Both “Nightingale” and “Don’t Let Go” deal with themes of struggling with mental illness. Do you think film has the power to help destigmatize mental illness?
Yeah. “Nightingale,” more-so, is rooted in a theme of mental illness. But to me, constantly, any and every film or narrative that demystifies that side of society, which is, as we know, very pervasive, is a good thing. Anything that causes conversation around it and makes other people feel able to talk about either their challenges with it or their ignorance about it is a good thing. I’m looking for stories to really point to who we actually are as opposed to some of the license that movies can take in terms of caricatures or stereotypes. One of the things that we tried to do with this is. even though the conceit is a far-fetched one, the characters should feel very grounded, very real, and very relatable.
You’ve played protagonists and antagonists, both very well. Although there’s a lot of grey area in the terminology, do you enjoy portraying good guys or bad guys more?
Hopefully, as you’ll see in the roles I pick, the good guys I play are not just that in the sense that they have real struggles that challenge their goodness, maybe even fly in the face of their goodness. And the bad guys I play – what I look for is moments where you question whether they are truly the bad guy. I’m always looking for moments where, hopefully, you can be, if not sympathetic, empathetic towards them. Human beings are incredibly complicated, and to be able to box them is something that is almost impossible. And if you can do that with a character, that’s almost always the kind of character I run away from. I’m looking for great characters that are tougher to define, and we all need those phrases that help us define things, but the more they bleed outside the edges for me, the more interested I am. I don’t really mind if I play heroes or villains, as long as there is complexities about them.
Do you tend to approach your roles more traditionally or do you lean more towards the method approach?
It’s a bit of both for me. I wouldn’t categorize myself purely as a method actor. I tend to respond to what I feel the character needs. Sometimes complete immersion is the only way I know to find the truth of a character, but sometimes, keeping it light and breezy on the set and not getting too bogged down is actually the way to arrive at the right performance for that particular character. With “Don’t Let Go,” I felt the need to immerse myself to a greater degree because, emotionally, the character was going through something so intense that you didn’t want to be just flipping in and out of that because the character doesn’t have that luxury. The camera picks up the truth in a way that, sometimes, there’s almost something magical to that. In as much as I try not to categorize the nature of the character this way, the methodology I use to arrive at the character in any given situation is also something I try to just respond to what’s on the page, what the director needs from me and what that character demands.
Does any different preparation go into real-life portrayals in biopics, someone like MLK in “Selma?”
Yes. Especially someone who’s as well known as that because you’re not just combatting your ability to give a good performance, you’re combatting people’s preconceptions of who that person is, especially if they a lot of evidence of who that person is, which is the way they move, the way they speak, what happened to them, historically. Often the reason why a biopic should exist is because it’s revelatory, it’s showing you a different side of that person. The only way people buy into that is if you give them just enough of what they know, you know that they can now take in what they don’t know. It’s a deeper dive, it’s more involved, it’s a harder list, but then there’s also the fact that you have to expect that you’re not going please everyone and you’ve got to untether yourself from everyone’s expectations.
You’ve co-produced many of your films, including “Don’t Let Go.” What qualifications does a project have to meet for you to join in as a producer?
Producing is very much about being an integral part of both the development of the project, ensuring the best production of the project both when in production and then in post, and then the marketing and [distribution]. Basically, you become one of the parents of the project, and that’s something I take very seriously. It’s not everything I do that I produce, but the ones I do, it tends to be because they are saying something that is integral to what I wanted to say in the world of the storyteller and having a voice at the table in order to ensure that those projects have a real chance at both saying that specific thing but also being seen in the right way and made in the right way.
You’re making your directorial debut with “The Water Man.” Can you speak about that project?
“The Water Man” is about an 11-year-old boy whose mother is ill and the family have moved to a town where there is this myth of the Water Man. The myth is that this figure has the power of healing. So he teams up with a 14-year-old girl to go and find the Water Man in order to be able to try to save his mom. It’s an adventure movie with elements of magical realism. I’m now in post on that film, and that was just an amazing adventure. It’s the next step for me in terms of getting more and more steeped into storytelling.
Any other exciting projects on the horizon?
I produced and am in a film called “Come Away,” which is a reimagined origin story of “Peter Pan” and “Alice in Wonderland,” and it’s Peter and Alice [as] brother and sister, and myself and Angelina Jolie play their parents. A film I did directed by Doug Liman and starring Tom Holland and Daisy Ridley called “Chaos Walking” will be, I imagine, sometime soon. And I also had a lot of fun playing the villain in “Peter Rabbit 2,” so that will emerge sometime next year.
“Don’t Let Go” will be released theatrically on August 30.