‘There Will Be Blood’: The Story Behind The Original Eli Sunday

Sometimes, all it takes for cinematic myth to take hold is one paragraph in an article from The New York Times Magazine on November 11, 2007. The profile by Lynn Hirschberg about Paul Thomas Anderson‘s “There Will Be Blood” revealed that during the shoot, the original actor slated to play Eli Sunday was fired, leading to Paul Dano having to double his work as both Paul and Eli Sunday. Here’s the entry:

Halfway through the 60-day shoot, Anderson realized that the second lead actor, who plays Plainview’s nemesis, was not strong enough. He was replaced by the versatile young actor Paul Dano, but three weeks of scenes with Day-Lewis needed to be reshot. During “Gangs of New York,” Day-Lewis would stay in character and deliberately glare at his co-star, Leonardo DiCaprio, mirroring the contentious dynamic that these men had in the film. While DiCaprio withstood the pressure (and Dano thrived on it) there are reports that the first actor suffered from intimidation. “It just wasn’t the right fit,” Anderson explained diplomatically.

It’s a pretty good story, and adds to the legend of Daniel Day-Lewis‘ unwavering commitment to Method acting. However, according to the original Eli Sunday himself, Kel O’Neill, the real story is a bit more human. At the end of the day, he admits that he simply wasn’t good enough for the role, and that Day-Lewis, towering as he was as Daniel Plainview, did keep a bridge of connection to the young actor.

“Filmmaking is so alchemical that sometimes certain factors don’t add up,” O’Neill told Vulture. “Some directors I’ve worked with — who very few people would say are better directors than Paul — just had a way of making me feel comfortable. For some reason, even though every other actor I know had a relationship with Paul that was super positive and where they did their best work, that just didn’t happen with me. I would attribute that primarily to a failure on my side: An actor should, with every ounce of their humanity, be attempting to give the director what he or she wants. And I recall going in and out on whether I could really do that.”

The actor says that after two or three weeks of filming, one day his name was removed from the upcoming shooting schedule. He was soon called into a meeting with Anderson and producer JoAnne Sellar and fired from the film. As for Day-Lewis, O’Neill says that Day-Lewis maintained level of professionalism even as he inhabited the role of Daniel Plainview.

“It wasn’t drinks every night with Daniel on set, but there’s a fundamental decency to the way he comports himself in those environments that gets lost in the shuffle of these rumors,” he explained. “After we did our first scene, he came over, shook my hand and said — sort of in character and sort of not — ‘Welcome.’ And that sets a tone where that person isn’t your enemy. I would be cautious now, especially when he’s not going to do this anymore, about making him so mythical that there’s no acknowledgment of the human being there.”

O’Neill walked away from the experience realizing that acting is “not a craft I wake up with the desire to do everyday.” Instead, he’s turned to filmmaking, and is currently working in the realm of virtual reality. As for “There Will Be Blood,” he hasn’t seen it (in fact, he now says that he doesn’t watch any more after “mid-period John Carpenter”; he can’t get lost in the magic of moviemaking anymore) but did happen to walk into a video store where it was showing on the monitors, and thought, “Looks like a good movie.”

Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, “Phantom Thread,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis, opens on Christmas Day in limited release.