In hindsight, perhaps Jesse Plemons winning the Best Actor honor at the Cannes Film Festival last month shouldn’t have been a surprise. As noted in our review, the Oscar and two-time Emmy Award nominee is transformative playing three distinct characters in Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest opus, “Kinds of Kindness.” There is Robert, the midlevel executive who is addicted to the control of his superior (Willem Dafoe). There’s Daniel, a police officer who is suspicious of his wife (Emma Stone) after she’s rescued from a week’s long shipwreck. And, finally, there’s Andrew, a cult member who believes in the cause perhaps a bit too much. But, as Plemons revealed during a conversation last week, transitioning between the three characters was no easy feat.
“It was my first kind of experience with the really quick turnover of wrapping a character and then less than 48 hours later after getting my hair cut when I wrapped Robert late one night to two days later, all of a sudden Daniel, that was definitely really jarring,” Plemons admits. “And at the beginning of shooting anything, there’s always a kind of window of time where everyone’s exploring and feeling like they’re finding it and getting their footing. And so it’s like you’re going from feeling like you’ve really hit your stride and found your rhythm and having a lot of fun with that first one, and then just the rug is pulled off from under you and starting from scratch again. But that being said, it’s such a unique gift for an actor to be able to do something like this.”
Recently wrapped on the upcoming Netflix limited series “Zero Day,” Plemons reveals how he found out he won the prestigious Cannes honor, whether it was an automatic “yes” to star in Lanthimos’ next movie, which of his three “Kinds” characters was the most difficult to portray and much, much more.
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The Playlist: Congratulations on winning Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival. So deserved.
Jesse Plemons: Thank you. Wild.
I believe you had already left the festival before the ceremony. Was there any chance of you going back when they called for you?
No, there was no possibility of me getting there. I’ve been shooting this mini-series in New York for the last six months or so [“Zero Day”], and it had been quite a while since I had seen my boys. I’ve got two boys that are six and three and I had maybe five days off, and we had worked all night that night. I went straight from set to the airport. I only knew that it was going to be announced that morning because my wife and my mom had done some, I think research online that night before. And Kirsten said something, “Y’know, there’s a possibility.” And I was just like, “No, no, no, no, no.” And so I had some idea that when I landed and turned my phone on, I would find out one way or another and I slept on the flight and woke up right before we were landing. And my thought right before I turned my phone on was “It’s probably Ben Whishaw*” and I love Ben Whishaw in everything always. That’s great. And then I turned my phone on and just saw a ton of exclamation marks from a bunch of different people and like, “Holy s**t.” And then I got to go and hang out with my family and my boys that I hadn’t seen in forever. So, it was actually kind of perfect. I mean, I think from the time I landed, there were five or 10 minutes before my category was going to be announced, so I didn’t even really have time to send any statement or anything.
*Whishaw starred in Kirill Serebrennikov’s “Limonov. The Ballad”
When this role came your way, multiple roles actually, what was your reaction to it? Was it nervousness? Were you excited?
Both of those things, yes. Nervous and excited and, y’know, it was really an unusual period of time. Once I read the script and then before I’ve fully gotten into prepping it – because reading the script – I would assume for most people in the same way as watching the movie, you’re not entirely sure why it’s making you feel all of these things. It does really, in my experience, grab you and sort of pull you through many different emotions. And so I just remember feeling kind of like I had all of this inside me after reading it and had no idea how to sort it out in my mind. I was feeling a lot of things and it was very unclear as to why and then I read it many more times and start to find your way into it and make decisions knowing that it could all and will all change. But yeah, I loved it. It was one of the more interesting scripts I’d ever read for sure.
I’m assuming when you got it, either Yorgos or one of the producers was like, “Hey, you’re playing Robert, Daniel, and Andrew in this.” You had some context when reading about who you were playing.
Yes, I knew that. I knew that much.
Did you feel like the characters were distinct enough on the page when you read it, or was it conversations with Yorgos after that helped you sort of land on who they were?
It was a combination. And then there are also a lot of connections in terms of specific lines that are kind of echoed about the three, maybe different characters saying them. But that was one of the few things we did talk about a few times was finding that balance of differentiating them without this turning into Peter Seller‘s actor show, which would maybe distract and take away from some of the themes.
But in particular, going from Robert to Andrew, they are night and day in terms of characters. Was there one in character or segment that you found more challenging than the other?
I think Daniel, the middle one was least enjoyable? I think in hindsight makes sense. And it was my first kind of experience with the really quick turnover of wrapping a character and then less than 48 hours later after getting my hair cut when I wrapped Robert late one night to two days later, all of a sudden Daniel, that was definitely really jarring. And at the beginning of shooting anything, there’s always a kind of window of time where everyone’s exploring and feeling like they’re finding it and getting their footing. And so it’s like you’re going from feeling like you’ve really hit your stride and found your rhythm and having a lot of fun with that first one, and then just the rug is pulled off from under you and starting from scratch again. But that being said, it’s such a unique gift for an actor to be able to do something like this.
With Daniel, the audience assumes he’s had some sort of mental break because of what has happened with his wife being gone. Or, maybe that’s been him all along. How did you interpret how he’s acting in that chapter?
Well, what you’re talking about, he was right.
She should be cutting off her fingers for him? [Laughs.]
In the end, did the real Liz not come back? Come on. [Laughs.] No, I don’t know. I’ll leave that up for everyone to decide. But that’s the interesting thing and I would, it’s kind of similar to watching any of his films. The experience of making it is kind of similar in that there’s this fine line of you have to make choices and personalize all of that for yourself so you don’t feel like you’re just showing up naked and unprepared, but then you obviously have to be sort of adaptable and open to whatever is happening in the moment. And so I think my interpretation probably changed throughout the experience and I don’t even know where I ended up, to be honest.
Can you watch yourself, are you an actor who can watch your performance and sort of take it in or are you more of a “I sat through the premiere, I’m done. That’s it. I don’t need to see this again.“
I am trying to get better to not much success. I don’t enjoy it at all really. But I hadn’t seen [“Kinds of Kindness”] until Cannes and was very nervous to see it just because early days in the rehearsal process I felt like I had no clue what I’m doing. And then slowly you start to just kind of give in to that feeling and it starts to present itself. But yeah, I was extremely nervous to watch it. In the first five minutes, I was a little squeamish. And then to my surprise, I was just able to watch the movie and didn’t really critique myself or spent too much time thinking about the performance. But I really loved the movie and I was blown away by the editing and the music, and I think I was curious to see how this tone worked. It’s so unusual and I felt really thrilled with how it came together.
Yorgos’ films have such a specific tone. Is working with Yorgos one of those things where you just don’t know what it’s going to be until you see it on screen?
No, that’s part of the reason why I don’t always feel the need to watch things because aside from the interest in everyone else and all the other pieces and brilliant people like that, I’m always curious about, but you do get some sense whether it’s right or wrong in the experience of making it. And, y’know, I reluctantly felt like we were walking this really interesting line where it was sort of comical but also extremely dark. And I felt like we were doing something that in my mind, should work and be interesting, even though there was very little to draw from in terms of references. And that was kind of one of the scariest things, in the beginning, was just trying to find some inspiration for a tone. It was really difficult. But yeah, I was blown away by how well I thought it worked, and obviously everyone’s performances I just loved. And again, the music and the editing.
I’m only asking this because I know of another couple who are well-known actors who do this. They send each other to each other’s films to see them just so they can get trusted feedback without watching themselves. Do you do that with Kirsten? Is she like “Go see ‘Civil War.’ Tell me what you think.” Did you send her to go see “Kinds of Kindness” in return?
If it’s not her, it’s my friend and agent Brandy because we’ve been together for so long. And yeah, I would definitely prefer that for one of them to see it before I do. But this was a scenario where I kind of put it off and put it off because I was working on something else. And then no choice but sit down and no choice
How easy was it after going through this experience just to say yes to Yorgos’ next movie, “Bugonia“? And what was that script like compared to “Kindness”?
Great directors that you really admire? I’m always very curious about what the script is. The odds of me not doing it with a director that you trust that has a distinct vision and is kind of in their own world? The script would have to be really bad for me to say no. I’m always trying to put myself in environments among people that I can learn from and especially a completely different type of experience and director than I’ve worked with previously. So yeah, with the recent one, I knew it was going to be a “yes,” but then read the script and it maybe follows a slightly more traditional narrative structure. Not to say that it’s not just as out there in its own way, but in terms of the structure of it, it’s maybe slightly more traditional.
“Kinds of Kindness” opens in limited release on June 21 and expands to limited release on June 28
