[text: "I tried in earnest to see if Google's Bard could help me write the next scene of the screenplay I'm currently writing. It was completely unusable, but, I did quite enjoy this select: "The police went to investigate. They found the monster in the house, and they arrested it.""]
Chris Evans, for a generation of moviegoers, is Steve Rogers, the ultimate good guy. But we saw in things like Knives Out that he can play smarmy and sinister really well. Lloyd is, as you say, the antithesis of heroic. How did you work with him to get to that level of villainy? Clearly he’s unleashing himself in a lot of ways.
Joe Russo: He is. And what’s great was Chris, is that we were talking to him at the end of the Avengers movies and talking about what he was going to do next in his career. He said, “Look, I think I’m comfortable enough in my life now. And I’ve done well enough that I’m just going to take risks.”
So it was appropriate for us to ask him to play the sociopath and not the hero because we felt like it’d be more challenging, an exciting role for him. And if you know Chris in real life, he is very different than Captain America. He has high energy. He’s funny, he’s quirky. And I think most people think he is Steve Rogers. He’s not, and that’s why we know how good of an actor he is. And it’s how truthful he can be as an actor. This is definitely a character that’s created for scene stealing and to be out there and entertaining in his insane villainy. And so we really just cut him loose and said, “Go nuts with it.”
Anthony Russo: We have an analogy for this experience in our careers. When we were making Welcome to Collinwood, which is our first real movie, it was being produced by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney. And George Clooney ended up playing a smaller role in the film. It has to help us get the movie made. And I remember when we were talking with George about the role and we’re like, “Oh really, really sorry, George, that it’s a smaller role.”
He said, “Are you kidding me?” He goes, “My job as a leading man is to show up and let everybody else steal the scene from me.” He’s like “Now I get to steal the scene.” So he relished playing that role in that movie. And I think it’s very similar to Chris. Again, he’s used to having to carry the lead. You have to be the character that’s relatable, understandable; he got to walk away from all that for this role, which I think is really liberating to performers.
- JOE AND ANTHONY RUSSO DISCUSS BRINGING THE GRAY MAN TO LIFE | Nerdist