Paweł Pawlikowski’s latest film is beautifully calibrated and poignant – and proof that running times do not need to be bombastic to tell a profound story. In just 82 minutes, Fatherland explores big themes of art and legacy while also teasing out conversation points of parental overshadowing, national identity and the small things that break a dam of contained grief. Sumptuous monochrome and academy ratio, it’s a period piece with plenty to say about the 21st century, and a cinematic treat that demands big screen viewing – with the drama of screen curtains closing to accommodate its pleasingly old-school format.
Mubi
It opens with a phone call between siblings; depressed Klaus (August Diehl) and pragmatic Erika (Sandra Hüller), the adult children of celebrated German writer and egghead, Thomas Mann. Erika wants Klaus to attend a trip their father is about to embark on, Klaus is unsure. The rest of the film tracks the trip in question as Mann (Hanns Zischler) returns to his homeland in 1949 to receive two awards for his work, after fleeing the nation for America during WWII. Erika is his helpmeet; driver, translator, secretary, publicist, stylist. As the duo travel between destroyed Frankfurt and the Weimar communist sector, family tragedy reshapes their experience and their relationship.
Though this ostensibly is a story of a male genius (Mann is a Nobel prizewinner and intellectual), the real focus is Erika, a formidably accomplished woman whose calm calculation snaps during a sharp conversation with a Nazi actor during a party and when drunk former soldiers carouse outside her window. Though she is fluent in multiple languages, a writer and a former actor, her most powerful act comes in gently taking the hand of an old man struggling to process his feelings or forgive himself for narcissism. Though the whole cast is excellent, Hüller is exemplary. The way she holds a cigarette informs an audience, just as the micro twist of her mouth betrays the feelings she doesn’t give voice to. And the recreation of a destroyed post-war Germany is like dreamlike time-travel. Every shot is gorgeous, but a couple of sequences of the Manns driving through bombed, shattered streets and along East German lanes feel like historical gems liberated from long lost archives.
Mubi
While Mann talks loftily of art and what society should look like, the parallels between a fledgling East German tightening control via autocracy and a Trump-era America are easily found. Recognisable too are the concepts of being on the right side of history and the way that art can illuminate and soothe. Whether a Bach fan or not, the moment one of his pieces plays in a devastated building, is a haunting, healing moment of hope. It transports, just as Pawlikowski’s movie does.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Images courtesy of MUBI Fatherland premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
I Saw The TV Glow creator, Jane Schoenbrun, returns with another zeitgeisty future-cult exploring fandom and the blur between art and life – bowing at Cannes in a gush of blood and fried chicken dipping sauce. Taking place in a world where eighties slasher franchise Camp Miasma exists (a seven-picture series that is realised nostalgically and brilliantly in a bang-on credit sequence), Sundance darling, Kris (Hacks’ Hannah Einbinder) is asked to bring her woke smarts to rebooting the artistically zeroed but still monetisable brand. Or as the constantly reanimated series is described by her, ‘zombie IP’.
Ryan Plummer/Plan B Entertainment
A director with ideas about the intersection of queerness and cultural monstrosity in horror – this one has a murderer who rises from the lake at the teen camp wearing a vent hood to terrorise nubile, scantily clad girls with a spear – Kris arranges to meet with the original final girl of the franchise, Billy (Gillian Anderson). A Norma Desmond-esque recluse who lives at the location used in the first film, Billy has a Southern accent that drips like molasses from her scarlet lips and a penchant for fried chicken. Swishing around her trapped-in-time house in sexy peignoirs or Hitchcock Blonde hats, she is alluring to Kris, a queer ‘pip squeak’ who is disassociated from her own desire in bed. Kris is seduced by the idea that Billy reached the most exquisite orgasm of her life while viewing herself as both killer and victim during filming. In accessing the male gaze of the lake-dwelling murderer, known as ‘Little Death’ (he evokes post-coital ‘petit mort’, geddit?), Billy has stepped into her power and a liminal space where art/reality fuse. Do the movies create Little Death or does he create the movies? And just how much fake blood can spew from beheaded and impaled bodies?
Schoenbrun has recently transitioned and while their psychosexual dark comedy horror sharply analyses the idea of gender dysmorphia via horror tropes, it also dismantles the libidinal and misogynistic aspects of slasher films by inviting audiences to consider why we are so often asked to root for female victims while also given the POV of their male predators. But those are only two aspects of a film loaded with concepts to consider on multiple views. The impact of porn (also a VHS boom industry) on female eroticism, the exploration of consent and the numerous sly nods to cinematic iconography are also offered for the unpacking.
But even if you don’t want to parse it, Camp Miasma, offers a fun time at the flicks. Both Einbinder and Anderson are delicious to watch – Einbinder comedic while leaning into the terror, Anderson Southern gothic vamping without ever mocking. There’s banging needle drops from Counting Crows, REM and Donna Lewis, decapitated heads sighing ‘bummer’ with their last breath and pleasing visual effects that provide a tangible sense of the video cassette age. Twin Peaks DNA ripples through the bloodlust, a sense of watching something smart – the sort of jewel-box movie that probably will play at midnight screenings in the future and inspire fan theories. The meaning of ‘miasma’ is of an unpleasant or unhealthy smell or vapour, and while Schoenbrun’s reflexive romp dwells in death and franchises past their sell-by date, it’s certainly no stinker itself.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Images courtesy of Plan B Entertainment Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
Closeness and Beanpole filmmaker Kantemir Balagov debuts his first English language movie at Cannes this year and, unfortunately, the third time is not the charm. Set in New Jersey, it tracks a blue collar Circassian family running a failing diner where delens (regional cheese and potato pies) are talked about incessantly and the minutiae of working class life is considered enough of a narrative hook. Azik (Barry Keoghan) is a whimsical chef who claims to make his excellent conserve out butterflies. ‘I can make anything,’ he boasts to his gambling, wrestling crew who swig vodka and rough house through the restaurant after hours. Only, he can’t. A widowed dad to a 16 year-old wrestling champ, Tamir (Talga Akdogan) – who behaves more like the parent in the relationship – Azik can’t make a living or much of himself. He’d like to work at a mate’s new flashy restaurant but fails to recommend himself, his idea of a gift to his son is a visit to a local sex worker, and his male pride is constantly pricked by Marat (Harry Melling), a shifty livewire whose mood seems always in flux. Azik’s heavily pregnant sister, Zayla (Riley Keough) despairs at the lack of purpose as she furiously mops the floors and phones an absent husband.
Why Not Productions
Masculinity is prided within this group – the ability to provide for family, pin a man to the floor, seduce women in bars. Marat struggles with all of them, baiting Azik with macho posturing that has fatal consequences. There’s also a pink pelican that wanders around the family’s plant-strewn house clapping its beak together and watching the cast with doleful eyes. The bird is incredibly engaging where the characters are not. The film closes with a celebrity cameo that feels unmoored and unearned.
Why Not Productions
As a study of the Circassian community and toxic machismo, Butterfly Jam never digs deep enough into either. Delens and a professional funeral mourner played for comedy aside, there’s little to learn about the culture or diaspora of this group. While the posturing and slighting of male ego is Scorsese-lite and culminates, violently, in something of a cheap shot (narratively and visually). Pink is everywhere – in Tamir’s clothes and wrestling suit, the pelican, the broken candyfloss machine Maret buys, the jam that Azik serves – but within such an unfocused story it adds little meaning. It’s a shame that such a talented filmmaker and his buzzy cast do not have more to say. Like the job that Azik fails to get, it feels like a missed opportunity.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Images courtesy of Why Not Productions Butterfly Jam premiered at the 79th Cannes Film Festival
Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER
Actor and musician Damian Lewis tells Greg Williams about his latest role in WWII film Pressure and his passion for artistry on the stage, screen and pitch as he attends a key Como 1907 game at their lakeside stadium in Como.
When I meet Damian Lewis on a beautiful sunny day in May at the lakeside Villa D’Este, it’s gearing up to be a scorcher. ‘Already hot for a ginge,’ Damian grins, lounging on the balcony in Brioni, ‘but I’m muscling through. I’ve got my Factor 50 on. And I’m about to go and watch some footy.’ The actor and musician is in Lake Como to watch Como FC, a crucial Serie A game between Napoli and the local team, in the hopes of qualifying. ‘Not dissimilar to my team, Liverpool, who are loitering in fourth position, and hustling for a Champions League place as well.’ Damian has long been a football fan (‘Liverpool when I’m in the UK. When I’m Italy, Como 1907 is my team’) and played the sport seriously as a teen to schoolboy trials level as a striker wide right, or wide left. His path didn’t take him further (‘I had the body of a 17-year-old poet, with not much poetry to show for it,’ he jokes) in the sport, his interest turning to acting instead.
These days he still plays charity matches (he regales me with a self-deprecating tale of having Brian Robson telling him to keep his legs together at such a match before being nutmegged by Zidane at Old Trafford, to his great public embarrassment), but can see a correlation between the beautiful game and acting. ‘There’s something about the geometry and the preoccupation with an objective,’ he says. ‘On a football pitch, it’s very similar to being on stage – a sense of where you are dynamically in relation to your fellow players or your fellow cast members, whilst moving towards, a shared objective goal – narrative – and the story, and knowing how you’re driving that together on stage. It’s total, total focus, away from the outside world; away from anything else that you’ve been thinking about for the rest of the day. Just the patterns on the stage, or on the pitch.’
Great footballers are artists he considers. ‘There are footballers who are artists, because when you see them move – the grace and precision… Zizou is like long grass in the breeze. But what is the definition of great art? It’s something expressed personally that speaks universally. Great artists sometimes labour for a lifetime to create the thing. Or sometimes it’s in a moment of pure animal instinct that’s so pure and beautiful.’ The thought puts him in mind of another entertaining anecdote (Damian has many). I’ve always loved this story about Paul McCartney going to see Julian Lennon because he’s got recently divorced parents. And he gets stuck in a traffic jam, and he’s just sitting there. And in the space of half an hour, he’s knocked out Hey Jude. That’s lightning in a bottle, isn’t it?’
Photo: Bob Ford
Lightening, and all manner of weather, is something that preoccupies Damian’s latest role, playing Field Marshal Montgomery – ‘Monty’ – in the true story of the meteorologist called in to help make one of the most crucial decisions of WWII: when to deploy troops to the Normandy beaches for D-Day. As Eisenhower (played by Brendan Fraser) tries to make a decision, weatherman Captain Stagg (Andrew Scott) tries to deliver an answer on best timing. Monty, a vet of two world wars, is light comic relief in Damian’s hands, with his outraged outbursts over delaying because of a spot of rain. We walk down to the shady edge of the lake, Negroni in hand, as Damian describes the man he plays.
I ended up in two fabulous projects telling the story – one behind enemy lines at night, and then Monty on the other side, with Eisenhower and a weatherman trying to figure out how to get our lads safely on to the beaches
‘Monty was a complicated character. A big ego. Stubborn. One of our great war heroes, of course, but he couldn’t really say his ‘R’s. Obviously I didn’t want to make a caricature out of him but I said I’d like to do it with the weak ‘R’, and the pedantry, and the ego, and the stubbornness. So hopefully we’ve got that, whilst, at the same time, showing that his side of the argument was valid. It’s the largest invasion force in history trying to cross the channel to liberate Europe. And he’s just asking how we keep this plan secret if we delay. Monty is hopping up and down like a sort of terrier in the background.’ Damian obviously came to attention for many as Captain Winters in Spielberg’s watershed TV show Band of Brothers and enjoyed the throughline from that to this. ‘What I loved about doing Pressure was that as Monty was planning the liberation of Europe with the Navy and the Air Force, in Band of Brothers, the 101st parachute regiment, Easy Company, who Captain Winters was commanding officer of, were landing behind enemy lines that night. There’s one crucial episode of Band of Brothers – episode two, which is now used as a training tool at West Point Military Academy in America – where Dick Winters takes a small group of men against a much bigger force, and takes out the FH-88 Howitzers, which are shelling the beaches as our boys are coming up the beaches. I ended up in two fabulous projects telling the story – one behind enemy lines at night, and then Monty on the other side, with Eisenhower and a weatherman trying to figure out how to get our lads safely on to the beaches.’ There’s another connection between the stories. ‘Lovely Andrew Scott was in a scene with me, in episode two of Band of Brothers, which a lot of people don’t know. He had one scene playing a young, scared soldier, and he hooks up with Winters, and it’s just those two walking through the woods. It’s a nice circle of life, I think.’
Damian came to Band of Brothers from theatre – he was part of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford – having attended drama school at Guildhall School of Music & Drama alongside Daniel Craig and Ewan McGregor (both in years ahead of him). He recalls being inspired by their success. ‘I always remember Ewan saying, ‘I want to be a movie star’ and everyone chuckling, going, ‘Yeah. Alright, Ewan.’ And then he just immediately became a movie star.’ All I wanted to do was theatre. I was completely obsessed with being the next, you know, Branagh, Olivier. I didn’t really think about making movies until I saw my peers; people around me, who I liked, who are pals – making films. I thought that was for other people. I just realised there was a bigger canvas out there.’
The legend goes that his big break came after Spielberg and Tom Hanks saw him in a production of Hamlet on Broadway. ‘It’s sort of been misreported that they saw me in that, and put me in Band of Brothers. Actually, neither of them remembered really seeing me,’ he laughs. ‘Me getting Band of Brothers was totally a needle-in-the-haystack casting. I’d gone through all the endless auditions and interviews in a damp basement in Soho in London, over a period of four or five months. And then suddenly the producer of the show got up one day, out of his chair, and said, ‘Damian, how would you like to fly to LA, and meet Steven and Tom?’ I went, ‘Sure. Let me just check I haven’t got lunch with my granny’. I went and met Tom, did some readings. I had a friend in town. We went out and got loaded. We were out late. And then I got a call at like 8 in the morning from Meg Liberman, the casting director, saying, ‘Damian, Steven would like to see you at 11 o’clock’. I had 73 cups of coffee and three showers. When I arrived there was an unbelievably good-looking actor sitting outside. I look at him, and I think, ‘You are the spitting image of Dick Winters’. I just literally thought, ‘Well, that’s been a fun ride.’ He goes in and when he comes out, he really generously says, ‘Good luck, man’. And he walks away. I go in, and Steven and Tom do the interview. They literally say in the room ‘OK, we’re going to start bootcamp in April. Go get in shape’… I love that story because it is my young actor Hollywood story. It’s that break. It’s that moment. I’m fully aware that not everyone gets that moment. It was very ‘two different worlds’. I loved being at Stratford-upon-Avon, playing Shakespeare, putting on my tights. But actually, this might be something I could do.’
Acting is an interpretive skill. The guy who put the words on the page – that’s the source. Everyone else after that point is an interpreter. I love the psychic journey of an actor. I love the sublimation of self to become someone else. I love going down the rabbit hole, and transforming… walking into a different person; walking through a different world; being in a parallel reality
I ask if he thought he’d return to theatre after the show. ‘I always wanted to go back and do theatre, but I think what happened, without me knowing it, is that Band of Brothers was one of the shows that was right at the vanguard of this golden era of TV. The Sopranos was out. The Wire. Band of Brothers came out. Suddenly, everyone was talking about TV in a slightly different way. And film people were coming into TV. And then Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Homeland, which I was in. I went off down a route that I hadn’t imagined for myself, because so much interesting work, and so many interesting people, were in it.’
With Negronis drunk it’s time to head to the match. We jump in a boat to get to the lakeside stadium. As we drink in the views Damian tells me about his music, having recently released his latest single, Sweet Chaos. ‘I’ve always played music. But I’m doing it more formally, I guess. When I was in my 20s, I used to motorbike around Europe with my guitar and a tent, and I used to play in the streets and busk. And then acting took over. There are often pathways in life. You come to forks in the road. I was married to Helen McCrory. We very much identified as an acting couple. I loved that life.’ He didn’t turn his attention to music until he met music manager and agent, Steve Abbott who suggested making a record together, Mission Creep. His latest album, also called Sweet Chaos, is out in June. ‘It’s definitely a passion, a way to creatively express yourself,’ he says of songwriting. ‘It’s not a vanity project. It has to pay for itself. If it doesn’t work, and people aren’t getting paid, and not enough people are liking or listening to the music or showing up to gigs or buying records or a bloody tote bag – then it doesn’t add up. And I won’t be doing it any longer. But I love writing songs. I love getting to the studio and recording them. I’m obviously much better known for my acting and that will probably never change. But I hope people find the music, and take it on its own terms. Changing lanes in this country can be tricky. It takes a bit of time for people to get used to that kind of thing. You don’t persuade everyone. I’m sure I won’t. But I love doing it.’
As we bob along he considers what music gives him that acting doesn’t. ‘Acting is an interpretive skill. The guy who put the words on the page – that’s the source. Everyone else after that point is an interpreter. I love the psychic journey of an actor. I love the sublimation of self to become someone else. I love going down the rabbit hole, and transforming… walking into a different person; walking through a different world; being in a parallel reality. Imaginatively, creatively, psychically – it’s quite a long journey to travel. It’s quite a long way to come back as well, if you really are an actor that believes in immersing themselves. And I try to be that kind of actor. Doing music has given me a different sort of agency and authorship that I love. I write the songs. I then go and record them with amazing musicians, and then I go on tour, and then I perform them. So every stage of the way, it’s mine. I really enjoy that process. It’s quite exposing, but I find acting quite exposing, too. I think any good art, where anyone is committed to it – is exposing. It’s a place of vulnerability.
We arrive at the stadium for the Como/Napoli game and walk towards the 12,000-seater venue. When we get inside and head to the pitch, he immediately starts inquiring about the grass and anticipating the atmosphere when the place is full of fans. I rustle up a football to give him a bit of pre-game keepy-uppy which he tackles enthusiastically. He’s buzzing with pre-kick off excitement as we head up to the bar of the Art Deco stadium where Damian chats to local fans about the match and his home team of Liverpool. He smiles broadly, in his element. He’s ready to see some of Como 1907’s artistry on the pitch…
Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER Pressure is in cinemas on 29 May
Steven Soderbergh’s latest twisty thriller features no guns or spies like the entertaining Black Bag, but double-crossing, motive reversal and tart conversation set within the art world are present and correct to delicious effect. The tale may essentially be a two-hander set in a London townhouse with only canvases and paint daubs as the collateral at stake, but there’s plenty of blindsiding and fun to be had.
Claudette Barius/NEON
The ‘Christophers’ of the title are a series of heralded works by enfant terrible painter Julian Sklar (Sir Ian McKellen), a misanthropic grinch who was once a philandering sixties art bad boy whose works and lifestyle were as rock ‘n’ roll as any of his artistic music contemporaries. His pieces have fetched huge sums at auction and now he is artistically blocked; unwilling to complete the set, unable to paint anything new. Instead he grumpily sits in his studio (clearly modelled on Lucian Freud’s) raging against the world – particularly his two adult children (James Cordon and Jessica Gunning) who he accuses of moneygrabbing.
He’s not wrong. The Sklar siblings are keen on getting the Christophers series finished to net them cash (especially as Dad’s health is failing), and they don’t mind how. In the opening of the film, the duo engage art restorer, Lori (Michaela Coel), to act as Julian’s new assistant with the aim of finding the canvases and using her latent forgery skills to finish them. She’s a quiet, watchful woman who went to the same prestigious art school as Julian, yet is working in a food truck rather than pursuing her passion.
Claudette Barius/NEON
When Julian and Lori meet the sparks fly. Used to harranging, bullying and shocking any audience (whether that’s fans paying money for Cameo videos or wannabe painters on his eighties TV art show), he is wrongfooted by Lori’s stoicism, how unimpressed or undaunted she is by him. Lori’s still waters run deep, and as the duo learn more about each other, allegiances change, revenge is served and the art world is lampooned.
Claudette Barius/NEON
McKellen tears into Julian with gusto – ranting about cancel culture, his terrible children, the horror of mediocrity with glee. He’s a monster and initially sucks all the air from the screen, leaving the usually incendiary Coel with little to do but remain passive. But it ultimately works to provide sweet satisfaction when her power arrives. While McKellen hisses zingers, Cordon and Henning are gloriously craven and avaricious as a pair of talentless freeloaders wanting an easy payout.
Claudette Barius/NEON
Ed Solomon’s screenplay questions art (what is true genius? Who should decide it?), the morality of reality TV shows (Julian’s condescension to contestants is the worst kind of cruelty for entertainment) and misogyny (why are men allowed to behave badly and women are not?). His twists and turns are not only fun, they reveal what we as an audience may be guilty of in assumption and profiling. And though we know McKellen is a generational talent, his sketching here of a bitter, performative man hiding self-doubt and fear is something of a masterstroke.
Words by JANE CROWTHER Images courtesy of NEON The Christophersis in UK cinemas 15 May
It was wonderful to work with Colman Domingo this issue, and chart his career path from New York to LA, from theatre to film. His journey has been a steady burn, the labours of a hard-working actor who has found success later in life and ensured his longevity. I’m very drawn to his story, I’m a similar age and I’ve also worked consistently and it’s only been in the last decade that things have stepped up to what he describes as his ‘harvest stage’. I was inspired to hear his acceptance of change – the changes to him and the changes to New York City where we finished our interview during the week of his SNL debut. Colman’s story also resonates with me as we visited two theatres that were integral to his path. I feel comfortable in those spaces as both my parents worked in the theatre and I grew up playing there. The idea of kismet also plays into Colman’s life – another thing I feel linked to. While in LA, we visited a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf that was the place that kicked off his involvement in Rustin, the film that changed everything for him, and was also the location for his first billboard in Los Angeles (also for Rustin). I love the idea of chance changing the entire course of a life.
Photograph by Bob Ford
As part of my bi-coastal cover story, I spent time with Colman over Oscar weekend in LA and although he was going to parties as a celebrated artist his humility shone out and I feel that that’s often a marker of people who have found success later – because they’ve known tougher times. But being humble and authentic was also present in my shoots with younger artists. Spike Fearn is so connected to his hometown of Coalville in the UK and wanted to create work there. It was incredibly refreshing to meet an actor who didn’t just want to move to LA and was keen to work in his own way. Also marching to the beat of his own drum – quite literally – was Lewis Pullman. The son of a beloved actor who’s grown up in Hollywood, Lewis is reverential of his lineage and pragmatic about his career. I like that he felt he would take a lifetime to figure out acting – just because he had a famous dad, he didn’t have all the answers.
And shooting Ellie Bamber in Lucian Freud’s former studio was an amazing privilege, not only because I’m such a fan of Freud’s work but also because Ellie was ‘at peace’ with whatever anyone thinks. That stuck with me because it’s a place all creatives hope to get to in life – and all four of my subjects this issue seem to have found that sweet spot. That’s inspiring and humbling for me. And I hope for you…
Photographs & interview GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER
Having worked decades to finally arrive, Colman Domingo meets Greg Williams on two coasts to explore the steps to success and the evolution of an artist.
LOS ANGELES, 15 MARCH 2026 On Oscars morning, as Hollywood’s denizens begin their glam and grooming all across town, I meet Colman Domingo in his suite at L’Ermitage Hotel in LA. Though he spent last night hanging with Anna Wintour at the Vanity Fair dinner, the twice-Oscar-nominated actor is up early, his smile wide as he invites me in. On the biggest day in the cinematic calendar, we’re going to ride around the Philadelphia native’s adopted city and retrace the career steps that saw him consecutively nominated for Best Actor for his powerhouse performances in Rustin in 2024 and Sing Sing in 2025. Roles that led to turns in The Color Purple, The Running Man and, hitting cinema screens now, playing the King of Pop’s dad in biopic, Michael, and a key role in Steven Spielberg’s highly anticipated big ensemble return to alien encounters, Disclosure Day.
This year, the actor is going to be enjoying the celebratory vibe of Oscars night without pressure – he’s attending the Vanity Fair party later this evening (‘I’m good for a crowd – she’s built for it,’ he says of himself). I ask him for his recollection of his two Academy Award nomination nights, a back-to-back run of achieving the utmost accolade of any actor. ‘One memory? Having my family out here. It was nice. Because usually I’m having a lot of this journey with friends and colleagues, and a lot of times not with my family. And my family… that’s my blood.’
Colman’s ‘Oscar breakfast’ this morning consists of a couple of cups of coffee and the enticement of a miniature chocolate statuette; ‘I usually try to bite off the head by the end of the night.’ That’s for later; now, we are going on a tour of the actor’s LA to find out how the city shaped him. ‘The funny thing is, I was coming out to LA as a theatre director, which is wild. And then, you know, other things happened in my career… like becoming a movie star,’ he laughs. As we set off he tells me that the pivot from theatre to cinema was crystallised for him when he saw a giant billboard poster for Rustin, his first with him as lead. He was driving around LA with his friend, Jamie, and glimpsed his face, feet high, and looking down over Sunset. ‘We both cried a little bit. We took pictures because we knew it was such a big deal to have, for the first time, my face up on one of those billboards. I remember it like it was yesterday – we were both in awe. And all the superlatives for the reviews and all. We knew it was a moment. We were like: you don’t get those often.’
Gratitude, pausing to appreciate and having a clear sense of where he began – and the work it took to move the needle on his career – is something that I understand as Colman’s MO as I spend time with him. He doesn’t want to dwell on the past, but at the same time he honours and is reverential of it. A word he uses often is ‘build’; when he describes his approach, his preferences, the stages and steps of his career. It’s apt for an artist who has taken decades of hard work to arrive at a place where he’s admired by colleagues and audiences alike. And in service to that journey, he wants to show me the places in LA that marked evolutions for him.
We head to the Geffen Playhouse where Colman directed Barbecue in 2016, a Hollywood satire about addiction written by Robert O’Hara (which he has since turned into a screenplay). The Geffen is also where he co-wrote and directed the musical, Lights Out: Nat King Cole, which he describes as ‘a dark night of the soul’ for the legendary singer. ‘When you deconstruct an icon like Nat King Cole, who lived with so much grace and elegance, you also start to look at the world that he was living in. How did he create all that beautiful music, living under the harshest times in American history? For me, it’s a great examination.’
I admit that I am fascinated by the artist’s ability to take pain and turn it into something beautiful. Colman nods. ‘To be honest, I come from a very healthy, happy home that wasn’t filled with a lot of heartbreak and tragedy. I lost my parents. But it’s normal stuff. What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. But I know I pull from a place of curiosity: what do people do with pain? How do you survive? Do I have that in me? I wonder, “Do I have Joe Jackson in me [who Colman plays in Michael]? X in Zola, a pimp? Mister in The Colour Purple? Do I have Bayard Rustin in me?” I think I’ve always looked at myself as an ordinary man – an everyman – but it’s meant that I can actually shapeshift and become all these people, and try to figure out how they live in me.’
The funny thing is, I was coming out to LA as a theatre director, which is wild. And then, you know, other things happened in my career… like becoming a movie star
As we drive to the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood Village, I ask if all actors have to be able to tap into that empathy. ‘I really think that has to be the basis of your work. If I go through a character’s perspective, then I understand him, and I can have empathy for him. That’s a great challenge right now with anybody in the world. We’re so polarised, but if we really try, we can really find the humanity in anybody. Once you examine that, I think you can also move forward, and actually find some healing, and find some grace. I think that maybe that’s what I’m trying to find in a lot of characters. I’m trying to find grace, always, even in people who don’t have it forward-facing.’
Billboard for Rustin (2023) above The Coffee Bean on Sunset, Los Angeles Photograph by Jamie Richmond
As I’ve found with many actors, there’s real curiosity that drives their work. Colman agrees. ‘No one would imagine when I was in high school that this would be my career, because I was an observer. I do now know that that’s a part of my gift, because I was very shy. I sort of decided not to be a shy person by the time I got to college. I worked in a Barnes and Noble book store in Philadelphia when I was 19 years old, and I used to take care of the self-help section and the travel section. Even then I was very curious about: how do you become a person? So I would read self-help books all day long, and then I read travel books. I think that I was really trying to figure out, and test out, how to become the person that I wanted to be. I was researching my own character. My older brother, Rick, and older sister, Avery, were very cool, athletic, gregarious and funny. And I was shyer, bookish and not cool or particularly funny. I wanted to become more like them. So I had to learn. But I think that’s the greatest part about this career, too. I’ve learned so many things. I’ve travelled. I do all these things that I would never get the opportunity for. And I feel like that’s all building blocks to becoming a person.’
We pull up outside the 1929-built Geffen, a former Masonic clubhouse that became an Italian restaurant and the Westwood Playhouse before it was gifted to UCLA. It’s a beautiful Spanish-style period building currently run by Tarell McCraney of Moonlight fame. ‘This is such a famed theatre when you are a regional theatre actor,’ Coman explains as we enter the space. His career started in San Francisco regional theatre, where he worked for 10 years, before moving to New York at the age of 36. After 16 years there, he moved to LA. He recalls writing Lights Out: Nat King Cole with Patricia McGregor (who now runs New York Theatre Workshop) for a small ensemble here, an experience that has now led to him playing Cole himself in upcoming biopic, Unforgettable, which he has also co-written and will direct and produce.
We head on-stage and he he moves towards the ‘ghost light’ glimmering centre stage. ‘You must always leave a ghost light on for the ghosts of the theatre. I think it’s the most beautiful thing. You come onto any stage, and there’ll always be a light on for the stage.’ Colman turns on the lights, almost on muscle memory from years before, clearly relishing being back in a live theatre space. ‘There’s been a lot of commentary because one of my colleagues said something that I know he didn’t mean, about performing arts, and two that are “dying”,’ he says, referring to Timothée Chalamet’s pre-Oscar comments. ‘I personally don’t think that he meant it the way he did because, my God, we need this for civilisation, for us to come together in a small room, and wrestle with thoughts and ideas on a stage. It’s older than all of us. It’s just necessary. And fundamentally – this is the college professor in me speaking now – I think that our society knows what the impact of these live art forms can do. It knows it can bring us together. It knows it’s revolutionary. It knows its power to make us have empathy for one another.’
It’s clear that Colman’s rise to prominence has not been an overnight experience, and has been predicated on decades of hard work. I ask about finding success later, the satisfaction of years of graft coming to fruition. ‘It’s funny – now that I’m a discovery,’ he laughs. ‘I’ve been working for 36 years consistently. I used to make my way around the country, working at all these different theatres.’ He even worked in a circus as an aerial web artist, stilts performer, juggler and as a clown. ‘I think clowns are so smart. In Shakespeare, I played a lot of dark clowns; All’s Well That Ends Well has one of the darkest clowns. And so my clowns are philosophers, they’re the truth-tellers. People think that clowns are just being funny. No, clowns are dark as fuck, too! I think I have the heart of a clown, so that’s what I lead with. I use the clowning in everything. I’m always telling actors… I’m never unprepared. I’m researched. I do my work. I know my lines. But then I leave a part of the preparation that feels dangerous, very vulnerable. With a clown, he’s always like this…’ He opens his arms wide towards the darkened seats of the auditorium. ‘Always willing, always open. You have to have a sense of play.’
A lot of the times when you’re working in regional theatre, you’re not making extraordinary amounts of money. Most actors are getting by, working-class people. I was a working-class actor for 25 years. Wherever I worked, it also had to fuel me as an artist. I always had to have a job – I was a good fucking bartender – even as I would take a bow on stage. I would take a bow, change, get a cab, go across town. Within five minutes, I’m like, ‘Hi, what can I get you?’
I ask him to go back to his start and tell me about what drove him – clearly not the fame or fortune, though he has both now. ‘A lot of the times when you’re working in regional theatre, you’re not making extraordinary amounts of money. Most actors are getting by, working-class people. I was a working-class actor for 25 years. Wherever I worked, it also had to fuel me as an artist. I always had to have a job – I was a good fucking bartender – even as I would take a bow on stage. I would take a bow, change, get a cab, go across town. Within five minutes, I’m like, “Hi, what can I get you?” he mimics leaning over the bar ready to take an order. ‘And I don’t even know if that’s humility either. That was just part of the life of an artist.’
Things are different for Colman now: he lives in Malibu, is a brand ambassador for Valentino and doesn’t need to keep the bartending job – but the change came only relatively recently. ‘I feel like I’m playing some catch-up, even with myself,’ he admits. ‘I was actually talking to Spike Lee last night, who knows me as that guy in New York who’s living in a rent-stabilised apartment or an illegal sublet in Harlem. He asked me where I live now. I’m catching up to the fact that I’m someone who lives in a beautiful home in Malibu, and owns some other properties and things like that. I don’t think I’ve changed a lot, but I have changed. That’s OK. I’ve had to evolve.’ He tells a story about seeing someone at Hollywood events who knew him in New York and who keeps saying they miss the way things were. ‘We should evolve,’ he stresses. ‘Not everyone’s happy for you. I’ve attained a lot, and I think I’ve been in my harvest stage. I don’t want for anything. There’s a peace that I have. I know I’ve built a solid foundation of a body of work, and I’m looking for the thing that I don’t know where it exists, or when it’s going to come. But I’m cool if it’s not in six months. I’m cool if it’s not in a year. I’m cool if it happens next week. But I’m open.’
We decide to head to Sunset Boulevard and find the billboard spot where Colman first saw himself and felt a sense of arrival as a movie actor. ‘I still try to approach this industry from being a theatre professional,’ he says as we drive. ‘I try to make it about all of us, and rally all of us together; to get behind something, and not be so individualistic. My career has always been in service of the story. It’s never just been in service of me being number one, or being at the centre of the event.’ On the way to Sunset we stop at the former Complex Theatre where Colman first worked, directing Single Black Female, when he arrived in LA. The theatre is now a shell, shuttered and due for redevelopment. ‘I was just a guy who had come to LA without notions of being in film or TV. I was a theatre rat. But I got here and thought, “This is kind of cool.”’
He tells me he’s always led with opportunity over money, getting paid $150 a day for his work in Sing Sing, and taking work that excites him. He adheres to a ‘one for me, one for them’ approach. ‘Running after the money is never good. You have to run after the experience and the art, and trust that it will take care of you.’ Happily he’s in a position now to pick and choose, but when he landed the lead role in Rustin it was a game changer. I ask if he pinched himself at seeing where he suddenly was, his work recognised, opportunities offered. ‘No,’ he replies quickly. ‘Because I think pinching yourself is being like, ‘I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I did this’. And without any ego, I know I’ve built this. I know every step it’s taken to get here. I do believe this has happened, because I put the work in. What I am in awe of – and this sometimes will make me cry – I’m in awe that I did it. Whatever energy from my parents, from a higher power – I’m still here, and I’m happy, and I’m whole, and I have love around me. I’m still fucking here, and I’m still the person that I know about here,’ he presses a palm to his chest. ‘I haven’t become something that I’m not proud of, or that my parents aren’t proud of. I don’t want to take any of that for granted.’
Colman lost both his parents in 2006, within a few months of each other. He shows me a tattoo on his arm etched for ‘Edith’, his mother’s name, and although he’ll talk about his parents’ love and their passing, he says he’s conscious of keeping his personal life personal. His love story with his husband of 21 years, Raul, is well known, one he describes as ‘star-crossed lovers’. The duo exchanged glances outside a Walgreens in Berkeley in 2005 but didn’t meet and found each other three days later through the Missed Connections column on Craigslist. He acknowledges that it’s a romantic, hopeful and beautiful story but ‘there’s so much more’. ‘Now I think I’m more interested in talking about the story of longevity. How do you keep reinvesting in a person? No one’s perfect and we’re trying to find some joy and grace and love and good times. You can tell if a person is loved or not, by the way they respond in every way in the world, especially with work and being a creative. I’ll walk into a room with love because I am loved. I’m not grabby for anything else.’
Some people have asked me if I’d have wanted the success to have come earlier? But I know that my journey has been for that to come later in my life, so I can truly appreciate it. I know the value of it. I always look at it as like: it could be my first, and it could be my last. But for now, I’m going to enjoy it
He felt love growing up in a blue collar family and that translated into support when he found acting as a teenager (he joined a summer programme at the Society Hill Playhouse) and in his sophomore year of college while majoring in journalism. ‘I just took to it. It was good for me, and I knew it. And then my teacher pulled me aside one day and said, “Have you ever thought about acting as a professional?”’ I didn’t grow up going to the theatre or believing that Hollywood was this thing that people do.’ Yet, here we are now on Sunset Boulevard, looking up at the billboard where he realised he’d made the journey to movie actor, and in his fifties. ‘The idea that it took over 50 years for me to be on Sunset Boulevard, is extraordinary. You never forget your first,’ he smiles. ‘Some people have asked me if I’d have wanted the success to have come earlier? But I know that my journey has been for that to come later in my life, so I can truly appreciate it. I know the value of it. I always look at it as like: it could be my first, and it could be my last. But for now, I’m going to enjoy it.’ As we stand there two pedestrians shout that they love him from across the street. He smiles and waves, wishing them a beautiful day.
We head to grab a coffee at the nearby Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf where Colman also had a pivotal moment in his career. It was here that he had a meeting to discuss playing Bayard Rustin with director Dustin Lance Black. The two men sat at a nearby table to where we are now and decided to work together, to will the movie into existence. Two years later they made it and when it came to promotion, that first billboard went up right above the coffee shop. ‘It’s as if it was pre-destined,’ he says, sipping his Americano with oat milk. ‘Listen, my whole career has been this way. There are no coincidences.’ He tells me about working on Lincoln with Daniel Day Lewis, and his first time working with Steven Spielberg who he re-teams with on the upcoming Disclosure Day. He and David Oyelowo shared a scene together that was almost replicated, historical decades apart, when they worked together again on civil rights drama, Selma. The horse that his character held for Day Lewis’ president in Lincoln was named Glory, the title of the Oscar-winning song from Selma, and the very same horse he later rode in Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation. ‘We’re always moving around history, and dancing around it,’ he says. ‘And if we really allow ourselves… it’s showing up in our art. And that’s why I literally believe in magic. Every time I see 3:13 – that’s my mother’s birthday. And for some reason, I always look at my phone – at least a couple of days a week, it says 3:13. Why? I believe that’s my mother saying hello to me. And I accept it as such.’
NEW YORK, 8 MAY 2026 That sense of magic brings Colman and I together again in Manhattan three weeks later when we both happen to be in town the same week. For Colman, it’s a significant trip – he’s hosting Saturday Night Live!, a major milestone for any artist but particularly sweet to him as a longtime New York resident. He’s busy rehearsing for the show and having dinner with Lorne Michaels but wants to show me something of his Big Apple. We meet at the newly-opened Faena Hotel in Chelsea and decide to grab lunch at the restaurant on site. The waitress there tells me that Colman acts with spirit and soul and that he is something special as she hands over menus. He looks bashful and thanks her, and over Mendoza beef tenderloin empanadas Colman tells me the recognition he receives as he moves through the world now is ‘the most beautiful thing’. ‘People let me know that what I’ve been doing has been meaningful, and it touches people. That’s what my work is now giving me back.’
When he was a self-described theatre rat, Colman lived near here but with gentrification and investment the area is now almost unrecognisable to him. The bar he used to work at is gone, his old apartment in Harlem is now hip. ‘I know that this New York is not mine. It was mine when I was here. I’ve made new agreements with New York, because I think you’re supposed to.’ As he was in LA, Colman is very much about forward motion, evolution, living fully in the present. He can no longer walk the same streets he used to in the same way; ‘I’m a public persona,’ he states, ‘the old me – I was everywhere and doing everything in New York. But that was a different guy, a different hustle.’ He admits that dealing with fame has been a learning curve. ‘As somebody who is really about people, and being out, and having experiences, and being in the world – for me to make my world smaller is a challenge. I wrestle with that every day.’ But he insists he doesn’t mourn his anonymity. ‘Because it’s another chapter.’
This week’s chapter started on Monday meeting the SNL writers, filming promos on Tuesday, and today, deciding on the sketches that will make the show on the weekend from 40-50 options. Colman is taking it all in his stride as someone who has done fast-paced comedy before on The Big Gay Sketch Show – and because this year he’s also travelled to Africa and skydived from 10,000ft up with Bear Grylls. ‘They could be bucket list items,’ he laughs, ‘but also, SNL is one of those things. It’s a zeitgeist.’ Along with promotion work for Michael and Disclosure Day, Colman is busy – and happy to be so – but he confesses to needing to ‘go to ground’ to be creatively fertile. ‘When things start spinning, it doesn’t work well for me. I actually feel like I don’t know how to actually “create” or “do” when things are too crazy. The only way I can work is if things are hyper-organised. And then I’m like, “Oh, then I can be free.”’
People let me know that what I’ve been doing has been meaningful, and it touches people. That’s what my work is now giving me back
With lunch over, it’s time to head to SNL. We jump in a car and head up 10th Avenue and onto 42nd Street, Colman’s old theatre stomping ground. I ask him for his happiest memory of New York, before he made his new agreements with the place. His answer is immediate – it was living in Manhattan Plaza on 43rd and 9th, a rent-stabilised apartment building that was home to numerous artists – among them Alicia Keys, Samuel L Jackson and Angela Lansbury. ‘It gave me more freedom to just be the artist that I was. And that’s your happiest time. You’re like, “I can write the plays I want to write. I can work when I want to work, and how I want to work. I can build the rooms the way I want to build it.” I was on a waiting list for nine years to get into Manhattan Plaza. And once you’re in, you’re in. You feel like you can create with so much liberty.’
We travel onward to Times Square. ‘I used to live over here, down there, and right down here,’ he says, pointing out different apartments as they pass. ‘They say it’s the city that never sleeps, but that’s kind of a lie now, because it feels like it takes naps now,’ he jokes. ‘I worked all up and down these Broadway streets. I’d haunt them. But you don’t own this city. You own it when you’re here, when you’re young, when you’ve got your hustle on. But then you move along, and it becomes somebody else’s city. You don’t want to go backwards.’ At a stop light I move from the back of the car to the front seat and look back at Colman as he watches his former city slide by through the open window. The light is beautiful as he gazes optimistically into his future, the vanishing point of Manhattan behind him.
When we arrive at the SNL studios we drive under the Rockefeller Centre and down through a subterranean maze. We jump in the elevator to rise upward to the SNL production offices and walk the corridors to Colman’s dressing room. His name is on the door in that famous SNL script and a bouquet of long-stem roses awaits him in a vase on the dressing table. He has a moment of calm before the writers’ meeting and the chaos of production towards Saturday night. He smiles and pulls a rose from the bunch, sits on his dressing table chair and presses the petals to his nose. He inhales deeply, taking the moment to appreciate the scent before there’s a knock on the door and he’s whisked away into his busy schedule. Like his approach to everything else in his life, he is literally stopping to smell the roses…
Photographs & interview by GREG WILLIAMS As told to JANE CROWTHER Michaelis in cinemas now, read our review here Disclosure Dayis in cinemas 12 June Grooming by Jamie Richmond Styling by Wayman and Micah Coleman wears Kenzo, Maison Valentino, Omega and Jacques Marie Mage Thanks to The Geffen Playhouse
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by GREG WILLIAMS & JANE CROWTHER
LA born-and-bred actor Lewis Pullman shows Greg Williams around Hollywood and hits the drums as he pursues a ‘fugue state’ in his art.
The morning after he presented Best Film Editing with his dad, Bill, at the Oscars, Lewis Pullman arrives at a Hollywood rehearsal space on the Walk of Fame, a greasy hangover sandwich and iced coffee in hand. He’s dressed down after his night on the red carpet with his parents, a bag of drumsticks over his shoulder, and he admits to nerves the night before. ‘But it was so special. Just getting to see my mom dressed up, and out and about on the town is worth it, you know?’ Lewis is a Hollywood kid, born and bred. The son of Bill Pullman and modern dancer, Tamara, he grew up at the family house in Beechwood Canyon and, aside from his college years and extended trips to the family place in Montana, has called LA home all his life. A drummer in band Atta Boy, he can’t do much shedding where he currently lives due to his neighbours’ proximity (his kit is packed away), so if he wants to practice he needs to find a rehearsal room. The place we’re meeting is right on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, where flash mob dances are happening on the crosswalk, star homes tours leave from the curb and Johnny Cash’s brass sidewalk star sits outside the door.
When he’s had his caffeine and carbs fix, we decide to head down the labyrinthine corridor to stroll around Hollywood. ‘I used to skateboard here with my friend, Jonah. We skateboarded all the way from the East Side to the beach all the time, on those little rubber-wheeled skateboards. We would take Hollywood Boulevard, because…’ He indicates to the smooth terrazzo of the Walk of Fame. ‘Good skating. We’d stop at Ralph’s, and get a full watermelon, cut it in half, and sit on the curb. It’s the best.’ The Pullman family home was a couple of blocks from where we are now (he points towards the circular Capitol Records) and he and his siblings all still reside in the town he and his dad work in. ‘My brother, my sister, their kids – they all live in the same cul-de-sac.’
It was during high school that Lewis got into the band and was a dedicated drummer, Atta Boy making a record just before graduation. ‘It was a kind of monument to what we had in that era, and that time. And then 10 years later, the guitarist Freddie went and looked at the bank account, and he was like, ‘There’s a lot of money here for not having promoted it or anything. What should we do?’ And we were like, ‘Let’s get the band back together!’ So we did, and now we’ve made three albums and we’ve done a couple of little tours. It’s 0.5% playing music, and then all the rest is just on the road – gas stations, driving, old buddies, old friends. So it’s the fucking best.’ He’s not managed to be on every tour due to his acting commitments but remains committed to mixing his disciplines. ‘I love that I still have it in my life,’ he says of playing music. ‘To be able to challenge your creative brain.’
We were like, ‘Let’s get the band back together!’ So we did, and now we’ve made three albums and we’ve done a couple of little tours. It’s 0.5% playing music, and then all the rest is just on the road – gas stations, driving, old buddies, old friends. So it’s the fucking best… I love that I still have it in my life… To be able to challenge your creative brain
Creativity is hardly surprising given his lineage. During the Oscars, he joked that he was his dad’s ‘sequel’ and Bill noted that Lewis had carved out a career without his interference; ‘All on your own you did just fine.’ ‘My dad didn’t raise me shovelling messaging down my throat, telling me “do this, don’t do this”. It was very much through watch and learn. And I got another great lesson from him when we walked into the Oscar rehearsal and he was like, “This isn’t how we talk, though. If we’re doing this, why are we doing it as somebody else? Let’s make this our own voices.” I was kind of nervous to change it. But they loved it. If there’s anything I got out of that whole experience, it was just being reminded to protect yourself. Protect your voice. Protect your intention of why you’re doing something. Why are we presenting? How can we get something out of it as a father and son?’
The Pullmans will be starring together in the long-awaited sequel, Spaceballs 2, a project Lewis admits to feeling some trepidation about taking on given it was the film that put Bill on the map. He will be reprising Lone Starr and Lewis will be playing his son. ‘I didn’t want to step on my dad’s toes. This was his second movie. It really launched him, and is so personal to him,’ Lewis says. ‘I think it would be different if I was playing his role, but then once I found out I was playing his son, that changed things. And then once I read the script, and it was one of the funniest scripts I’ve read ever in my whole life, I was just like, “It’d be stupid not to do this.” But I had to talk to my dad, and we had a lot of conversations about it. I think that he thought that I was tiptoeing around it, because I didn’t want to step into a realm that he had already been in. Meanwhile, I was tiptoeing around it because I thought maybe he didn’t want me to step in there. So then once we finally were like, “No, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it’s so meta.” I felt I’d absolutely regret it if somebody else played that role. I don’t think I could get over that if I missed out on it. I’m so glad I did it because it was one of the most rich experiences of my life, working with him in that capacity, which is comedy, which is something we don’t get to do often, but we do all the time when we’re at home.’
Will we be seeing a little of the real Pullmans’ dynamic when we finally see the film? ‘You know, you always have that, regardless of how hard you try. There were parts where it was kind of a challenge to act with your family member, because you fear that they know you so well that they’re going to know better than anyone if you’re lying – if your acting is shit. But I would hope I’m not very similar to my character, although I love him greatly. He’s not the brightest bulb in the shed.’ He pauses. ‘But I don’t know. I have my days…’ He laughs.
We cross the street, passing beneath the 1920s Taft Building, the first high-rise office building in LA, the former HQ of the Academy, as well as housing offices for numerous Old Hollywood stars including Charlie Chaplin and Will Rogers. Across the street, the neon retro sign for the crossroad twinkles in the sun as we head towards the old Pantages Theatre and the Frolic Room bar (the drinking haunt of Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland and, in her last seen appearance, the Black Dahlia, Elizabeth Short). Showbusiness is evident everywhere we look. I ask Lewis how he feels about the business end of his career, the promotion. ‘It’s probably my least favourite part of the whole thing. It’s so different being in front of a camera right now with people that aren’t the crew, that don’t know the “why” of why we’re doing it, or what we’re doing. There’s something about a film set where everyone is under the same preconceived notion about what the story is, and the collective illusion. The publicity part of it – I’m trying to find my way in.’ He stops and admires the marquee of the old movie theatre. ‘I keep thinking about deathbed thoughts,’ he laughs. ‘I don’t know why this has been on my mind lately. What the fuck am I going to be thinking when I’m dying? I don’t want to look back on my memories, and just see slates and hotel rooms and press junkets. So I’m trying to figure out a way to make that all not just something that I sleepwalk through, you know?’
I’ve gotten it down with the lines now. But at the beginning I was thinking maybe this wasn’t the profession for me, because it takes me so long. But now I’m starting to love it, because I’m treating it less as memorisation and more as just steeping. My job is to live in the scene, and to try and paint it in my mind as accurately as possible. Once I trick myself not to memorise, I end up memorising through that process
Does he think that’s because he has watched his father’s experience and has entered the industry with his eyes wide open? ‘I get asked about nepotism all the time… It’s an undeniable truth, but I think one of the more strangely valuable parts of the whole thing is watching my dad through a long career and what that looks like – how he manages his expectations, and what he actually allows himself to feel celebratory over, or where he gets his gratification from. Because he never got it from accolades. It was always the experience of the making of the thing. The journey. And the rest of it is just noise that he mutes. There is a healthy dose of discontent in him that keeps him driving forward, I think he holds onto that. But now I see him taking it all in, and living in the breaths in between a lot more.’
Music seems to help Lewis live in the breaths in between. Growing up, he was in different bands until he started playing with his ‘best buddy’, Kyle McNeill, and they began recording with their bassist, who ended up becoming Lewis’ brother-in-law. He recalls the messing about in the recording studio fondly. ‘There was something about the repetition of takes and what it looks like to get the chance to do it multiple times. In theatre you get one take each night, and then you have a whole day to think about what you might adjust. Whereas in the studio, sometimes you try and just have one night that’s like a one-night play.’
As we wander a few blocks down we pass a movie shooting on location. ‘It’s nice to walk down a set where you’re not worried that you’ve got to be learning your lines right now,’ he grins. He tells me he has ‘all sorts of beautiful, little learning challenges’, including dyslexia. ‘I’ve gotten it down with the lines now. At the beginning I was thinking maybe this wasn’t the profession for me, because it takes me so long. But now I’m starting to love it, because I’m treating it less as memorisation and more as just steeping. My job is to live in the scene, and to try to paint it in my mind as accurately as possible. Once I trick myself not to memorise, I end up memorising through that process.’ Despite the learning challenges, Lewis studied social work at a small liberal arts college, Warren Wilson, in Ashville, North Carolina after high school. ‘It’s a work studies programme. There’s a farm. I was on the tractor crew – I’m handy with the back-hoe and the front-end loader. I was doing social work, theatre, and working outdoors with my hands. And it was that trifecta of variety that I felt was really fruitful.’
We head back inside, to a rehearsal room with a drum kit and a Fleetwood Mac road case doubling as a coffee table. ‘I’m fairly rusty,’ Lewis says, eying the drum kit sitting on the vintage rug. ‘I chose the worst instrument for somebody who travels.’ He takes out a set of favoured sticks and sits on the stool, placing a cloth over the snare. ‘Growing up, my favourite drummer was Levon Helm, and he was all about muting it down, so that it’s not so ring-y.’ He pushes a blanket against the bass drum head so that’s also not as ‘ring-y’. ‘I’m not a technical drummer. I’m all about the feel and the pocket,’ he says as he starts tapping out a rhythm. ‘Let’s fuck around for a little bit.’
He begins to play and despite his protests, he’s great – his triple pedals tight and using his hands on the snare. ‘The first drum I ever got was a cajón so I got really into trying to incorporate hand stuff into the middle of that,’ he explains. ‘I forget I’m doing it, for a lot of that time. And that’s something that I don’t get in any other part of my life. In acting, that is what you’re seeking – right? That kind of forgetting that you’re there, that you’re doing it. Losing yourself. The brain just goes into this little fugue state, a purgatory in-between place. It’s a nice place to go.’
He’s recently been in pursuit of that fugue state in Marvel’s Thunderbolts*, The Testament of Ann Lee and the upcoming adap of the bestseller, Remarkably Bright Creatures. Lewis plays a rootless young man in search of his father who befriends an OAP (played by Sally Field) with a connection to the octopus in the aquarium where she cleans. ‘It sounds like something that is so specific for octopus lovers but it’s very much a universal story about found family. And Sally Field is unbelievable in it. Every day, getting to work with her was like going into the boxing ring. You’re just way below the weight class. She doesn’t settle for anything but the total truth. So if anything felt like a lie or a fib, she would really be adamant about tapping into the truth. It was like when I worked with Jeff Bridges. He loves asking questions, and philosophising, and mulling it around a lot – which I find really helpful. I think it’s cool to be able to work with actors of all different generations, because everyone has different styles.’
His experiences playing Bob in Top Gun Maverick, and Bob in Thunderbolts* as well as the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, were similarly educational moments. ‘Doomsday was such an experience – one of those ones where you’re literally trying to open your eyes as wide as possible, to just soak it all in. It’s one of the most massive movie sets I’ve ever set foot on, but you wouldn’t know it with how the Russo brothers operate. Despite it being this massive thing, it always felt like we were doing something that was trying to capture something in the room. It was there, regardless of the kind of scale. I never would have thought I would be in a movie like Top Gun or in a Marvel movie. Sometimes I wish I was a better planner or manifester. But also I never would have dreamed to manifest either of those things. So, keeping it open in some ways has been a gift for me, just because I love those experiences. And yes, they’re big, huge movies, but they’re so different. The characters are so different, despite them sharing the exact same name – I think I’ve tapped out on playing another Bob there.’
He’s just produced his first movie under his Buckwild production company shingle, directed by his friend, Graham Parkes, and co-starring Maya Hawke – they premiered it at SXSW earlier in the week. It follows Lewis and Maya as a couple whose harmony or disharmony affects the world around them (fighting equals earthquakes, stocks crashing, the Dodgers losing). Describing the film as a ‘surreal rom-com-dram’, Wishful Thinking was born out of an ambition to give himself a role ‘other people weren’t giving me the opportunity to do’ – namely, playing a romantic lead. ‘You do a movie like that because you wouldn’t normally be cast in it, you know? Maybe you haven’t done it, so they can’t imagine you doing it. It’s not a short cut. It’s a long cut. But it’s the only way to garner any sort of control.’ He’s also working with his Maverick Doomsday castmate Danny Ramirez on his writing and directorial debut, soccer movie Baton. ‘He’s got a serious plan, and he sticks to it, and it really serves him. It’s just amazing to see him directing and writing and producing and starring.’ Does Lewis think he might want to move into directing, too? ‘I see what it takes to do it well, and I know myself well enough to know that I don’t think I have that gene. Also, I’ll probably die not having figured acting out. I don’t need more on my plate than that. I’m still trying to figure that out.’
With that in mind, he’s looking for projects he describes as ‘never right down the line, off-kilter, off-balance’. As he packs up his drumsticks he considers how his move into producing will affect the choices he makes in roles. ‘I don’t want to spend three months of my life doing something that I could watch, or play a role that I’ve seen somebody else do, or play a role that I know somebody else could do better than me. So it’s about finding the ones where I have something to say, and I can say it in this part right now. That can change month to month, you know? I’m realising that the project that I might be perfect for today, I might not be for tomorrow. But it’s really touching base with that grain of truth, when you’re like, “I know I can do something that nobody else can do right now.” Being able to say that, and with pride, is empowering…’
Photographs by GREG WILLIAMS Interview by GREG WILLIAMS & JANE CROWTHER Remarkably Bright Creaturesis on Netflix now, Avengers: Doomsday is in cinemas 18 December, Wishful Thinking and Baton will release soon, Spaceballs 2 is in cinemas 23 April 2027 Thanks to Hollywood Rehearsals www.hollywoodrehearsals.com
Greg Williams takes pause to consider the bigger picture on images seen small on his social media. This issue: Willem Dafoe at the Venice Film Festival in 2018.
I shot this picture of Willem Dafoe at the Venice Film Festival. I had a very short amount of time with him. We were in this hotel courtyard, which was very pretty but it didn’t really offer anything. Willem said, “I get it. It all looks great, but it’s not what you want.” So we looked for something to do. And there was this little fountain and he said, “Oh, I can play with this.” So he started playing with the water, flicking the water up at me. He completely soaked my trousers, so at the end of it I looked like I’d peed myself!
But anyway, he’s throwing this water up in the air, he probably did it 20 times, and this is the one picture that by far outshone all the others. There’s this beautiful curve where the drops of water frame his face so perfectly. I focused on him, so the drops of water are out of focus. Really, he gave me this photo. He knew exactly what he was doing, and we waited for this happy accident.
Leica Q, 1/1000 sec, f/2.5, 1600 ISO, 28mm
Photograph and words by GREG WILLIAMS Dafoe was awarded the Best Actor award at the closing ceremony of the 2018 Venice Film Festival for his portrayal of Vincent van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate directed by Julian Schnabel
