How you doing? I'm fine, thank you.
How are you? Yeah, really good, thanks.
Yes, the middle of the London Film Festival over here.
So it's pretty intense.
Long days watching movies, but I watched John and the Hole last night
and really enjoyed it. I mean, yeah, just get started.
I know. Such an unsettling kind of tonality to the film.
I could barely sleep last night after watching it.
Did you get a bit of a sense, too, that the atmosphere during the shoot,
is that something that's kind of pulled together during during post?
I got a sense of it
to a degree, I mean, I certainly got a sense of the unique horror
of the circumstance that the family finds themselves in. As far as the
subjective point of view, through this sort of very mysterious
and scary young boy, that's something I could only.
intuit or, you know, we were or shooting scenes in the house we were.
Not dialed in to him, I mean, that's a part of the problem.
I'm not not clued in to what was going on with John
and not really clued into what was going on with anyone else.
I think everyone's quite isolated.
So, yeah, I mean, I
I had a I had a sense of it when I read it, and I
certainly had it in the back of my mind, but only upon seeing it.
I appreciate, you know, how
what what Pascual [Sisto, director] had done.
I mean, it's a kind of a fascinating emotion
that you had to kind of display, which I think you display with so much
subtlety, which is to be so full of love to someone as you are for your son.
But feel like for a moment you've lost and you actually don't understand
and you've kind of lost that sense of control.
And how I mean, that's I mean, that's quite a tough
I'm assuming emotions, access, but a great challenge for an actor
to kind of have all that kind of nuance going on inside.
Yeah. I mean, I'm glad that was your experience.
That was the that was the
I guess the assignment.
The script is very spare, but.
I really trusted Pascual's sensitivity to the
to the nuance of each character's journey, and I felt taken care of in that sense.
And yeah, I mean, I think I think that very much defines what.
The character is going through that he is.
Because of this situation.
He simultaneously put in visceral touch with a sense of complete.
Exasperation and powerlessness and.
The sort of extent of his love
and sort of expanding experience simultaneously, in a way,
I think what John does is a really, really.
Way outside the box form of family therapy,
even though it's a creepy place,
we're left at the end. Hmm. The more.
Hopeful take is that something
valuable has been learned.
Even if it can't be named.
Yeah, but I mean, I love this kind of emotion to access.
Is your character loses all sense in some ways of dignity?
I mean, he is he's the he's the the father of this household,
you know, and he loses complete sort of control over everything.
Was is it quite carthatic as an actor losing dignity
because you're you're able to kind of like lose that, but not in your own skin?
Not as Michael. But I guess that's something that I guess that happens
to all humans at some point in our lives is actually happening to us personally.
So how is it kind of accessing that and doing it in them through the prism
of someone else? I suppose it's.
Relatively speaking, a safe place to be.
Utterly humiliated and disempowered.
But I think in his humiliation and disempowerment.
He. Does I mean,
it feels like, John?
You don't want to spoil the way the movie ends, but.
I feel like. The
the things start to look up at a time
that I think coincides with. John's father.
Relinquishing control and sort of surrendering to the.
Absurdity and unknown of what's happening.
But yeah, I don't know.
My wife always tells me I'm unembarrassable so maybe I, maybe I
maybe I thrive on you,
You know, I think the experience of being caught on camera is
is always to some degree humiliating.
So you're playing a character who's actually explicit,
explicitly experiencing that you kind of don't have to pretend. Yeah,
of course. You know, there's there's not it's not too easy
to relate in many ways to the situation that you're just kind of faced in.
But I guess there is an element
in many parents lives where they do start losing that sense of control.
Not in a bad way. I mean, we all become adults.
We some and I guess is a period, isn't there, where a child's can go from
being your little baby, that, you know, you kind of do dress, you're kind of
and then next thing you know, they're off to school
when they get in the bus or the subway on their own or something.
Is that something
is that an aspect you could kind of tap into here, that sense of just losing
that kind of grip and not not in a grip that you kind of have to lose?
We all we will have to relinquish that.
But I guess it can be quite hard to to come to terms with, in a way.
Yeah. Yeah, I think.
In a in a heightened and and maybe metaphorical way,
the film captures, I think, a fundamental aspect
of what it is to be a parent.
There's something about the situation
the family finds themselves in, that is.
Simultaneously shocking, but.
In a in a very grave way, not entirely surprising
that I feel like all of them are grappling
with. A sense of.
Having seen this coming.
Even though their eyes were closed when they were looking at it,
if that makes sense, you know, and.
Yeah, I mean, I think
I think the. The sense of.
Powerlessness that that the family and the parents are feeling
is something that's maybe unique to having a child in the present day.
Their distractions are unique to this time and place,
but it's also, I think, timeless. Yeah.
I mean, Charlie [Shotwell]'s a really talented young actor.
Must be so great to watch
young performers and get that sense where the sky is the limit.
But going back to the
start of your career, do you remember having anyone
kind of help you or guide you or take you under their wing in a way
that I'm sure Charlie would say about you guys on on the set of this,
I think. Being. Encouraged and.
Considered by older people who I admired.
You know, plays I did when I was a
probably Charlie's age, I certainly wasn't doing anything
the level that he's doing this.
But when I was his age and maybe younger, just the experience of being.
Being being considered being taken seriously,
and as much as I was just listened to by by elders
whose talent and experience I admired, you know, this is like productions
and relatively like regional or community theater productions, but.
And being having a sense of being championed because of that
went a long way.
I mean, I certainly try to remember that
when interacting with younger actors, you know,
in a way, you know, someone like Charlie, I'm sort of in awe of his.
His talent, his self-possession, his.
Both instinctual and intellectual gifts,
but also, you know, you remind yourself
this is a kid and and he, for his part
and from his perspective in his way, is looking for.
Encouragement and confidence and validation as well.
And do you miss being the age child his age?
Mm. There are maybe. Certains.
There's a certain wide open openness
that I that I miss and and try to remember.
And in a sense of, you know, just being in no way
preoccupied with.
The finite nature of our journey,
you know, that that I.
That I remember intellectually, but less and less experientially
the man who has little care for finite nature of our journey is Dexter.
I'm afraid we do have to just mention
that was a very bad segue, but I had to learn from that.
I'm just interested
in the point that you guys decided to to get back into,
because I'm assuming across the years this must have been discussed a few times.
I just wondered,
at what stage do you think actually, you know what, let's let's do this.
Let's let's let's reopen that book?
Yeah, I mean it as as you say.
Not quite immediately, but.
Immediately adjacent, the conversation was in the air,
and I would say there were probably
three different stabs.
Forgive me, at at a new script,
a new context, a new story.
The timing never felt right,
and the scripts themselves never felt worth doing.
I mean, I knew that the way the show ended was it was.
At best, confounding, if not infuriating for people,
but I didn't think of that in itself as a reason to do more.
Certainly if we couldn't
come up with a story that felt like it was worth telling.
But I think a lot of
why the timing felt right
came down to how much time had passed and how many storytelling opportunities that.
Span of time allowed us
mostly in terms of Dexter's son
having grown to an age where he.
What is very much.
Potentially, at least his own person and.
And and I think I just needed to, you know, take some time away
and mix it up and commit to things that had the kind of definitive beginning
middle middles and ends when I signed on for them, rather,
whether they were independent films or or theatrical productions or what have you.
It was a combination of things.
It was also the the.
Stars aligning and Clyde Phillips coming back into the fold, and then
Marcos Siega, his executive producer on the show and director on the show
on on most of the episodes and sort of a producing director, a sense
that as we push the boundaries and tried
to redefine the show, I think I, I
gained an increasing.
Appreciation and that a certain
amount of the show's fundamental DNA needed to be honored
and needed to still be
coursing through whatever story we were telling
and having people who were there from the beginning was fundamental.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of interested to know, but I bet there's so many
sort of discarded kind of pictures
for the sequels and reboots and kind of that stations.
Has that been the case in your career?
I mean, even some things that I didn't
ever, never really made the kind of public domain.
But life projects you've been in, say, like Six Feet Under
And I mean, there must been so many calls to producers and networks
trying to entice you all back that that never sort of saw the light of day.
I mean, if if those
if those calls happened, they never came quite enough to reach me.
Maybe Alan Ball just cut it off at the at the head.
And also that show ended in such a sort of definitive way.
We saw all the characters.
I mean, there would be a way to maybe revisit them. But
I mean, in a way, the the unsatisfactory character of the Dexter ending
is a big part of what set the stage for feeling appropriate to go back to it.
A silver lining, maybe.
I mean, my final question I was going to ask, because,
I mean, I've got to to my friends who they used, they
they used to go out when they were like 16, 17 for like two years,
and then like 12 years later, they just got together again.
And I was like, wow.
And I was like, is that always like playing Dexter again?
Yeah, maybe. Maybe.
I mean, I'm sure,
you know, there's a there's a relationship that they probably have
physically and and and and otherwise that
feels eerily familiar, even though so much time has passed.
And yeah, there was there was that sense, especially in the first days of shooting
where I was playing something that was.
Had had some sort of element of the quintessential
and felt like he was still there, you know?
Yeah, he was and he was.
Are you surprised by how
easily you slipped back in or did you always expect that to be the case?
I was I was hopeful, but the flavor of
it was something unique
in comparison to whatever I had anticipated.
I mean, I try not to be to.
Expectant in terms of what it would feel like, but.
Ultimately, I think I was.
Pleasantly surprised/
A little freaked out by how
how available he remained.
Yeah, well, pleasantly surprised, , I'm hoping
I'm going to feel when I watch it.
But it was yeah, I think I speak on behalf of the entire world
that we can't wait to see that character back. Oh, good.
But yeah. And John in the Hole was another great one.
So there's some good stuff coming up.
So it's been a good time.
Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the festival. Cheers.
Thank you, Michael. Okay. Thank you. Bye bye.
Jazz, ladies and gentlemen, you're watching. Hey, you guys.
Hey, you guys. How are you guys? Is that from The Goonies? Yeah.
Hey, you guys.