Willa.. How are you?
Yeah, really good. Thanks.
I really enjoyed the movie,
I think. Yeah, the film.
It kind of just continuously surprised me from the moment it started.
It was kind of general.
It was like it never did what I expected it to.
It was at times a thriller
Then it was a occasional sort of romance, the drama, then a kind of weird fever
dream like surrealist comedy. I loved it.
I mean, do you remember your first experience reading the script?
But then I'm thinking this.
This does feel a bit different to other things I've read.
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, I read it a long time before I ever got the job
or shot the movie, and I remember
really kind of feeling it was very theatrical.
It was it read a lot like a play because there are a lot of long scenes.
It's a really contained piece in general.
It's doing interesting things,
story wise and action wise in order to kind of
streamline the process of shooting some of those scenes.
And it just it felt like it was working within a lot of really fun
constraints, which I always find to be
an interesting challenge as a maker of film and television.
I mean, obviously lots of the actors in there kind of come and go.
There's a nice blend of sort of moving and sort of drifting
into the different worlds in people's lives.
But Jordan is obviously,
you know, the character Paul played by John Magaro is the kind of constant.
What was it like collaborating so closely with him on this project due to weather
the kind of glue that kept this thing together in many ways great.
I mean, John's fantastic.
We had a really fun time shooting.
We're all living in that.
In the motel where the Silver Sands Motel, we're all living there together
for whatever, two weeks plus, then return to Silver Sands.
After COVID, we figured out how to shoot
he's so he's so fun.
And it's the first probably five or six days of shooting was just us
was just me and John and all of our scenes that are just together.
And we had, I think, kind of an interesting experience
when the world sort of then opened up and there were new people
coming into this little world that we had been building for six or seven days.
And I think, you know, in the art imitates life sort of way, it was
it was actually a great opportunity to let all of that
kind of like shake up that was happening on set with new people
coming in
actually just like inform the characters in the way that they're moving
through that kind of new space.
I'm just so pleased to see Richard Kind in Anything is done.
It's just his voice.
He plays, he's inside out and he plays Bing Bong
which I don't know if you've seen that, but that's the saddest moment.
Even after reading his prolific I'm so excited about that.
You just mentioned about staying in the motel.
How was that kind of experience?
When you're doing a period thing, does that help maintain the
realism of the period?
Settings always feel like you could be on a kind of period drama
and then you go back to the kind of modern five star hotel in a setting,
and it can be a bit of a departure that could take you out of the moment
being in that setting.
So it continuously helps stay in character in some ways.
Yeah, no, it definitely does. It definitely does.
I think even kind of more importantly,
especially when you're working on a small film like that where it's just everyone
wants to be there, none of us are really getting paid at all. And
I think it, it, it just like builds camaraderie.
It's kind of a sense you're living where the crew's living.
You all are eating all your meals together.
It's really like a different version of how to make a movie because, you know,
I mean, if you're working on a bigger budget movie or TV show,
you never have that opportunity to kind of spend that much time
with everyone that you're working with.
And it just I don't know, it does feel like repertory theater or
or something different than what a set normally feels like.
And it's and it's fun.
I obviously all set around this watershed scandal
that is at times of American history that is always interested.
You do you know much about this or prior to getting involved?
Yeah.
I mean, I think that I think that we all had
had Watergate as a sort of
crisis point in America, at the forefront of the American kind
of collective consciousness for the past several years, as we've kind of,
you know, been navigating some tumultuous political terrain.
And I think it's
no surprise that there are currently so many different shows that are either
directly about Watergate or kind of set in the seventies, not political soup.
That was the seventies.
And so I think, you know, I think I certainly knew about Watergate.
I didn't necessarily know about the 18 and a half minute gap very much before
reading this script and kind of learning more
about that specifically.
But I think it is, you know, in the past many years,
it has certainly been something that I think we all have been
just more aware of than maybe we were before then.
It's just a fascinating concept, isn't it?
Just this idea of kind of
finding that little gap in the idea of making a whole movie that yeah.
I mean, I think also the thing that the movie does so well too is it's not
obviously it's
topical in the sense that it's dealing with
things that are adjacent to things that we're dealing with right now.
And, you know, I think that it's easy to draw those parallels, should you want to.
I think it also is a movie that is entertaining in
and of its own right for reasons that are outside of that.
And I think that, you know, I think that Dans Moya
and Mirvish did a really good job of kind of
leaving it up to the audience what your angle in is.
And I kind of I always like that.
I always like it when when a movie or a TV show assumes the audience is
smart enough to draw their own assumptions from something.
I always find that in more interesting, you know, theatrical, cinematic experience
that kind of manages to be quite relevant, relatable,
but it doesn't try to be relatable.
Yeah, but I was wondering too, because obviously you play this transcriber.
Have you have you transcribed
have you ever had the the horrible thoughts having to translate?
Because I do the time and I yeah, I'm sure you do.
I'm sure you do.
I mean, I certainly have like I in college, I know I was sent
recordings of lectures that I missed.
And so, you know, I certainly it was like over there.
I like listening to them have I
every though had to transcribe something word, word for word?
I don't think so. I don't think so.
And I did do a lot of typing on those old typewriters
and that scene that we shot in the office and
I don't know how they wrote that fast.
My mom still times
my mom still types of one thing.
I don't know how I don't know how she does.
She writes my notes on sheets.
Sometimes she writes things just she just must take about four years.
But I don't know, I,
I want to talk about I mean, you've got some really exciting
stuff as well coming up on it.
So it must be in the river with your work, The Neighbor and John Malkovich.
I mean, how how is that?
I mean, as someone obviously, you know, your is this your profession?
You're very professional person.
You'll be on set when you're with people like Robert DeNiro.
Is there an element of sometimes see him going, oh shit, that's
that's Robert DeNiro, right.
That definitely it is definitely a strange experience when you meet people
who you've been watching for years and years and whose work you love.
I think it's always funny to me what people when I meet them
are the people who kind of like, I can't keep it together around.
That's always like a funny experience because I am, you know, I have gone
to work with some amazing, amazing actors who are truly just like you icons.
But it's
it's always like the ones that kind of, I don't know, cut you off guard.
Like I sit in front of Viggo Mortensen, a
hockey game the other day, and I totally had no chill.
I was like over there in like, I got to say hi. Hi.
I just totally like having a personal meltdown.
You say hello.
He was very kind.
I made him take a picture with me for my dad.
And, you know, I'm sure he gets it all the time.
It's always, you know, it is always funny, though.
I find it much easier to kind of keep it together
in professional circumstances when I'm not just like a person
in the world encountering another person in the world.
But yeah, John
and Bob are just fantastic.
And I actually had most of my stuff in the movie of Jack Houston.
I respect him, but he's also fantastic
and I think we really had a really wonderful opportunity
to kind of like dig into
some kind of tricky terrain.
And we had like the time to do it.
Well, I think it's so true what you said that if I and if I go to like a
press conference in De Niro oe Scorsese, he walks and I go, Yeah, but that's
that's supposed to be if I see him, if I see some sort of light.
So even just an ordinary someone from just a soap opera,
I've seen the work.
It's like, you know, so you're just like, oh,
there's also obviously the House of Usher, which is the Mike Flanagan series.
And I was like, I mean, I thought that if you guys finished that,
I mean, you're allowed to say how your character's saying,
I know these things are quite secretive, so no worries.
It's not, you know, if I am technically allowed to say,
but I think that they are
almost done shooting and I wrapped my stuff
and I'm very excited for that.
I am really excited.
I think that whole creative team is just brilliant and there are some just
I mean, the whole cast that they've assembled is really fantastic
and I feel very grateful and excited to have been part of that project.
And, you know, they're just they, you know, Mike is so prolific
and all of the stuff that he creates is so complicated and interesting and smart.
And I truly do not know how he does it so frequently.
You basically just these just mentioned everything about 18
and a half to Washington, the river, it's the house of Usher.
These are really great projects.
Is this a reflection, do you think, of an industry
that is just kind of flourishing?
There's so many streaming sites and services now and so many different
great creative kind of minds out there.
And when you have so many shows, comes what comes of that is so many roles?
Is it does it feel like as good a time as ever?
Do you think, to be an actor in this industry right now?
I think it definitely is a great time to be an actor.
I think it's a great time to be anybody in the creative business.
I think there are so many opportunities and outlets for people
to see things that would have ordinarily been harder to see.
I think that it also has made it harder for audiences
to kind of find what they want to watch just because there is such
a wealth of
of of of options.
And I think I find that as a as an audience member,
you know, I can spend like an hour trying to like
look between the different streaming services, remember
what it is that I was wanting to watch in the first place.
I think that that's the trade off really, this kind of, you know, renaissance
of all of this amazing stuff that wouldn't have maybe gotten made otherwise.
It's just like you want to you made something amazing.
You want people to see it.
And it's kind of harder than it ever has been for it to, like,
cut through everything else and be the thing that people are watching.
Yeah. Yeah.
So it's as good a time as ever to get
the job is maybe just the hardest time to present them to people.
Yeah, I can spend I can spend the length of the movie
just trying to find a movie to watch, just flicking through.
I really it's gotten to the point where it's like,
I won't turn on the television unless I know where I'm going.
And like, what I'm trying to watch is, can I see good, good movies?
Or does this a British I mean, this is an exciting time for for the industry.
But does this feel like an exciting time for you personally in your career?
Because this feels like there's
been some really cool stuff coming out have been sort of created recently.
Yeah, no.
Yeah, I'm very I'm very happy, grateful, excited.
I feel I feel like I've been
very lucky to get to do a lot of different types of projects,
a lot of different types of characters. And,
and I have some stuff coming up that I'm excited about that
I can't talk about yet, but, you know, it does
feel it does feel
like an exciting moment.
Has it been a kind of struggle at times?
I'm about the reason I'm asking that is because my cousin is sort of left
with two cousins, both getting into acting and they both kind of left drama school.
They're kind of in their early twenties
and they're really having to kind of persevere
because it's one of those things where you just need that break.
You need someone to take that gamble on you, and I just want to push yourself.
Have you always maintained the faith or has ever been hard to cross the years
in and picturing where you could be sort of in the future?
No, I think I think that what I've kind of realized is,
regardless of I mean, obviously, there's the initial hurdles of like
getting your first jobs that then make it more likely that you'll get more jobs.
But I think that once you kind of cross that
barrier, I think that at least
what I've seen from, you know, friends who are
kind of even more well-known
have more name recognition, is it the goalposts just kind of move?
So like you're constantly just
I don't think you've ever I don't think you ever feel
that you've arrived at the place that you want to be.
I think there's there's constantly sort of like the fight
and then there's the internal sort of struggle where I think that
anyone who is a creative person and whatever dimension, I think
there's the inherent self critique
and the turmoil that comes of that.
I think it's just the, the, the various sort of like fights that happen change
over the course of a career.
But I think you're constantly navigating and uncertainty
really is what it is and like a whole host of different ways.
And then I suppose it is a sort of struggling,
but I think yeah, when it does, when it does lift off,
I mean it sounds like there's nothing, nothing better. Yeah,
but anyway, that's, that's all I've had time for.
Thank you so much for speaking to me.
And it sounds like you got a call and maybe we'll catch up on one of these
other things you've got coming up in the fact that there's some good stuff.