Getting the lead role in a Steven Spielberg film is pretty close to getting a golden ticket. Sure, “War Horse’s” Jeremy Irvine might disagree, but for the most part, the Spielberg touch can propel an actor to another level. Look at Whoopi Goldberg in “The Color Purple” or Shia LaBeouf in “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” (don’t blame Spielberg for LaBeouf’s choices afterward). Since his debut in “The Tree of Life,” Tye Sheridan has certainly been known in the independent film community with roles in “Mud” and “The Standford Prison Experiment,” among others, but despite putting on Cyclop’s visor in “X-Men: Apocalypse” he can walk through a middle America mall without getting too many double takes. That should change a bit with his lead role in Spielberg’s expected blockbuster “Ready Player One.”
Based on Ernest Cline‘s popular novel, the film centers on Wade Watts (Sheridan), a borderline destitute teen resident of the fastest growing city on earth in 2045, Columbus, Ohio. Like most of the world’s population, he lives in spends most of his time in the OASIS, a virtual reality environment where you can be anyone or anything. Wade’s avatar is Parzival and like almost all the other inhabitants of the OASIS he’s on the hunt to win “Anorak’s Quest.” Find the three keys and you’ll have control of OASIS and, more importantly, its valuable stock worth $500 billion (basically, you’ll get rich quick). He just has to make sure Innovative Online Industries (IOI) and it’s corrupt CEO Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendehlson) doesn’t figure out how to win it first.
The friendly and cerebral Sheridan shot a significant amount of the role in motion capture, but, as you’ll discover, Spielberg made sure the entire cast wasn’t flying blind.
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Gregory Ellwood: Hey man, how you doing?
Tye Sheridan: Good man, how are you?
Pretty good. So, how long ago did you even audition for this movie?
I first auditioned for this movie, I wanna say … December of 2015.
That’s quite a while ago.
Mm-hmm, yeah. When I read this script, I thought, “Oh man, this is so cool.” Because I was completely obsessed with VR [Virtual Reality] at the time, and really, the potential of what VR could become, in the sense of what tools it might offer us in the future to push and help us progress and evolve forward. For stories, as well. Telling a story with another dimension. Stepping into this story, really, was fascinating to me. When I read the script I got incredibly excited, but I thought, “Man, I cannot wait to see this movie in theaters, but there’s no way Steven Spielberg is gonna cast me in this role. I’m still gonna audition for it.” I sent in a self-tape. I was in Montreal shooting a movie and I sent in a self-tape. Then I got word back from my agent, he said, “Hey, I heard back from Stephen Spielberg’s camp, and I think they’re gonna pass and look for someone different.” I thought, “Oh, yeah, of course. Whatever, I can’t wait to see it in theaters.” Then, a couple of weeks later he called me back and he said, “Hey, remember that Spielberg movie?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “I think they want you to audition again, I don’t know what the deal is, but I think Stephen wants to see you do your audition again, and maybe you could try to lighten it up or make it a bit more fun, comical.” Which I tried to do. Then I got invited to L.A. to audition with Olivia Cooke, who was already cast at the time, and I knew Steven was gonna be in the room. I still didn’t know, at that point, if I was gonna get the role, so when I met Steven I made sure to thank him for all of his films, because he’s one of my heroes. “E.T.” is one of my all-time favorite films, ever. I think without that film and several of his that played literally hundreds of times during my childhood, I would be a totally different kid. I thanked him for that, and then we ended up talking about VR and “E.T” for like, 30 minutes in the audition room, which was pretty amazing. Then I found out I got the film a month later and I was over the moon.
You’ve obviously been through a number of high profile audition processes before. Was this the most nerve-wracking for you? Or because it was Spielberg were you thinking, “If I get it, I get it?”
Look, until someone calls you and says, “Hey, you’re doing it. It’s happening” I try not to get too invested. You wanna be invested enough so that you understand the story and you put forth your best intention with the character and put forth your best thoughts, but I feel it’s always important when you’re going through something like this, to understand that you’re gonna get told “no” a thousand times, and that’s O.K. No matter if you’re Leonardo DiCaprio or Daniel Day-Lewis, I’m sure all of those guys, until they got to one point in their career, were told “no” so many times. That’s comforting. It’s really about playing the game and grinding it out so that you do find those opportunities that are the right fit. In this case, I think this opportunity for me was like the most perfect opportunity I could ever imagine. I really enjoyed myself and learned more on this movie than I think I ever have on any other film and a lot of it was to do with the fact that we shot in motion capture and that this film was really pushing the boundaries technically, of what people had done in film and in shooting motion capture so far. We did things that no-one had ever done before. We had a tethered VR headset that was spatially tracking so ILM [Industrial Light and Magic] had rendered and built these three-dimensional worlds that were basically raw mock-ups of the environments that we would be walking around in in the film so we could get a better sense of what our place was in those environments. How big they were, how small they were, how bright or how dark. That was super, super, super important, and I think it really helps the film in the sense that this film is seamless between the real world and the virtual one, which is called the OASIS. Steven was very brave to do this and a lot of other people, ILM included, and what they’ve done is just beyond my expectations and I’m so happy and proud to be a part of this movie. I’ve seen it twice now. I guess it’s different for me because I was watching it and noticing things or thinking about it consciously, the way other people wouldn’t when watching it for the first time. There’s so much in the film that you can miss. Watching for the second time I noticed twice as much as I did the first time which is so cool.