little bit and watched it a couple of times but I think it's healthier if you're playing people for them not to come to set. Yeah, yeah. Because I think I would be concerned about them watching and feeling exposed. It was very scary showing them the movie the first time. Yes, how was that? It was very scary. She was very scared. We had shown Mark two weeks or a month prior. It really rocked both of them. But Dawn has since watched it about four times and she said to me at the L.A. premiere, it's become very healing, which I never expected. I really was scared because I care about her that it would unearth so much pain, which I think it has but probably on a necessary level. I think it's been able to heal stuff between her and Mark. I think he has recognized his accountability through the film. And that's an amazing thing and none of us expected that. We didn't know it would be a healing thing for them. So we're so grateful that it has been. It's kind of what you would hope for but not even consciously. Yeah, we were hoping that they would see themselves and go, okay, I'm seen. People get me now. This is my imprint on the world. Because it plays that delicate line between should we only strive to win and succeed and then sort of eviscerate your own need to be okay. And I like that about the film, that it's sort of the anti-Rocky. It's not the guy with his fist in the air. It's actually the guy who's okay losing. Yeah, yeah. Which I wasn't sure how it was going to end either and I was like, oh my God, it was just again surprising in a way that was not what I had anticipated. And Conan O'Brien was so good. Wasn't he good? He was so good. He was so not Conan. I know, so un-Conan. I loved your scenes with him. Squashing every kind of all of his, you know, usual person. You know, the Conan we know and love. Yeah, he was so reserved and submarine. He was such contempt for Linda. Completely. I loved you guys together. Yeah, it was really like the love story of the film. It really was. The bitter end of this dreadful love story. Okay, one more question then I know we have to go. When you were hurling yourself into those waves at the end, I had a panic attack because I'm absolutely terrified of the ocean. Was that you doing it? I did about 80%, yeah. Oh, my God. But I'm an Aussie. I'm Australian. So you grew up just hurling yourself into massive waves. Well, no, no, no. I have great respect for that. I'm always like I know if there's a rip, I know I don't have to go in or I know how to do it, you know. But I was hyper, hyper aware of the ocean. But it was rough, yeah. But I felt like she needed that… The baptism. Yes, the baptism. And then get stuck and thrown back out. Oh, you were just magnificent. Oh, you were. Brilliant. And I've loved talking to you. I've loved talking to you. We didn't get to talk about Kik Gurry. I love him so much, Kiki. I was like thinking of him. I was like, oh, my God. Oh, I love old Kik. We've got to give him a shout out. He loves you so deeply. Isn't he a great hang? He's so wonderful. He galvanises such joy. Yeah, he does. And everyone was completely obsessed with him on Edge of Tomorrow. Like he was the glue. He was the glue. He's the glue. He's the caramel that keeps us all together. He'll be stoked. Okay, good. We love you, Kik.