(intro music)
Hi, everyone.
Thanks so much for joining us in-studio today
where we have Bill Pullman.
Hi.
- Hi. - [Natalie] How are you?
- I'm good.
- Such a pleasure to have you here.
First of all, you have been in so many movies.
You have this amazing career spanning decades.
We've got Spaceballs.
We've got A League of Their Own,
Independence Day.
What do people mostly recognize you from
whenever you get recognized?
- Well, sometimes it's the most recent thing
and sometimes it's something that was old
and then some people,
I can almost sometimes spot when they're coming up.
I think,
"Oh!"
And they'll say something like,
"Casper."
(Natalie laughs)
- [Natalie] That's a good one!
- Grab bag, yeah.
Carrie Coon, I worked with on The Sinner,
she was saying how Casper was a coming of age story
for a girl,
'cause her love of Casper, when he's an ideal ghosty thing
and then he becomes a real thing.
That was why she remember the movie.
- So let's go back a little bit
to whenever you were just starting out.
Like I said, I can't have you in this chair
and not talk about this decades-long career that you've had.
- You started off,
you went to college for theater, correct?
And then you taught theater for a while.
Is that right?
- Yes.
I guess that would count as a late bloomer.
I was 33 by the time I was in the first movie that I was in.
I had done a lot of different things before that,
but I was interested in theater.
I started out in a building instruction program
and I was restless and looking for a lot of things
and I got in a play and then the guy said,
"You ought to do this."
At that point, I was very intrigued by making theater
so I had a graduate's degree in directing,
so I was acting but I was always directing as well.
I thought that was going to be a good life to keep pursuing
and then I was in Montana doing it
and I was teaching at Montana State University
and I realized I needed to go and try to...
Into the professional pond and see how I could swim.
Then I was in a play in New York
that got some reviews and things
so I could get to a better agency
and then this job came up to do a play in L.A.
and that I could maybe, once I was out in L.A.,
could test the waters with some film and TV out there.
That's when I got cast in Ruthless People,
was the first movie.
- So, from Ruthless People, from there,
it just seems like you kind of were taking off,
which is great.
You got to work with so many directors
especially over the years.
Was there ever a role where you felt a little
out of your comfort zone?
You're such a likable person to watch
and a likable actor to watch.
Did you ever have any role you were maybe hesitant
to take on?
And how did you move past that?
- Yeah, I've done a lot of
different objectionable characters
and so looking to push the boundaries...
Once I get established in something, then I want to
introduce some instability to it.
I think I was really happy to be part of
some romantic comedy thing
but then I didn't need to keep doing them.
I've always really liked noir movies
and I find that there's a level of humor in them sometimes.
Finding those kinds of scripts were really intriguing to me.
- Well I guess that's a perfect segue, thank you,
into The Sinner,
which is this great thriller television show.
I think this is the first time that you've
done a character,
where you've done a show for multiple seasons, correct?
- Yes, yeah.
- I have so many questions.
The show is great.
If you're not watching it, please.
Season 1's on Netflix.
How did this role come to you
and what were your first thoughts?
- I remember getting a letter from
Derek Simonds, the showrunner.
They didn't have all the scripts or anything.
just had a summary of a direction of it,
but the letter was very...
Directed it specifically, things that he had liked about
what I had done
and significantly, it was a play that I did on Broadway,
The Goat,
and very seldom do film people rely on theater things
to make their judgments but I thought it was
an important play to me.
It was one of those important milestones of my career
and I think the fact that he was intrigued by
this person who
had some buried secret,
I think maybe that was
what he saw that was good for Ambrose.
- There's only one book that the series is based off of.
- Yeah.
- But the second season, we see your character,
you're sort of the through-line from the first season
to the second season.
When did you know that that was happening,
where a second season was happening,
and that you would be reprising your role?
- When we started the first season
he was eager to have me in the writers' room
and talking about what...
I think because Ambrose, the character of the detective
was not that well-charted in the German novel.
He wasn't as fleshed out as what Derek wanted to do
so I could talk to the writers about a lot of things
and it became a very personal discussion about
my own past and what could be tracking similarly
and what it is to have
certain kinds of trauma
early in life that maybe forms behavior
that becomes manifested later.
I used a lot of my own life.
Derek comes from
Jungian
methodologies
and likes to feel like there's a DNA
a little bit from your life in characters.
So I ended up describing a lot of upbringing,
my own sense of being, ways in which I felt like I was...
I think life is always an unpeeling of the onion
about who you are,
looking to get a better grip on your identity.
I had a bit of unpacking to do and I talked a lot about it
in the writers' room and then he said,
"You know, I think it's going well
and it seems the numbers are up."
And I had never been part of that week by week,
"Here's the numbers."
I didn't really want to hear very much of it
but at certain point, he said,
"It's going well."
And that's all I needed to know,
and that we might do a second season.
Then there was a little bit of a downtime,
while they were looking to see when to start
when they'd hired the next writers' room
and then he called me and he said,
"I wonder if you're okay with this
as a premise for the second season,
because we're going to take Ambrose into
the belly of the beast.
Going to bring him to back to where he had his early upbringing
and is the last place that he wants to go back to."
- Were you, for the second season as well,
were you involved?
- Yeah.
It was quick hits.
It wasn't like micromanaging or anything
but invited you in and had...
I think there was a lot of...
'cause at that point,
a lot of the scripts hadn't been written
so they were feeling like...
It was really interesting to then,
as the scripts...
I thought,
"Oh, this is a nice idea and they're patronizing me,
that this is all me just talking to them
in an afternoon and that will be the end of it
and they'll go off to write what they want to write
and I'm fine with that.
Very nice that I got invited to go in."
And then to see the scripts coming out and realizing,
"Oh, they used this and oh,
they used that and they used this,"
it ended up being an affirmation
that it was time well spent.
- The whole cast is incredible.
Shall we just start to even talk about Carrie Coon
and Tracy Letts?
They're married, right?
- Yeah.
(laughs)
- They are both...
Carrie Coon, especially, she's a force
anytime she's onscreen and the two of you together,
what was that like for you working with Carrie?
Had you worked with her before?
- Never worked with her before.
I had seen her do the Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
that she met Tracy on,
their Steppenwolf production
but very much comes from a lot of craft.
It's not...
She's always learned to
immerse herself in things.
It's difficult.
I think the idea of not knowing the scripts
until you just get them and next week you got to shoot.
You have to assimilate a bunch of information
about your character, some of it you hadn't known before,
that kind of thing.
I think it was going differently than what she was used to
but she is such a pro.
She adapted to it and then we'd talk a lot.
I think we really decided,
"Well, we'll rely on each other,"
and with Tracy, too.
"How can we make this work," kind of thing.
Fortunately, Derek's very collaborative,
looking to accommodate everybody and keep everybody
in the same zone
but also to listen to what their contributions are.
They're both bright people that are not making decisions
out of some kind of insecurity.
It tapped their strengths and I hope
they felt good about it.
(laughs)
- I would imagine.
It's done really well, the show's great.
I am curious also about the scripts,
because you're getting them week to week
for the second season.
I guess the first season, if you want to read the book,
you would know the story there
but for the second season, you're getting these scripts
week to week.
There's a lot of flashbacks.
It seems like it was shot so perfectly, though,
and everything seems very seamless.
What's that like for you as an actor?
How much do you know going into, let's say,
in episode two or three, you're sitting by a fireplace
with Carrie Coon's character...
Is it Vera?
- Vera, yep.
- You're sitting by a fireplace with Vera
and then maybe a few episodes later,
we go back there and you have to tap back into that place.
What is that like for you as an actor?
Do you like the back and forth?
Does it keep it fresh for you?
- As you said, I've never done a repeating series before
so I had never gone through this sense of...
It takes a certain amount of trust
to know that the character isn't going to be
suddenly distorted in some way
to fit some writer's conceit of where the character goes
but with that situation where I'm in this cabin
in the woods with Vera, Carrie's character,
and then it jumps out of that and I wake up
and I don't remember what happened,
at that point there was,
"Maybe we'll come back to it."
It wasn't even for sure we would come back to it.
And then,
"You know, it's looking more and more
like we'll have a scene in the cabin
and we actually have the budget for it."
It's not just like the story is driving everything.
It has to be configured with,
"Can we schedule it?"
- [Natalie] The logistics.
- The logistics.
This cabin was very far in the woods,
hard to get all the equipment there
and they said,
"I don't know how much time.
We have a day.
Now it's only a half a day.
Now we're back to a day,
and so we can have a scene."
The closer and closer we got it,
suddenly we realized...
Then I could tell with Derek,
there was a way that it felt like
everything they were coming up with,
with what actually happened between us,
was a diminishing of something
so they were a little afraid to write it
and they weren't happy with what they were writing
and then at a certain point they said,
"No."
Derek said,
"We really have to have this go on between them,
and we want to see it.
We can't just fake it, do another one."
So that script kept evolving right up to that
and I remember we came in on a Sunday
because we were going to shoot it on a Tuesday,
we rehearsed it in a room,
Carrie and I and the director and Derek.
That's where it all...
We suddenly made a lot of input and it all came together
that this is going to be great to shoot
and we know what the stakes are
and we're going to try to go for the big idea.
- The last thing I want to talk about, though,
while we still have a little bit more time
is your docuseries, Epic Yellowstone.
What can you tell me about that?
- This is a project that these two
documentary filmmakers from Bozeman
had been working on for four years.
- [Natalie] Wow.
- I'd been very much an advocate of the Yellowstone Park
and I just think it was a really peculiarly American thing.
It was the first national park in the world.
1872 is when they first got started.
It wasn't until 1915 that they opened it,
so in 2015 they had a big party there
that I got involved with,
some kind of emcee for this celebration birthday.
All this time I realized it's so unique,
and then this footage that they showed me was so...
Things I'd never seen before.
Animal behavior,
grabbing a sense of what the ecosystem is
and how valuable it is that we have this
untamed part of the country that is preserved,
hopefully forever.
It's almost more wild than it's ever been
once the reintroduction of grizzlies and wolves,
and then to see this footage that takes so much patience,
these filmmakers would be in the coldest of temperatures
or something,
some guy who'd say,
"I saw the bobcat again,"
and they'd have to go back and spend a week
trying to get back into an environment
where they could actually photograph the same animal
that they had shot months before.
- How do you even do that?
- I know.
- Let's find this one squirrel.
(laughs)
- With 4K cameras and drones.
It's an incredible achievement, I think,
so I think it's going to be a worthwhile watch.
- Sounds pretty beautiful,
beautiful footage and a bit of challenge to shoot and film,
so yeah, I'm curious what that is going to be like
whenever it comes out,
so that's March 10th.
You can see Epic Yellowstone March 10th
on Smithsonian Channel and again,
The Sinner.
Season 1 on Netflix, Season 2, iTunes.
Buy it if you haven't already seen it
and you will keep us posted on Season 3.
- Yes.
- Okay, because all of the minds need to know.
Thank you so much for being here.
So nice talking to you and thanks everyone for watching.