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Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, and Lewis Pullman Interview: Bad Times at El Royale

Jeff Bridges is a legendary actor who has won the Academy Award for Best Actor and been nominated six other times.  His resume includes The Last Picture Show, True Grit, and Marvel’s Iron Man.

Cynthia Erivo is an actress and singer who has appeared on both Broadway and the West End.  She has won a Tony Award and a Grammy and has recently begun a career in feature films.

Lewis Pullman is an actor who has appeared in Aftermath, Battle of the Sexes, and The Strangers: Prey at Night.

All three appear in Drew Goddard’s Bad Times at the El Royale, a mystery-thriller about seven strangers in a hotel that each have a dark secret. Bad Times at the El Royale hits theaters October 12, 2018.

Screen Rant: Hello guys. What was it like doing such an intense scene with an Academy Award winning actor next to you?

Lewis Pullman: Well, I've used this analogy just a while ago and I'm going to use it again. But it's very much like-- it feels like a dream.  Because I grew up watching Jeff, and I love Jeff. So, it's very much like-- But Jeff’s so good about reminding you that he's none of those-- Whatever idea you have about him, kind of vanishes when you're with him.  Because you're good about having—You connected-- Jeff Bridges: Don’t touch me. Lewis Pullman: Sorry, sorry. [LAUGHS] We're very close. Jeff Bridges: When you say dream. It is like a dream, yeah. Lewis Pullman: Yeah, yeah. Jeff Bridges: Right now, this is kind of a dream. Cynthia Erivo: Yeah. Lewis Pullman: Yeah, for sure.

Screen Rant: Did you play multiple roles on set? Were you the set photographer as well, Mr. Bridges?

Jeff Bridges: I was, I like to do that. I have a funny kind of camera called a Widelux. It takes these peculiar pictures. I make books for the crew and the cast. And yeah I’m doing this.

Screen Rant: That's great. Your role required a lot of singing.

Cynthia Erivo: Yes.

Screen Rant: Now this is very different for Hollywood movies. The music was in the foreground and you're doing a capella scenes in front of the cast. What was that like?

Cynthia Erivo: It's something that I'm quite used to coming from stage and coming from Broadway and all of that stuff.  I'm used to singing live in front of people. But I think that when you get to take 14 on something, the pressure is on to make sure that the quality stays the same. And that was the thing that I wanted to make sure that everyone still had the quality of sound that they needed in order to do the scene. I didn't want to falter. Because I knew that that was part of everyone's experience of the scene. So, yeah.

Screen Rant: Was there a difference in your performance whether you're performing on the California side or the Nevada side?

Cynthia Erivo: [LAUGHS] I don't think there was.  I don’t know. Was there?

Screen Rant: For any of you?

Cynthia Erivo: Did anyone notice? Lewis Pullman: Warmth and sunshine to the west. Jeff Bridges: There you go. Lewis Pullman: Hope and opportunity to the east.  Those things kind of soak into you.  A little bit.

Screen Rant: Excellent. Did you have a favorite moment on this film? I know you committed to this project very early on, Mr. Bridges. What were you most looking forward to? What scene were you most looking forward to it?

Jeff Bridges: Gee, Cynthia and I have some cool scenes. We got some cool scenes. Cynthia Erivo: We did. Jeff Bridges: You know, it's filled with great scenes. You know, each one. I don’t have one, not one that pops out to me.

Screen Rant: Excellent. What was it that sold you on this project? Why did you come on to it?

Jeff Bridges: For me, it's the kind of movies that I like to see. Where you don't know what's going to happen next. The filmmakers are ahead of you.  And I love that. That's what brought me to the project.

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‘Lessons in Chemistry’ Star Lewis Pullman on Breaking Out of His Comfort Zone And Becoming a Twitter Crush

The actor plays Calvin Evans, renowned chemistry researcher and love interest to Brie Larson’s Elizabeth Zott.

Open up X (formerly known as Twitter), search for “Lessons in Chemistry,” scroll for a bit, and a few patterns will begin to emerge. The first is that the television adaptation’s rabid fan base — it’s based on Bonnie Garmus’ 2022 novel, which was a No. 1 New York Times best-seller — is really smitten with Lewis Pullman. The internet is all but flooded with fan-cam-style tributes to the actor and his portrayal of Calvin Evans, renowned chemistry researcher and love interest to Brie Larson’s Elizabeth Zott. The actor signed on to the project, which Larson optioned before the book hit shelves, just as the novel’s popularity was kicking off, so he wasn’t yet aware what proverbially large shoes he would be filling. But he says he still felt the weight of the role. “I actually didn’t audition for this, which is scary,” he says. “If you don’t audition, you wonder, ‘Gosh, what are they imagining that I’m going to do?’ Like, ‘Holy shit, I hope your confidence in me is correct.’ ”

Pullman is in the middle of a very fruitful period. After making his feature film debut in 2017’s The Ballad of Lefty Brown, he followed up with roles in Bad Times at the El Royale, George Clooney’s Hulu adaptation of Catch-22, and, most notably, joined Tom Cruise, Miles Teller and Glen Powell in Top Gun: Maverick. He’s calling in to this interview from Hoboken, New Jersey, where he’s on the set of a project that he’ll shoot right up until his planned Christmas family vacation in Montana, where his father, Bill Pullman, lived before pursuing an acting career.

The other thing that everyone (on the Internet, at least) is talking about is the slight continuity error in Lessons in Chemistry: Six-Thirty, Elizabeth Zott’s beloved dog, is played by a Goldendoodle. Though the show takes place in the 1950s, the breed didn’t start appear until the 1990s. The discrepancy is something that Pullman also relates back to the weight of taking on a project like this. “There’s a danger and a beauty of adapting a novel,” he says. “People fall in love with these books and everything about them becomes important [to those people].” He says that the dog was simply the best actor for the job, and the team hoped audiences would be able to see that. “He was so cute and extremely skilled, so you’re like okay, maybe people will focus more on the fact that he’s able to emote well,” he says with a laugh. “He was a bit of a genius.”  

Here, Pullman talks to THR about the show’s decision to expand the character of Calvin, the inevitable comparisons to his actor father, and how he’s keeping busy off the set.

We were originally supposed to do this profile in August. How would you describe your strike experience?

I was just talking to my friend Glen Powell about this exact thing. We were like, we’re so glad to be working because I never learned to be idle very well. Having a sole, singular purpose is the easiest thing for me. But instead I did a bunch of stuff. I did a play with my friend Sean Sipos from Outer Range; we were shooting this last season in Santa Fe and we decided a crazy idea would be to put up a two-man play at the same time. We lived together and worked on it, its’ called A Steady Rain by Keith Huff. When the SAG strike hit, we decided to do it again. I also did what many actors did and started a production company and a podcast.

I didn’t know you started a podcast! This is why you need social media — to announce things like this.

Me and my friends Danny Ramirez and Greg Tarzan Davis — two other Top Gun boys — started it together. We wanted to call itKnowledge Heist but that title was taken; basically, we all have a really strong rapport but are very different guys, so the idea was to sit down together with great minds we’ve had the chance to meet over the years and steal all their golden nuggets of wisdom. It’s like Smartless, but less smart. And less funny. (Laughs)

You mentioned not being able to be idle. Do you think you learned or retained any element of being comfortable in slowness during the pandemic? Could you apply that during this latest work stoppage?

I really was like cool, we’re fucking ready for this. We’re prepared. And then when [the work stoppage] happened it felt like there was nothing in my muscle memory. I felt like I had to re-learn how to use an abundance of time. It was interesting to have to get creative, though, to find ways to be useful within the restraints we had.

How do you choose your roles? 

I think it isn’t until recently that I’ve started to be able to have the privilege to be more specific about the direction I lean in with my acting roles. For so long you take what you can get. I was lucky that what I was getting was interesting, and was alongside incredible people. But I do feel I was stuck in this world of being the more nervous, meek, shy guy. I can relate to that, because I grew up like that. But I’ve also grown out of that so I wanted to break out of that and be able to explore characters or roles that scare me. Any job that has taught me the most has always been the one that I initially thought I couldn’t pull off. I’ve found that fear emulsifies into an energy that forces me to discover a different sliver of myself. A sliver that maybe I never knew was lying dormant in me.

I’m about to do a thing that I hate being done to me, which is questioning something you’ve said about yourself. But, were you actually meek?

I was very shy. I was a very socially anxious guy. I also loved people, so there was a weird contradiction. I loved my family and my community. It’s a cliché, but when I discovered acting in high school, it was very terrifying and humbling at first but then I felt this extreme weightlessness. I’d burst the ceiling of discomfort so everything else feels menial in comparison. It helped me to feel more comfortable operating in the world.

Were you kept at a distance from your dad’s career, then?

He kept it very separate so that we could have a somewhat normal upbringing. There was always an element of mystery behind his career. We were a very creative family, everyone is in the arts to some degree, but we weren’t allowed to watch TV. We could pick one or two movies every weekend, so it became a ritual where we came together to watch and would have conversations about it afterwards. Then I eventually went on a deep dive and watched all of my dad’s movies — ones I had been too young to see, or the smaller films — and we entered this phase of being able to talk to each other about his movies. It opened up this whole other part of his life that I hadn’t been privy to. And of course then when I got to college and could watch TV whenever I wanted, that just blows your brain up. That and sugary cereals — I really exhausted them in abundance once I was an independent man.

Have you seen the comparisons online between you and your dad’s work in While You Were Sleeping?

I haven’t. I love to hear that. I mean, these two characters are so vastly different. But I can appreciate how much of my dad — and my mom — I’ve got in me. We have our shared mannerisms and our own vernacular. I’m honored to be compared to him, because that movie’s one of my favorites. 

What do you have most in common with Calvin? 

His awkwardness was something that was easy for me to sink into. And he’s not very articulate in expressing his emotions, which I can relate to — the shutting down, or finding yourself mute when you’re experiencing a new emotion.

What were you going off of when you said yes?

I had the first two episodes. They of course ended up changing quite a bit. But I knew it was a very rich character – I really wanted to clarify what Calvin’s role was in the larger story and how the role services the journey of Brie’s character. One thing that was a deterrent initially was all the science jargon. That was one of my worst subjects in school. And I felt like I had to understand it all in order to perform it. We had these really awesome experts on set and I asked them to explain it all to me like I was a five-year-old. For Brie, I was convinced that it came easily to her and she understood every ounce of what was occurring on the show. I couldn’t even remember what ions were.

Were you involved in the conversations around tweaking the story to allow the character of Calvin to be in more episodes?

That was just a really great piece of news I received. I already felt lucky to be in even two episodes. It’s funny, I watched it all recently and to see that whole episode about Calvin was scary for me. But Lee [Eisenberg, the showrunner] was adamant that we learn about him and that it helps inform Elizabeth. The rest of the episodes I would just pop in as a physicalization of Elizabeth’s grief. There was a lot of joking around on set that I was playing a ghost all of a sudden. I’d just show up from around a corner. Like, what was I doing? Was I just out in space?

Did it feel hard to sit on the sidelines as this show was premiering?

To a certain degree, doing press can offer good closure for a project. You’re able to talk about it and release it into the world. But it’s also not Calvin’s story, it’s Elizabeth’s. So I was like, let’s just let it live and not get in the way. That was a relief in some ways. 

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Interview: Lewis Pullman on Becoming Calvin in ‘Lessons in Chemistry’

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

If you take a dash of scientific rigor, a generous helpings of creative vision and bucking 1960s societal gender norms, you get Apple TV’s Lessons in Chemistry. Starring Brie Larson and Lewis Pullman, among others, the miniseries bubbles over with vibrant, well, chemistry. Larson stars as Elizabeth Zott as she transforms from a brilliant chemist to (still brilliant) cooking show sensation and icon to millions of women across the country. She navigates grief, sexism, and more and in her unlikely path from lab work to kitchen work.

Pullman is Calvin Evans, Elizabeth’s love interest and a character who ultimately has a tragic end. Calvin is a brilliant scientist in his own right and is not your typical 1960s man. Lewis Pullman brought so much charisma and charm to the role that the creators even expanded Calvin from what it was originally envisioned as. If you haven’t seen Lessons in Chemistry, be warned that there are some fairly major spoilers ahead.

Over Zoom, we chatted with Pullman about bringing Evans to life with a ton of under-the-hood character insights. The actor shared how he feels like the first two episodes of Lessons in Chemistry are almost a prequel to Elizabeth’s story overall. Pullman praised Lee Eisenberg for his creative nimbleness and shared the responsibility he felt on taking on a character that was initially not supposed to be in more than a few episodes. He shared the details about crafting the Calvin persona, including the fascinating physical evolution he underwent to distinguish between before Calvin met Elizabeth and after.

Ayla Ruby: So this role was expanded from how it was originally conceived from what I’ve read. Can you talk about your initial journey to the project, what conversations were like when people realized there was lightning in a bottle with Calvin and how that worked?

Lewis Pullman: Yeah. It was a great process. I mean, Lee Eisenberg was the showrunner on this, and really it’s just one of the dream collaborators because he understands, I think as something that I think is really hard to balance, which is having a very clear direction and where you’re going as a storyteller, but then also leaving room for spontaneity and for things that you might want to, like you said, grab lightning in a bottle that might not be as a part of your initial roadmap, but that you’ve left room to add in and to create as you go.

I think that’s a really rare trait. So I would say a lot of the reason why Calvin was expanded upon in the TV show version of this was because of Lee and his kind of nimbleness as a creator. But yeah, I think obviously it was a little bit nerve-wracking to be… Once we finished the first two episodes to find out that there was going to be more, and it was a little bit like… Because you had an exhale like, “Okay, got it in the bag.” And then once I found that out, it was very exciting, obviously, because I was really enjoying working with everyone on this.

It was such a good team. But I was just, I guess a little nervous about tainting Calvin’s position in the story because it’s already dangerous to tell a story in this way. It was, I think a gamble in which is what was so exciting about it, but to have an audience grow so attached two people, and then to just remove one from the equation entirely is you risk some things doing that. But I think that we… I felt like we had done well. And I think that the reason why you do that is to… Because in my opinion, the show really begins on the third episode. I mean, in a lot of ways as Elizabeth’s story, that’s where it kicks off.

In my mind, the first two episodes almost feel like a prequel or a prologue or something like that. And so I was a little concerned about bringing Calvin in a way that was going to tarnish or pollute the waters of Elizabeth’s story because for obvious reasons. But I think Lee explained to me, he was like, “Everything that we learned about Calvin in this from here on out, it’s only going to make it in the show if it informs us about Elizabeth and where she is and where she’s going.”

And so once he said that, I was like, “Okay. That makes sense. I feel like that is the best use of Calvin in this sense.” I mean, not just as of service, but it’s also you get to learn more about Calvin in a great way. But everything that you learn either informs Mad or Elizabeth. And so I thought that was a really smart way to go about it.

Ayla Ruby: I thought using his daughter as kind of the vehicle for that using Mad was very interesting. And like you said, I think it didn’t take away from Elizabeth at all. It was just kind of this beautiful shift in point of view that we hadn’t seen in those first two episodes.

Lewis Pullman: Yeah. Well said.

Ayla Ruby: So Calvin is wonderfully interesting. He’s been through loss with his parents in the Boy’s home. There’s heartbreak, there’s brilliance. How do you as an actor find the truth in him? What was your approach to that and how do you build the character just as you?

Lewis Pullman: In reading the book, I was trying to incorporate things that maybe were in the book spiritually or energetically that some of it wasn’t in the scripts. And also just using all of the material that I had at hand. And then I think in a lot of ways, I’ll start with, it sounds very basic, but just like where am I similar to this person and where am I different? And then you usually start to do all the heavy lifting on the where am I different parts, or you start to just… And you learn where you can really lean into on the where am I similar parts.

I think a lot of what makes Calvin, Calvin is this. He walks through life with this kind of understanding that the world is full of disappointment and most likely it is you are going to be disappointed and especially when it comes to people. So that looks a certain way on somebody in the way they carry themselves and the way they go through life whether that’s how they run or how they row. It’s why they’re doing those things. Why are they doing those things? Is it to quiet some part of their mind? Is it almost as a self-flagellation or is it almost as some sort of therapy? So there’s a lot to work with there, but I think that it was fun to do because in a lot of ways he’s two different people before he meets Elizabeth and after he meets Elizabeth. Me and Sarah Adina Smith really tried to, as best as possible, differentiate what changes within Calvin once he meets Elizabeth, both emotionally and physically in his body and how he interacts and how, I think that, that was a really exciting thing to try and figure out.

Ayla Ruby: So there’s this very unexpected death that you mentioned earlier for him in the second episode, and I was re-watching, and there’s even foreshadowing in the first episode, which I thought was lovely. I’d love if you could talk about that scene, how it evolved, if it evolved at all, and what the mechanics of that were for you as an actor.

Lewis Pullman: Yeah. Well, I never made contact with the bus.

Ayla Ruby: That’s good.

Lewis Pullman: I don’t think I ever even touched that bus, but I saw the bus. It was an interesting scene to shoot because essentially, I think on that day, they were… What’s it called technically? But they were basically overlaying those two different shots onto one. Maybe even three. But essentially I had on this curbside with a stuffed animal dog, and I had to mime him pulling the leash and then the leash coming loose and then mime being hit, and then mime on… So it was very imaginative and it was hard. It’s one of those scenes where you’re doing it and you’re like, “I am a clown. I’m a clown and this is my job.”

Because it was out in Pasadena in public, and there’s obviously some neighbors who would come out there and were watching. If you don’t understand what we’re trying to do, it looks very odd and it looks like I’ve lost my mind. But luckily you have somebody like Sarah who’s constantly reminding you, “This is going to be half a second of the whole scene.”

I do think that they came out really well. I was obviously worried that it was going to be either too gory or too… I think that they did it really well even… And the sound design was like… It’s a tightrope walk to make sure that that’s alarming enough and truthful enough without being indulgently gory or anything like that especially within this landscape of this tonal space. It’s like there’s not much of this kind of shocking maybe… I don’t know. It could have gone into body horror kind of gore, and I thought that they did it really well.

Ayla Ruby:I totally agree. So moving on a little bit, it’s been talked about before, but there’s this magic almost between you and Brie Larson as Elizabeth and Calvin. It’s such a wonderfully tear inducing thing. And it’s very natural. Can you talk about how did you both approach it? How do you find the easiness? How do you get that camaraderie? How that all works?

Lewis Pullman: Oh, yeah. I think there’s a lot of components to it, but I think that it helps when… Brie is such a deeply curious person and loves learning in this way that’s never ending. And it’s a curiosity for all things. And so I think that is really helpful when you’re getting to know somebody, because if we’re both very curious about finding out, learning why another actor is making a story, being a part of something, learning about what they’re hoping to get from it, because usually there’s a reason why we play these characters or why we… And it’s interesting to look at why she was drawn to Elizabeth, why I was drawn to Calvin at this point in my life, at that point in her life. And then on top of it just she brings these board games to set every day. And not just board games, but all sorts of games.

Right off set in between setups, they were always there. And if it was scene work that felt like it was appropriate to go and do that, we would be doing that on the side. And it was like a lot of the scenes where it was very perfect because we’d pick up the game where we left off and there was this playful competitive nature to the dialogue happening off camera that then would bleed into the dialogue happening on camera.

I don’t know if that was intentional or not. I think she just wants to make sure that sets feel good and fun as much as possible, which is a very great thing to be curating for a set. So there was something about that. I think that some of their language… I think Calvin and Elizabeth’s love language is like, it’s like this mental tennis. So having that in the board game, quality of things and then bringing that into on camera really helps a lot.

Ayla Ruby: So there are a couple of really, really cool big Calvin scenes that I’d love to ask about. There’s one, I think it’s in seven where he’s ring shopping and it’s very traditional and it’s also very… It’s a traditional moment for Calvin and what Elizabeth [would want]… But it’s the ring lady. And I’d love if you could talk about that scene, what it was like, what went into your performance with that, and just anything you can share.

Lewis Pullman: Yeah. I think I was nervous about that scene. I think I was nervous because it is such a great opportunity. I think I always get scared when I know there’s a well-written scene and the only thing that’s going to mess it up is me. I think why that scene is so important and why I loved it so much is because it’s something that Calvin, I assume had never done. So he is almost finding himself there in this moment and learning, and teaching himself how this is done. And I think if you buy a piece of jewelry for somebody… I think that buying clothing or jewelry for somebody is a very different gift giving than a book or something like that.

Because if you expect them to actually wear these things, you are both assuming that you know them very well. And you’re assuming that you also maybe know something about them that they don’t know. I think the perfect thing like the gifts or the clothes that I’ve been given that I love are, if they’re almost like, “Oh, I might not have picked this out for myself, but I like that. I like that you saw that you thought it would look good on me or something like that.”

So all those parts, elements of gift giving, but then put into the biggest gift of all time, the wedding ring. And so it’s big and. It’s an important… And you’re kind of wondering, “What is he doing?” They had this whole conversation in bed about marriage and everything and kids. What is his proposal going to look like? I think that in a lot of ways I knew that you weren’t going to get to see him propose to her, so you get to see his intention without him saying it in that moment. You get to why he picks out the ring that he picks it out.

I think he says something like it’s simple but complex or something like that. Or it’s clear, but complex or like something that. Boiling down the representation of what the ring is and was basically you get to learn almost in some way how he’s going to propose and what he’s going to say to her through the act of purchasing the ring in itself.

Ayla Ruby: Again, that episode appropriately titled, The Book of Calvin has so many Calvin things. We learn more about the relationship between the Reverend and Calvin, and it’s really wonderful. But beyond that, there’s this incredible monologue told through one of the letters. It’s about what Elizabeth means to Calvin. And I would love if you could… It’s sincere. It’s remarkable. What kind of went into that, I guess, monologue for you?

Lewis Pullman: Is that the monologue where he says, “She’s my why?”

Ayla Ruby: Yep.

Lewis Pullman: She’s my… Yeah.

Ayla Ruby: She’s my why. The reasons why he loves her, basically.

Lewis Pullman: Yeah. Oh, gosh, my memory is foggy. I wish I had in front of me, but I think that those were… In some way he was with the Reverend kind of having this beautiful dialogue about religion and science, and in some ways they kind of fuse into the same thing by the end of their dialogue. And I think that despite Calvin’s reluctance to accept any sort of religion into his world and heart, I think what he’s discovering is in many ways what enriches somebody’s life with religion he was finding with Elizabeth.

She was providing him almost with this proof that there is something, there is magic in this world. There are things that are unexplainable. And I think that that was kind of where he arrived at. It was a beautiful way for their letters to come to a bit of more closure before Calvin went.

Ayla Ruby: I don’t want to laugh over it, but I’m thinking of the dog puppet now. So I’m not trying to… So there’s also a lot of physicality in this role. You mentioned the rowing, the running. I’d love if you could talk about that. And also there’s a dance. I’d love if you could talk about how you came up with that and anything about all of that.

Lewis Pullman: Yeah. I think it was important for me to even in just my body language change the amount of tension and almost physically representing almost like a shell of a turtle for protection or something. And once he falls in love with Elizabeth, it’s this curtain of warmth. It’s a bath of confidence or at least of calm that comes over him. And just trying to figure out how best to represent that in my body.

I think that the dancing… There’s a couple different moments of dancing, but I think that the moment where we are drinking and we’re walking, we’re both, I think Calvin does a little walk around the table, and I think we were just improving there and I had a cup, I had a mug, and I just improv that the mug, this was full or I wouldn’t do it, but that the mug was a hat or something. But that was all just improv dancing. And then the crazy moment of dancing.

There’s a moment that’s a lot more kind of… It feels like a convulsion or almost like violent moment of expression is something that Sarah Adina Smith… I did that. I think that’s in there for probably maybe four seconds or something.

Ayla Ruby: It’s short.

Lewis Pullman: But we did it so many times that I threw my neck out because I was trying to figure out. It was supposed to be like this moment of… To show that he’s able to lose himself entirely. I think that Sarah and I both agreed that there’s something really admirable or endearing about somebody who can unapologetically express themselves in a way, I think in a way, whether they know that it’s embarrassing or not, that it doesn’t really matter. If that is some sort of representation of him almost on a cellular level, almost short-circuiting in a way that he’s making himself to… Because he loves controlled chaos and he loves jazz music, and so it’s in this way of almost like shaking the etch-a-sketch of his brain to kind of restart or rejump or spit fire into a new direction. He’s all about that. That was a fun one to do though.

Ayla Ruby: Yeah. I know we’re getting close on time, but was there anything super challenging besides everything you’ve talked about or really gratifying to just bring to life and for you to just accomplish with this?

Lewis Pullman: I think, there was a lot that was really gratifying. I would say that the thing that was most gratifying was it’s always such a relief to walk on set or on a project and discover that the creative team behind it is not just posing that they love to be open collaborators. I think a lot of people can often say that this is a collaboration, so your opinion really is important. But knowing it comes down to it, that’s actually just kind of a nice thing to say or something. But in this case, it was very much true.

It was a true blue collaborative experience. Everybody’s voices were being heard and considered in a very beautiful way. That’s rare. And so that’s kind of why you do it, that’s why I do it, is to have those moments in time where you can try and fail and everybody just picks each other back up and they celebrate that, the attempt to at least to try. That kind of cushion and freedom is where I think relaxation is bred. And then with relaxation comes the confidence or the willingness to try and fail. I think some of those moments are what you see in there where it feels like they’re flying or it looks like we’re a little bit without ground because we are just exploring and trying things, and I think that that’s where beautiful art is made, in my opinion.

Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. I think that’s a wonderful sentiment to end on too. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk.

Lewis Pullman: Thank you for the wonderful questions. It was great to see you. Great to meet you.

Ayla Ruby: Great to meet you.

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Lewis Pullman On Filling In Blanks For His Character In The Starling Girl

After successfully making the rounds on the festival circuit, The Starling Girl has finally arrived in theaters to much critical acclaim. Writer and director Laurel Parmet's feature film debut is an exploration of danger and desire in a repressed religious community, a story that takes elements from her own life and her research. At the center of the thoughtful tale is teenage Jem Starling (Eliza Scanlen, Little Women), whose highly structured life is upended when she falls in love for the first time.

The object of her affection is married youth pastor Owen Taylor (Lewis Pullman, Top Gun: Maverick), who returns from an extended trip abroad and finds himself isolated from his church and family. Their bond is equal parts tender and traumatic, allowing Jem to free herself from her previous restraints while also rendering her vulnerable to being taken advantage of. The ensemble cast of The Starling Girl, who exist primarily through Jem's eyes but neverthelessflesh out the world, include For All Mankind's Wrenn Schmidt as Jem's mother, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Jimmi Simpson as her father, and Euphoria's Austin Abram's as Owen's brother.

Screen Rant spoke to Pullman about how he and costar Eliza Scanlen utilized the rehearsal time they were blessed with while filming The Starling Girl, which scene stood out to him most, and what he hopes to see in Top Gun 3.

Eliza said that it was a priority to be able to have some rehearsal time. How did that affect your dynamic together and your understanding of this very complicated relationship?

Lewis Pullman: It was crucial. Laurel talks about this openly, but she had a relationship sort of similar to it. And because I had a lot of questions, and I had a lot of things where I wasn't sure of how far we wanted to go, or what our pocket was, and where we wanted to be totally. That week of rehearsals, we were able to explore how far was too far, how far was not far enough, and to build a common language and a shorthand between me and Eliza and Laurel. So that on the day, we knew exactly what versions we wanted to try. Laurel could say a couple words, and we know exactly what she means. And it just gave Eliza and I an opportunity to play. We would do a lot of improvisation in order to expand our idea of how they might interact outside of the dialogue. And that, I think, allowed us to feel comfortable. On the day, it's rare to get those rehearsal days, even on a huge budget movie. I think Kevin Rowe and Kara Durrett, the producers, and Laurel really fought for that week. They protected it, and that was a big part of it.

Do you have a scene in the film that either resonates the most with you, or that you were proudest of seeing from its inception to its actual execution?

Lewis Pullman: I think the scene where Jem and Owen end up wrestling in the river. Having that conversation was special for me because that's the kind of scene that you build up in your mind so much. It feels like such a pivotal moment for them and for Owen; he's so expressive in that moment, and he's so truthful and earnest in this way that I think he can't really be with anybody else — or he feels like he can't be. I think it really is a part of what made his love for her make so much sense to me; what he says in that, and how she responds. That was one we had, like, 30 minutes to shoot because it was getting towards the end of the night, and that river was freezing. We were both shivering so much, but poor Eliza. We had to do my close-ups first, so I was already warmer, and I could hide the shakes a little bit. Then she had to go after me, and she was doing an impeccable job recruiting all of her energy to make sure she wasn't vibrating. But it added this energy and fueled this interesting vibration to that scene. I really thought that was a beautiful scene, and it turned out well.

I also loved you in Top Gun: Maverick. What are your hopes for Bob in Top Gun 3?

Lewis Pullman: Oh, my gosh. You know, I'm all about low expectations, low disappointment. I don't want to fantasize too much. But, of course, that was such an incredible experience. We would love to revisit it, and everyone on that movie is like family now. We could sink back into those characters so easily. It's just about finding the right story that feels like it needs to be told in order to further Maverick's journey.

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Atta Boy Reunite After Eight Years for Sophomore Album ‘Big Heart Manners’ – Audiofemme

When the members of LA-based indie rock band Atta Boy are together, it’s easy to tell they’re childhood friends. The group was first formed when lead singer Eden Brolin, guitarist Freddy Reish, keyboardist Dashel Thompson, and drummer Lewis Pullman were in high school, and their first album Out of Sorts was recorded soon after graduating college. After an eight-year hiatus, they’ve just reunited to release their sophomore album, Big Heart Manners.

“[For our first album] we weren’t very emotionally mature,” points out Brolin, citing the growing up the band did in the interim as a major creative driver of the album. “There was something about that flip-flop and taking risks in either direction and seeing the growth in something even though you put it down for a while.”

“We were curious to get back together and see what our sound was because it had been eight years since we were in the same room together,” Pullman adds. “My personal goal was to refine what our sound was and reintegrate and just kind of challenge ourselves to push each other into new realms.”

In contrast to the more upbeat, poppy vibe of Out of Sorts, folk and country influences are audible in the new music, which is more reminiscent of bands like Band of Horses or Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. The new album also incorporated some new instrumentals, including acoustic guitar and woodwinds.

In the first single off the album, “Devoted,” Brolin’s smooth, mellow voice reflects on a troubled friendship. The second, “Shade,” was co-written by Brolin and her partner Cameron Crosby and is based on a macabre dream she had about twins living in the same big house yet separated in different rooms, who ultimately took their own lives together. “What I take most and enjoy most from my dreams are just images that give you a different sense of what your own reality is,” she says.

Whether pulled from a dream or from those encountered in real life, Big Heart Manners is populated with a wide range of characters, their stories rendered in potent lyrical imagery. “Every time I hear lyrics that I’m amazed by, the first thing  I want to do is look up the analysis. It’s nice to hear an explanation to some degree, but it’s also awesome to leave that up to the listener to have their own relationship to the words,” Brolin says. “I want people to have their own experience with it.”

The album’s title comes from lyrics from the song “Lucky,” which the band members all wrote together. Like “Shade,” it centers on a rather pitiable fictional character. “Your boss at work tells you that you’re dumber than dirt / but you got them real big heart manners,” Brolin sings against simple, subdued keyboard chords.

“It’s about somebody that just sort of persists through the shittiest shit and just mean fucking people all day that just don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, and still, through that, being able to lend yourself to trying to be the best possible person that you can be,” says Brolin, who is also known for her acting work on shows like Beyond and Yellowstone. “And that’s what I think big heart manners are.”

“The best way to beat hate is to beat it with love, that’s what ‘Lucky’ does,” Reish agrees.

The band is currently collaborating with animator Deepti Menon on a video for “Lucky,” as well as an additional EP. In the meantime, they’re serving as ambassadors for the organization for Headcount, which helps people register to vote, and will be posting information on how to vote on their Instagram and even their previously inactive Twitter. “That’s gonna be our first tweet and could very possible be our last tweet,” Reish jokes. “A lot of people feel powerless when it comes to their vote or even if they should vote, but Headcount has tons of valuable information that can help you find and support candidates who actually fight for change, not just preach it.”

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Interview: Lewis Pullman on Playing a Life Coach in Skincare

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Skincare star Lewis Pullman about the upcoming thriller directed by Austin Peters. IFC Films will release the Elizabeth Banks-led movie exclusively in theaters on August 16, 2024.

Famed aesthetician Hope Goldman (Elizabeth Banks) is about to take her career to the next level by launching her very own skincare line, but her personal and work lives are challenged when rival facialist Angel Vergara (Luis Gerardo Méndez) opens a new skincare boutique directly across from her store. She starts to suspect that someone is trying to sabotage her reputation and business, and together with her friend Jordan (Lewis Pullman), she embarks on a mission to unravel the mystery of who is trying to destroy her life.

Tyler Treese: Your character in Skincare is a life coach. That’s like an instant red flag when I hear that occupation. What was your prep for this role? Did you look into any real-life life coaches? Especially those who are projecting an image more than who they really say they are.

Lewis Pullman: I watched a lot of YouTube videos, and it was really fun because, obviously, there are some great life coaches out there, but there are too many bad ones. So that was obviously the route I was looking into more. It’s clear that he is an entrepreneur of sorts, but he’s like a jack of all trades, master of none sort of.

There’s that scene where I do get to do some life coaching, and we weren’t sure how much we were gonna use of it, so Austin usually let me go for it. I was just kind of summoning all the life coach sessions that I had experienced in the month prior. Just coming up with this. They love a good analogy, but some of them are literally, if you were to [really] listen, you’re like, “This doesn’t make any sense what you’re saying.” So, to try to put in some of that, I thought it would be interesting.

When we were first talking about Jordan’s voice, I thought trying to figure out how he sounds or likes the people that maybe he respects and how they sound. I started listening to a lot of interviews of Justin Timberlake because… not that he’s a life coach, obviously, but he has a beautiful voice and it’s kind of seductive and sort of soft and slightly effeminate. I thought that it was 2013, so what if he was obsessed with Justin and was trying to kind of — ’cause he sort of is a chameleon — replicate certain people that he’s looking to or mirror them. But we ended up tuning that down a little bit, the Justin Timberlake voice, but it came out a little bit when he was doing his voice coaching. Thought that was pretty funny.

I love that you mentioned how there’s a lot of talking in circles because it really doesn’t cut the mustard if you really look at what they’re saying, but if you say it confidently or eloquently enough, people are just completely fooled.

That’s the key right there. That’s sort of, honestly, that’s at everything that’s at the nucleus of Jordan is like. Fake it until you make it kind of mentality.

I love Elizabeth Banks’ performance here, and you both get some excellent scenes together. What just really stood out about her as a scene partner and getting to see her go all out? I know she’s great in comedies, but it’s so nice to see her just have such a juicy, dramatic role here.

God, I know, isn’t it? When I read this, I knew that she was attached to it, so I could easily imagine her doing it. It’s one of those roles where you’re like, “Nobody else.” Who else is gonna be able to lock into this like she did? And she did it even better than I ever imagined. So, yeah, it was like every day a masterclass just of her.

She works so hard and has such a good work ethic. She’s a great director as well, so it’s cool to watch how she breaks down a scene and how she approaches it. But she’s also like a very joyous person and the more joy there is on a set, the more relaxed everyone is, the more free they are to try things out. I think that that she set the tone and so it was one of the great joys for me getting to work with her.

You were just at San Diego Comic-Con and Thunderbolts* had such a big showing. You have to be so secretive about these projects, so how was it just seeing the crowd really respond positively to it and getting to see that work starting to pay off?

Oh man, that was incredible to be able to have a seat at that table. Yeah, my heart stopped when I walked out on that stage. It was beautiful, I mean, all those people that were in there were so kind, and it was cool to be able to see. We worked so hard on the movie and then to see face to face the people who love it so much, why we put so much work into it, and how appreciative they were even before it came out. But you know, just to see that I was like, “All right. Yeah, it was all worth it, what we did.” I’m excited for them and everybody to see it.

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In conversation with Lewis Pullman, star of ‘Lessons in Chemistry’

Warning: Major spoilers for the show “Lessons in Chemistry” ahead. 

“Lessons in Chemistry” is an underdog story – a show about a woman taking back control of her life after unfortunate circumstances, about how it’s never too late to find yourself. But before it turns into that, it’s a love story. 

Based on Bonnie Garmus’ book of the same name, “Lessons in Chemistry” stars Brie Larson as Elizabeth Zott, a woman working as a lab tech in the 1950s who dreams of being a scientist. Eventually, Elizabeth will go on to host her own cooking show, but at the beginning of the series, her aspirations continue to fall flat, time and time again. That is, until she meets Dr. Calvin Evans (Lewis Pullman). 

Over the course of the show’s first two episodes, the relationship between Elizabeth and Calvin evolves from cordiality between colleagues to a blossoming romance between two people who, up until this point, were perfectly content to be alone. Watching these two intensely guarded people begin to open up to each other is almost cathartic, in a way, and the chemistry between Larson and Pullman is quick to ignite. For a moment, it feels like everything is falling into place – until tragedy strikes, and Elizabeth is left to deal with the fallout. 

“Lessons in Chemistry” premiered on Apple TV+ last October, but Rough Draft Atlanta recently got the chance to speak with Pullman about his role in the show. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

I read an interview with you where you said that you didn’t audition for this show. What is that feeling like? Not having to audition, just being asked to come in for a part?

Lewis Pullman:  It’s a good question, because it is a different thing, you know? You’d think it would be entirely good, but there are some parts of it that … can be a little alarming. You’re like, well what is it that I have done that makes you think [I’d be good]? I don’t know what I’m gonna do, so how do they know what I’m gonna do if I don’t know what I’m gonna do yet? 

I think there are two very intriguing reasons to do something. One is when somebody sees something in you that they believe in that you don’t. That is always a good reason to plunge into something. And then the other is when somebody doesn’t see something in you, they don’t think you can do something, but you know that you can. I think those are both very intriguing paths to follow. 

It’s interesting you bring up that duality. Which one do you think this was for you, and what made you say yes? What drew you to the role?

Pullman: This was something that I really felt like – when I read it, I was very flattered that I was being thought of, but I didn’t know exactly what they were looking for. It’s such a specific story. It’s not like it’s just a [romantic drama]. It’s so many things, and it’s not really Calvin’s story, you know, at all. So where does he fit in, how does this character best serve Elizabeth Zott’s story, were all these questions that I had. 

Once I got the answers – which were essentially like, it’s not trying to really fit into any sort of genre, we’re trying to just tell a truthful story, which is what Bonnie Garmus’s book was. It’s a very unique, beautiful story about a woman conquering a whole minefield of misogyny despite all odds, and being very distinct despite [living] in a time where being distinct was not celebrated. So it was cool to just try and figure out the puzzle piece of how Calvin fits into that.

I read a couple of interviews with you, to get a jumping off point for this, and I think you’ve spoken pretty thoughtfully about trying to fit yourself into the story in an interesting way. Not to jump into spoilers right away, but your character dies after two episodes. I think that creates a difficulty of crafting a relationship that we only get to spend so much time with, but it has to be really upsetting when it’s ripped away. I think you and Brie Larson achieved that, but what was the process of building up that chemistry? Did you do a chemistry test? How much time did you spend crafting that relationship? 

Pullman: We didn’t do a chemistry test. Lee Eisenberg, the showrunner, and Sarah Adina Smith, the director of the first two episodes, and Brie – obviously, Brie Larson, she’s a producer on this – I think that they were all on the same page from the get that it was going to be an open dialogue, and we were going to be able to do rehearsals and have conversations about what we wanted to bring into it. That kind of created a landscape of very, you know, you can bring a little bit of yourself to this story, which I think immediately makes you feel like you can bring more humanity to it, you know? Sarah Adina Smith really encouraged those small moments that maybe weren’t on the page, you know? Finding those little beats and those little things that make a relationship feel four dimensional. I think I gotta just give all the credit where credit’s due. It was designed really well. The writers really made it – you know, it’s like a mini movie, the first two episodes, which is beautifully arced out and very intricately designed. It feels full, and right when it feels full is, you know, obviously when it’s taken away. 

I was supposed to just be in the first three episodes, and I think that they realized that they were able to do that, actually, within the first two episodes. Because if you give them too much time with [Calvin and Elizabeth], then it’s really not very nice [laughs] to an audience. 

Well, I hadn’t read the book and I was completely shocked. So it definitely worked on me. 

Pullman: That’s good to hear. 

And the added aspect of having the dog narrate the death – I mean, if you want to talk about kind of a mean thing to do, I was a little bit of a wreck. 

Pullman: The dog. The dog!

I know. The dog. What a great dog. Wonderful actor. 

Pullman: A beautiful dog. Truly. 

In relation to that idea of trying to find an aspect of yourself in a character, I was reading another interview with you where you said that’s part of the reason you choose characters, but you also like to choose roles that intimidate you, or scare you in some way. I wondered if you could elaborate on that, and what type of roles give you that feeling? 

Pullman: I think there are scripts that you can read one day and feel extremely connected to it. In indies sometimes, they take a long time to take off. So then, it can be two, three years later and you revisit the script and you’ve already developed, or moved on, or explored some sort of realm that was intriguing about that [script] … you’ve already either explored that, or you’re not interested in exploring that, or it doesn’t scare you anymore, or it doesn’t feel like some sort of hill you want to climb.

I’ve found that, strangely, the fear is – well, it’s those two things. There’s the duality of it, like you were saying. You can read something that’s so far from yourself and feel a challenge – you know, I think the word “problem” is interesting, because I think it can have a negative connotation. But there’s two different types of problems, right? There’s one problem where it’s daunting and it’s not exciting to solve the problem. And then there’s a problem where it’s almost like a puzzle, and it’s intriguing, and you’re pulled in and you want to try and feel challenged to solve it. 

[I look for] problems that light you up in that childlike way, where you’re challenged to figure it out. You’re like, can I do this? How do I do this? There’s something exciting and kind of scary about that, walking into the dark. But I do think it’s that fear that kind of forces you to make choices. You have to be in a very inebriated, kind of inhibitionless state, because there’s no other way to discover those things except to be fully free. You cannot be restricted. So, there’s something exhilarating about that. 

It’s interesting, the word “problem.” Did Calvin make you feel like that? He ends up being a pretty warm presence throughout the show, but he starts off kind of thorny. 

Pullman: I think he might even be thornier in the book, maybe. That’s also, in my opinion, what the book did so well, and what Lee Eisenberg and the writers just nailed, was the two characters, at the point that you meet them, they’ve accepted that they’re better off alone. You know, they have found their part of the world that they like existing in, and most of that doesn’t involve interacting with other people. So I think there’s such reward when they finally collide, and they’re actually [with] this other person. 

Brie did this thing – I don’t know if she did this intentionally – but I think one of the reasons why the chemistry reads so well is she rarely smiles … in the first episode until she’s with Calvin. And there’s such reward in seeing her kind of open up. You read that as trust, and you read that as willingness to fall in love with somebody, which Elizabeth had been so protective and resistant against. Nobody had interested her or challenged her. 

That’s a really good point. Calvin appears in the show after his death, but as sort of a manifestation of Elizabeth’s grief, in a certain way. How do you, or do you at all, alter your approach to the character in that instance, from an acting standpoint? 

Pullman: I think I went into it and was like, he is more kind of this ethereal thing. But then I realized, you know, it’s basically a glimpse or a little flash of where he would be, where they would be, what they would be doing if he was still there. But it is a little bit from her perspective, because it is, technically, from her imagination of what he would be doing, I guess. But she knew him better than anybody, so I just basically tried to play it like it was any other moment – except for the very last moment, which is sort of more like he was kind of leaving her. 

Yeah, some kind of peace. 

Pullman: Yeah. 

I know that you’re also a musician, and obviously jazz plays a big part in Calvin’s story at the beginning. Were you really into jazz before? How did you approach his relationship to music with your own background as a musician? 

Pullman: You know, I played in jazz band growing up, but I was never drawn to jazz, personally. I think originally, Calvin listened to a lot of like, Frank Sinatra. I can’t remember if it was Lee or Sarah who came up with the idea of having his music, his love for music mirror … the way his brain worked, [which] was very much sporadic and this kind of improvisational, kind of like manufacturing chaos in order to find the patterns and find the inspiration within. 

That was a very helpful part in getting into him, was listening to a lot more jazz, and trying to feel that little more frantic, more searching for something [feeling]. There’s something very uncontrolled and controlled about jazz, and I think he had certain parts of his life that he really needed to be in control of, and then other parts he had no regard for.

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Lewis Pullman Is Sorry for Making You Sob During ‘Lessons in Chemistry’

The actor spoke to Cosmopolitan about playing board games on set with Brie Larson and why he was okay taking a role where (spoiler) he dies two episodes in.

If you’re coming here because you've been personally victimized by Lessons in Chemistry (aka you sobbed hysterically into your popcorn and glass of wine while watching episodes 2 to 8), welcome. You’re not alone, and we’re here to help. Actually, we’re mostly here to talk to Lewis Pullman, who stars as Calvin Evans in the series that follows Brie Larson and Lewis as the titular chemists who fall in love but in a flew-too-close-to-the-sun kind of way before tragedy strikes. Lewis has the very-difficult job of helping to construct a believable and complete love story in only two episodes. And spoiler alert: He does it.

We asked him about working on that task with Larson, why he loved Calvin and Elizabeth’s dynamic and why acting feels a little bit like being a clown sometimes.

Editor’s note: There are many more spoilers ahead for Lessons in Chemistry, so if you haven’t finished the show yet, don’t say we didn’t warn ya!

I’m wondering how the conversations about this role went with your agents when they were like, Okay, Lewis, role looks great. You do die in episode 2. Tell me about how this came about for you.

[Laughs] Nail on the head there—that’s kind of how it went down. It’s a no-brainer to get to work with Lee Eisenberg and Brie Larson on a story that is so beloved. But that also comes with a lot of fear. You don’t want to be the one stick in the spokes.

If you were to look at my grades from high school, I was unsure whether I could fake being a scientist. I love their relationship, and I love his personal history and him as a character, but I’m honestly so bad at science. Luckily, they had all these incredible scientists on set to help us. I had to ask them to explain it to me like I was a 2-year-old.

You and Brie have such wonderful rapport in the first few episodes of the series. I’m wondering what the chemistry read process was like for the two of you.

We didn’t have a chemistry read for Lessons in Chemistry. We tried to build the scaffolding by workshopping a lot of things and not being afraid to try and fail and land on exactly what it was about these two people that made them such magnet to each other. They found each other in such a rare, statistically unlikely scenario, especially because they’re such particular people.

And Brie is so great. She brings a whole basket of games on set and has such a lively and playful approach to her work. So we would be playing games in between takes with the whole cast and that immediately makes it feel like a family.

What kind of games? Like, board games or card games?

Like Boggle and Catch Phrase. She had a whole plastic tub of them. It was so fun. And you’d do a scene and then you’d go back and you pick up right where you left off in the game.

What was your favorite part of the Calvin and Elizabeth dynamic?

It’s a very fresh-feeling romance and they are these very awkward people. They don’t abide by a lot of social norms and they don’t like most people or they don’t get along with most people, which makes the likelihood of them finding somebody that they get along with decently, let alone fall in love with, extremely improbable. It’s so fun to play people who aren’t used to being in romantic relationships. It’s almost like the age-old alien comes to Earth and tries to assimilate with humanity.

I liked how earnestly they were into each other. There was no cynicism in their relationship.

Especially once they finally accept it, because it is so hard when you’re used to being alone for so long. It must feel like an impossibility. And everything feels dissonant. And even the best things that feel so good, they’re new, so they feel uncomfortable.

I want to fast-forward a little and talk about your character’s death. I’ll admit I had not read the book, so I was surprised. And I was literally watching it with my goldendoodle on my lap, sobbing hysterically. What was it like to film?

Oh no! That was one of those moments where I was like, I’m a clown. What I’m doing for a living is that I’m a jester, I’m a fool. We had to shoot that three different ways: one where the camera was static, one where I’m trying to pull a fake dog, and one without a bus, where I mime being hit by a bus. We’re in Pasadena with all these onlookers. But it even surprised me when I finally watched the whole series. It happens in such an abrupt and in a way that has a violence to it that is realistic without being too gory. And that final shot on Six-Thirty is heartbreaking. That dog really stole the show there.

Have you had any friends or family text you being like, “Thank you for making me sob, Lewis”?

My mom was like, “No more dying in movies, please. Can we stop?”

For the rest of the series, you appear in flashbacks. How did you wrap your head around playing a character that the audience knows has since passed away? Do you alter your performance in any way?

When I read it on the page I was like, Oh, this is easy. I just come in and comfort her. But I’m not exactly playing Calvin. I’m playing Elizabeth’s perception of what she would hope Calvin might do in that moment. When you lose somebody, you can’t help but try and fill in the blanks of how they might support you or respond to you or what questions you wish you could ask them and how they might answer it. And so in some ways, those scenes were less Calvin, and more trying to be a physicalization of Elizabeth’s grief and almost a hologram of what she predicts or she fantasizes about what he would be doing or saying.

Yeah, he’s almost a dream to her at that point.

Yeah, totally. I got a little too accurate on some of it because I would just come around the corner and console her and Mad, and I was like, Where am I coming from? What am I doing in my office? Was I doing work or did I have a ghost mask and I was just like, haunting the halls? That was something that was not on the page.

What was your favorite scene to play in the series?

I love the Christmas scene montage. Brie and I got to play and dance and try and bring to life to their relationship, the manifestation of their bliss. You’re also creating memories that you know Brie’s character is going to look back on, so the richer, the better. And that was such a fun, playful day.

My last question for you—it’s a very serious one: The outlet Decider called you a “mega dreamboat” in the show, and I’m wondering if you’d like to respond to that.

That’s such a high compliment. I didn’t know about that. A “mega dreamboat,” that’s a double whammy. That’s a high honor. I think there’s many others heads fit for that crown. I wouldn’t put myself on the list, but I’m honored to at least spend the rest of this afternoon pretending.

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Captain America’s Danny Ramirez Gives Lewis Pullman His Best G-Force Face

There are a few ways to know when you’ve made it big in Hollywood, and starring in a Top Gun movie is probably at the top of the list. Well, that— or landing a role in the MCU. Danny Ramirez, who stars as Falcon alongside Anthony Mackie in Captain America: Brave New World, has now checked both boxes. But the 32-year-old actor is way more than just a major blockbuster player. As he gets ready to appear in the second season of The Last of Us, Ramirez called up his old friend and Top Gun: Maverick costar Lewis Pullman to reflect on joining some of the biggest franchises in Hollywood, though he hasn’t forsaken his indie roots. “That’s where I came from, that’s where I’m going to, and that’s where I will live,” he told Pullman from the backseat of a Cadillac, naturally.

———

LEWIS PULLMAN: Where are you?

DANNY RAMIREZ: I’m in the back of a Suburban? A Cadillac? A Cadillac.

PULLMAN: Nice. Scream it from the rooftops, buddy.

RAMIREZ: Yeah, it’s always a dream to be in the back of one of these, you know?

PULLMAN: That’s what you did all the work for. [Laughs]

RAMIREZ: [Laughs] This is the payoff. 

PULLMAN: Okay. Should we start this thing?

RAMIREZ: Let’s do it. I appreciate you doing this. 

PULLMAN: Dude, I love you to death. I was honored to get the call. I want to start with this. I just went to the premiere of your movie, and it was the biggest premiere I’ve ever been to, and you were the star of it. You had your whole family there, and some of your best friends, and you had to leave two hours after to get on a plane to go to wherever you are right now. Paint me a picture of where your head is at, where your heart is at. What’s sinking in? What’s not sinking in?

RAMIREZ: I think that gave me a little whiplash. To be fair, it was a little chaotic to think that my mom was visiting L.A. for the first time, and then I just had to peace out on her. And then leaving the premiere is another thing, but in regards to the film’s reception, or the size of the premiere, that to me felt like a small premiere, which is weird. I had such a curated experience of it, and it was still a celebration, but it was just… segment, segment, segment. And then, the celebration itself was watching the film with everyone. But the rest of it paled in comparison to having my family be there.

PULLMAN: Where are you right now?

RAMIREZ: I’m in New York. I’m about to do Hot Ones.

PULLMAN: You’re going to do Hot Ones?

RAMIREZ: Dude, I know. I don’t know if they’re ready for what’s going to happen to me.

PULLMAN: They’re not. For the readers out there, he’s born with probably the worst tolerance to spicy foods, but also the most gumption to continue to push past the discomfort. I couldn’t think of a better person to be on Hot Ones.

RAMIREZ: It’s me and Anthony [Mackie], head to head.

PULLMAN: You just have to put yourself in a position where you’re going to be destroyed for a couple days, but you have to beat Mackie.

RAMIREZ: That’s basically what I’ve solidified in my head.

PULLMAN: First of all, I was so fucking proud of you watching this thing, man. It was an out-of-body experience, because I’ve gotten to know you so well and your performance is so magnetic. You’ve also done a lot of indie movies. What do you find are the main similarities between an indie movie and a huge big blockbuster like this?

RAMIREZ: That’s a great question. We all got lucky that a director like Julius [Onah] was the one that led us through Captain America [Brave New World], because he’s an indie director. That’s where he comes from. And the way he approached the story kept it grounded, outside of  the days that you have to do some crazy stunts or some green screen things. So the energy he brought to set was that of an intrapersonal character drama. Honestly, this presser has been hilarious, because everyone’s like, “Yeah, Top Gun and Captain America, you’re a big action guy. Would you ever do indie movies?” I’m like, “Yo, that’s all I ever do, don’t rewrite my story now.” That’s where I came from, that’s where I’m going to go, and that’s where I will live.

PULLMAN: Right. You’re a part of The Last of Us now, which is massive, and with these huge franchises that already have existing IP, there’s a lot of expectations. You have Top Gun, Captain America, The Last of Us, so there’s a preconceived notion about what world you’re stepping into, what character you’re playing, how it should be. How do you navigate going those projects while staying true to what you want to do?

RAMIREZ: Another great question. You’re doing so much better than all these press junkets. To me, it makes it easier because the world’s established, so I have a bunch of tethers. It’s already a moving train. I’m not going to decide, “Hey, you know what? Let’s go this way.” I don’t want to shift its destination. Everyone knows their role. You’re a part of a system.

PULLMAN: Is there a world or a type of work that you feel like you haven’t touched yet, a collaborative format that you haven’t had the opportunity to dive into? And what would that look like?

RAMIREZ: I think a straight-up comedy. That’s terrifying to me. There’s parts of this movie that I’m funny in, because it’s circumstantial and situational, but a broader comedy terrifies me.

PULLMAN: What I appreciate so much about your performance in this is you do have a lot of the comedic relief on your shoulders, and you do play it with so much reality, and such grounded-ness. You’re not hamming it up. 

RAMIREZ: Thank you.

PULLMAN: You’ve worked with so many incredible people in such a short amount of time, and I feel like you are really good about collecting and protecting little gems of knowledge from them. Is there something that you learned from Mackie that you’re going to take with you?

RAMIREZ: Yeah, it goes back to the previous question about a pre-existing culture on a set, and the first day on Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Mackie pulled me to the side. He’s like, “Yo, being in the MCU is like being in a theater troupe. Everyone here has been working together for the past 15 years.” And so sitting with that information, I think it was, “You’re not going to reinvent the wheel. Don’t come here to change the course, but let’s collaborate.” And that��s the same way we created Top Gun: Maverick. We were all fresh and new, but there was no need to impose ourselves and play selfishly. So I took that theater troupe mentality, hoping to establish it in the future projects.

PULLMAN: I love that he took the time to tell you that.

RAMIREZ: It was two sentences, right? It was only 30 seconds of his time.

PULLMAN: 30 seconds on his schedule. That’s two days.

RAMIREZ: Yeah, that’s true. He is Captain America.

PULLMAN: Okay. I’m going to divert to a sappy one here. You work pretty consistently. Even when you have time off, you somehow fill it with work that’s setting the stones for whatever’s next. You must get tired. What do you tell yourself in those moments, where you feel like you might be becoming complacent or you might be settling for mediocrity?

RAMIREZ: Well, I absolutely get tired. I’ve gone through different phases where I seek balance, and I was seeking it so intensely, that I was like, “I’m not seeking balance.” There were times within the training for this movie that I was tired and didn’t want to do the extra miles at the end and I was like, “No, I get to train like an athlete right now. What would little me think of this moment?” Or if I have to work a scene and I’m exhausted, I’m like, “Little me would be happy that I’m going to be able to provide for my family.” 

PULLMAN: That’s cool.

RAMIREZ: Yeah, I tap into that quite often, because there’s so many moments that I think I could get jaded. You get jaded real quick if you run into people that are not doing this for the right reasons. That’s one of the things that affects me the most, is seeing someone that just wants to do this to be famous.

PULLMAN: Okay. I’ve got some rapid-fire questions. You’re stranded on a desert island, you can only watch three movies for the rest of your life. What are they?

RAMIREZ: Interstellar would be one. I’m jealous of my friends that are able to quote Will Ferrell movies like it’s scripture, so I’ll go Step Brothers just to have a light movie that I could memorize, so if I ever get returned back to society I would still fit in, just because so many people quote that movie. The third would be City of God.

PULLMAN: Nice.

RAMIREZ: That’s the movie that got it all started for me, because I think the other two are missing romantic elements. This one has romantic elements, but it’s also a really good drama.

PULLMAN: Yeah.

RAMIREZ: And then, I’ll sneak one in, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.

PULLMAN: You’ve been telling me to watch that for a year. 

RAMIREZ: You have to, dude. You’d love it.

PULLMAN: Okay, I got to get on that. 

RAMIREZ: I see you update your Letterboxd all the time and I never see Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. It’s almost a slap in the face. [Laughs] This is why I asked for you to interview me, so I could turn this around on you.

PULLMAN: They should create a thing in Letterboxd where you can pay a hundred bucks and then lock somebody’s account until they watch a certain movie.

RAMIREZ: I would pay for that. I would have paid a hundred bucks for you to experience a great movie. That’s sick.

PULLMAN: Here’s a question. You do have to fly in this. Flying in films has been done so many times. What was it like up on the wires with the wedgies? How was that for you? Do you have a great landing, right before you kick those three dudes’ butts?

RAMIREZ: Well, that was because of the experience on Top Gun. I felt like if Tom [Cruise] saw my body positioning, he’d be judging the aerodynamics.

PULLMAN: [Laughs] Yeah.

RAMIREZ: You’ll see in the BTS, I’m holding proper form, so whether or not body parts were replaced, that’s not on me. I was aerodynamic, and banking when I had to bank, and trying to make sure that my head was in the right position because wind will then affect lift, and all these things.

PULLMAN: Right, and you don’t want to whiplash.

RAMIREZ: Yes. I think that’s what was instilled in me having done Top Gun. “Tom’s maybe going to watch this and if he does, I better come correct.” So there were days that I would be the only one putting on a G-force face.

PULLMAN: Yeah.

RAMIREZ: Just because Sam’s suit is a way more advanced thing that I’m like, “Alright, he’s under a different reality.” Mine’s a little bit more analog, and so we have tubes to breathe, and I’m the literal cockpit. I’m the jet. 

PULLMAN: Okay, I’ve got two more questions. The last scene in this film is such a beautiful scene and your performance is incredible. You and Mackie are really locked into a truly open heart place. Can you give us a little bit of how the sausage was made in that scene?

RAMIREZ: Yeah. So that was the first scene I shot in the whole movie. Day one.

PULLMAN: That’s classic.

RAMIREZ: Day one with Anthony, obviously we’d known each other because of the show, and when we were in Prague, he took me in, guided me through that process. But we weren’t close, close. So I was also like, “Damn, okay. He’s probably going to be like, Who’s this kid that just got upgraded to a bigger role in this universe?‘” And then Julius kind of nudged over and whispered some stuff in my ear in regards to things that we had talked about, that I told him to remind me, just of honoring my dad and trying to turn that energy of grief into something that can be beautiful. I saw the moment that it clicked for Anthony, and because it was day one on set, I saw the respect build within that. And then he’s like, “Aright, we’re going to play ball.”

PULLMAN: That’s awesome.

RAMIREZ: And then, that final scene that we did, the final take we did, which is what you see most mainly in the movie, he turned it on to a level that I think was like, “Okay, we’re making this really grounded.” That was a north star for the rest of the film. 

PULLMAN: I mean, it really works, and you guys really did earn that. 

RAMIREZ: Yeah.

PULLMAN: Okay, last question. What are you excited about? What are the rays of sunshine peeking out of the horizon that you are looking forward to?

RAMIREZ: Well, it’s working with you, dude. I’m excited to work with you on the plane. It’s the project that we have cooking together. It’s having more agency in the stories and being able to pick. Because still, to this day, the jobs that I’ve had have been booked out from a point that I was auditioning for, grinding and getting them. But now, I think the scary part of the career is next, which is maybe having to make some decisions.

PULLMAN: Yes.

RAMIREZ: And even if it’s an audition, it’s picking and being selective, because I think we’ve been spoiled to work with really talented people, and I want to keep learning. That’s kind of what I’m looking forward to: working with people I love and people that I can learn from.

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Lewis Pullman interview: Lessons in Chemistry was a 'challenge'

"I appreciate chemistry, but it's not how my brain really works," Lewis Pullman readily admits while discussing his role as chemist Calvin Evans in the critically acclaimed Apple TV+ limited series "Lessons in Chemistry." He tells Gold Derby’s Latasha Ford, "There's something very intriguing about trying to portray somebody who's written as a savant and a genius, when you're not that. And so that was a good challenge." Watch the full video interview above.

Pullman attended the "Lessons in Chemistry" Emmy FYC event at the Television Academy's Wolf Theater on June 9 in North Hollywood, California. At a max-capacity screening and panel, the actor was joined by co-stars Brie Larson and Aja Naomi King, executive producer Lee Eisenberg and director Sarah Adina Smith.

As for learning all of the complicated chemistry terms, Pullman reveals how Larson "really had the load of that, and she's like a savant as a person in real life -- she can just read a full page of that stuff and be able to regurgitate it." He then confesses, "I'm not like that. I need to spend a week and a half on it. But we had these great actual chemists on set, so that was really helpful. I would always be like, 'All right, explain this to me like I'm five years old.' I would also record them reading my lines, because it's like a different language -- it just looks like hieroglyphics to me."

While Larson had "a lot of those really rough scenes," both emotionally and physically, Pullman was "lucky" because "it was really fun to be able to kind of live in these very elated, blissful states." He tells us that his character is "kind of experiencing these new emotions for the first time, so there's this very childlike nature."

The actor claims that the moment Larson's character Elizabeth Zott leaves him, "That was probably Calvin's lowest point and there's nothing harder than leaving somebody without any answers." Pullman remarks, "It's worse than being broken up with or something, because your brain starts to create the worst possible scenarios, and you're left in this kind of state of limbo. That was probably his most agitated, turbulent place, I would say."

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Florence Pugh and Lewis Pullman talk mental health journeys and most-used emojis in GLAMOUR's Friendship Test

Four years on, Florence Pugh has made her big return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And after her on-screen sister Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow met her demise (sorry, spoiler!) her character Yelena has found a new friend. Kind of.

In Marvel's newest superhero movie Thunderbolts*, Florence's Yelena finds herself teaming up with other misfit superheroes Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Red Guardian (Stranger Things' David Harbour), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko).

But the closest bond she forms is with a mysterious new character Bob, played by Lessons in Chemistry star Lewis Pullman. When they find themselves trapped in a vault as part of a plan to assassinate them, the pair begin a friendship that sees them confide their deepest traumas. The “void” – an evil power that feeds on traumatic memories – is used throughout the film as a clever allegory for depression. It's refreshing to see a Marvel blockbuster explore the mental health journey, with Florence and Lewis very much at the forefront.

Plus, we see Florence break a Guinness World Record within the first few minutes of the film by base jumping off the second tallest building in the world, the Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur. An unmissable power move to watch on screen.

GLAMOUR sat down with Florence and Lewis to talk their own mental health journeys alongside the movie, as well as the bond they forged on set.

Even though it’s undoubtedly an action movie, at its core Thunderbolts is about fighting your inner demons and trauma, quite literally – what do you hope this film says about mental health, particularly male mental health?

Lewis: I think there was a lot of this that was very personal for me, and so I felt important to try and represent it in an accurate way and in a realistic way. There's so much fear around getting the language right when you're talking about mental health and saying the wrong thing, it can prevent you from actually talking about it.

And so I think it is kind of the perfect vessel with the Thunderbolts, we are all kind of just mess-ups who are trying to figure out these really deep and very complicated themes about mental health. And I think that they're messing it up on the way. That really important to remember. You don't have to know the right terms to start talking about it or to think that you can help somebody with something.

And then also I think that it was really important to represent how it can look different… just because you're smiling doesn't mean there's not a lot going on in there.

GLAMOUR: Did you guys draw from your own experiences of mental health and lows in life?

Florence: During the making of this movie, I had one of the most wonderful, bizarre realisations where the lesson that this film was trying to teach us was something that I was learning from as we were shooting the movie.

And it was really wonderful to be taking inspiration from the art that we were creating and allowing myself, I suppose, the graciousness that Yelena allows herself of actually accepting that she needs help and accepting that she needs to allow others to care for her, which is something that I find very, very hard. I like being the carer and I like being the person that is there for everybody. And I think during that movie it was a real nice wake-up call of actually going, "It's okay," and it's okay to accept that you're not [feeling] great and it's okay to accept that you're feeling quite weak and it's okay to ask for help and it's okay for people to help you.

I had a nice mirrored realisation of the work that I was creating was the exact thing that I needed to teach myself.

GLAMOUR: Florence, what was your first impression of Lewis?

Florence: I remember instantly laughing with you, and that just continued throughout the whole movie, so very, very funny. Very clever and very funny. That was my first impression. And I also knew in the first rehearsal when we were going through the script and seeing which bits that we liked and which bits that we wanted to change, instantly feeling relaxed. I was like, "Okay, cool. I've got a great scene partner and he's a really good craic. So this is going to be a fun experience."

Lewis: My first impression was you being like, I need to have my dog on the…

Florence: On the studio lawn.

Lewis: And we were all like, "Yeah, you should have your dog." And you're like, "It's not allowed. There's no dogs or animals allowed." And we were all like, “That's absurd.” And you were like, “I know.” And you're like, "I think I'm going to..." And you did the most Thunderbolt-y thing. You were like, “I'm going to bring my dog anyway.”

I remember just having a lot of fun joking around, but then you are way better about joking and then going into the scene and doing an unbelievable job.

Florence: There were so many takes where we would be in the middle of a deep, deep bit where we would be off on a completely different tangent and then they'd be like, “Okay, and rolling!”

GLAMOUR: Florence, what is Lewis' biggest ick?

Florence: I don't like the term ick. I don't believe in the… I think it's really shit. And it only really associates to men and I don't like that either… People fuck up and that's absolutely fine. Why are we making a big deal out of it? [To Lewis] I don't know your ick and I don't care about your ick, because I embrace all of you.

Lewis: I don't have any icks… Who would play Florence in her biopic?

Florence: I haven't thought about that. That's assuming I've thought about it. That's assuming that I think that I deserve one.

Lewis: Do you think it would be a cool movie?

Florence: No way! No way! There are plenty more important and more brilliant people that deserve a biopic. I can't even speak.

Lewis: Yeah, I do think I want to throw my hat in the ring.

Florence: I would love! Okay. Okay. Now I changed my mind. If you were playing me in my biopic, I would actually help fund that.

Lewis: And I would pitch in quite a bit as well.

Florence: I would genuinely love to see that. And I, almost go as far to say that the movie doesn't need to be made. Just get us to the camera tests! Just get us to the camera tests. I just need to see your footage attempting to look like me… Kevin Feige? Do you want to be a part of this? Okay. Who would make the better action hero in real life? Actually you, because...

Lewis: It's simply not true. Go ahead.

Florence: He did so much prep for getting into physical shape for being his character and he was so dedicated and I remember the day that he was allowed to have a burger again and it was like he'd been shut out in the desert for weeks and then there was food placed in front of him. He was like, "Ah," like shaking for burger and a milkshake. And that takes real dedication.

Lewis: Especially when you don't even see it on camera.

Florence: So true… What original Avenger would Lewis be?

[To Lewis] I actually think you would be a really funny Tony Stark. Could you imagine you as a Tony Stark?

Lewis: Cannot

Florence: It would be hysterical.

Lewis: That's another movie I'd love to make and then never release.

Florence: It would... Just for us to watch.

Lewis: Yeah, just for us, a little home viewing.

GLAMOUR: Should we make a list of films that need to be made?

Florence: So no one can see them, but just for us to enjoy.

Lewis: Okay. What is Florence's most used emoji?

Florence: It's changed over the years, but recently it's the person doing a cartwheel. So cute.

Lewis: So cute.

Florence: So effective for anything. Like if someone says, "Are you coming out tonight?" Just send them that. Or "Are you up for lunch?" Send them that. Or, "Hey, did you do the laundry?" Send them that. It's honestly brilliant.

Because when you have fucked up and you haven't done something, it's even funnier. No. Whoo!

Lewis: I haven't even really unlocked that. I need to bring it to my most used so that I can incorporate...

Florence: And then also the disco man.

Lewis: Oh, the disco man's great.

GLAMOUR: I feel like I'm not fully utilising my emoji keyboard.

Florence: Me neither. I used to do... It was either just the turd. I love the turd. He's so cute.

Lewis: Classic.

Florence: Just a little smiling poo.

Lewis: It really looks like a poo...

Florence: Yeah, it was either the turd and now it's the cartwheeling man or the disco man… Or the pregnant lady… Yeah, she's great. Especially if it's like, “Do you want to come to dinner tonight?”

Who is funnier you... Or Lewis? Lewis.

Lewis: That's not true.

Florence: It is true.

Lewis: It is not.

Florence: It is true.

GLAMOUR: Why?

Florence: His comedic timing is brilliant. He also just loves to laugh at himself, which is just the true key to any person that's funny. And also he made me laugh the most on set. I also spent the most time with you on set.

Lewis: Yeah, we spent a lot of time-

Florence: But we were both delirious on set together, because at the beginning of the shoot when we were still trying to figure out how we were going to make days, the shoot would get longer and longer each day. And we'd be finishing on a Friday at 10pm, 11pm at night. And that was when we were truly going really cuckoo.

Lewis: Really bonkers. There's some really, really crucial scenes in the film that we do at the end of the day with five minutes left.

Florence: It's quite mad, actually. The scenes that are in the movie that we shot at 10pm at night on a Friday.

Lewis: Pivotal, pivotal.

GLAMOUR: Lewis, what surprised you most about working with Florence?

Florence: My smell?

Lewis: I never really smelled you. Which is a surprise, because we were doing a lot of running around.

Florence: Oh, yeah.

Lewis: I would say what surprised me most was how generous you were with just helping guide me into this crazy thing.

And I think without being like... "Let me help you," it was a very sneaky way that I didn't realise was happening until midway through I was like, "Oh, she's been very much a champion of taking me under..." I'm trying to avoid the taking under the wing.

Florence: Because it sounds a bit weird-

Lewis: But yeah.

Florence: Because then you really might smell me. I think entering this world and entering these movies is a really big deal and you don't really realise in the moment what's happening. And it's really intimidating because there's a lot of moving parts and because when you are the new person, there's so much that you're trying to process that you don't realise that you have power in certain situations or that you can help a scenario. And I think it's really important that there is someone, like I had, you know, Scarlett [Johansson] was that for me, to have someone that is just allowing you time to process things and allowing you moments to take control of scenarios.

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IN CONVERSATION WITH LEWIS PULLMAN — Numéro Netherlands

Your character “Bob” has been kept quite a mystery, and rumours have already been swirling the internet that there is more to him than meets the eye. He seems like a fascinating character. How did you approach bringing him to life, and what aspects of him resonated with you personally? 

I was so lucky to be able to work as closely as I did with Jake Schreier (director of Thunderbolts) when taking the chisel to the marble with Bob. From the very beginning it was obvious Jake had become the expert of all things Bob and had as much care and empathy for the character as I did. So Jake was really my north star when going about building him and crafting the pace with which we unveiled his many layers and how we unstack the Russian nesting dolls of Bob throughout the course of the film.

Were there any challenges you faced while embodying Bob? Did you have to do any specific prep work – whether physically, mentally, emotionally – to fully dive into the role?  

It definitely was a significantly physically and mentally challenging experience, which I loved. 

I sort of tried to go about the prep with an athlete mentality. On a movie of this scale I figured we would be doing scenes many many times, so a lot of the training and character prep I did wasn’t necessarily what was going to be on display in the film but it was going to help me be more agile and have better stamina, physically and emotionally, when doing certain scenes over and over again and not losing steam. 

The film brings together a group of beloved characters, from Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova to Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes. What was it like on set between you and your co-stars? How was it to work with them?

I mean, this is one hell of a cast of titans. I learned so much and could fill a whole playbook of knowledge from each of them from seeing how they operate within this world and process. Florence, whether she was aware of it or not, really generously took me under her wing and helped me navigate a lot of the variables that were so new and nerve wracking for me. I really look up to her and was really fortunate to have her guidance.

Without giving away too much, is there a particular scene or moment in the film that you are excited for audiences to experience? 

There is a scene in a very tight and cramped space that was a blast to shoot and it was where we all really built a real bond when shooting it. If there ever is a blooper reel, I’m sure 50% of it would end up being from that scene alone.

How has taking on roles in large-scale blockbusters like Thunderbolts & Top Gun: Maverick evolved you as an actor? How does the experience compare to working on more intimate projects like The Starling Girl or even Lessons in Chemistry? 

I think the most surprising thing I’ve learned is that in many ways there is no difference. It’s still about best serving the voice of whoever's turn it is to tell their story around the campfire. 

And speaking of the now Emmy nominated Lessons in Chemistry, what was it like to play two different versions of the same character, Calvin – one which is  alive and one imagined by Brie Larson’s character Elizabeth?

It was an interesting exploration trying to distinguish the difference between the two. There was strangely a beauty and freedom in portraying Calvin after he was gone. He becomes a manifestation of Elizabeth's grief, but it’s bittersweet because there were also moments of “what could have been” and existing in the love that could have continued. There was a lot of joy in giving that part of the story life.

A lot of your characters are quite layered and complex. How do you choose your roles? Are there any specific themes, stories, or even genres that you’re drawn to? 

The goal posts are always sort of changing when it comes to what I’m drawn to. Whether it’s getting the opportunity to work with someone I admire or getting to live in a world I’ve always wanted to exist in, or getting to explore a part of myself that I’ve never had the chance or have been too scared to shine the flashlight on. Usually if something scares me about a role that's a good sign. I don't want to get too comfortable, I think I just bore everyone and myself when I do that.

I can’t not mention your father Bill Pullman, an iconic actor at this point. I imagine, but correct me if I’m wrong, that there must be a lot of pressure weighing on you to fill his shoes. How do you deal with such expectations? And do you intend to walk in his footsteps, or would you rather carve your own path in a different way?

Phew, tell me about it. Well he’s one of my favorite actors and favorite people in this life, so I definitely felt that pressure deeply in the beginning. I think once I realized that filling his shoes was a Sisyphean task, I figured that I wasn’t going to get anywhere true by walking in his footsteps wearing his shoes. He has done, and is doing, such a singular thing and all I can do is use what he’s taught me and do my best to try and blaze my own trail and honor all that he’s taught me as an artist and my pops.

How would you define success for yourself?

I don’t know why this is such a hard question for me. I think keeping your hunger and curiosity alive and redefining success as you go has been important for me. Sometimes I assume doing something will give me that feeling of accomplishment and once I do it I find I was wrong. So it’s just about going back to the drawing board in those moments and taking into account how much we change, zooming in and zooming out, and having patience with myself.

What projects are you hoping to bring to life through your own production company? Can you share more about that venture and what inspired you to take that step?

Our whole idea for the production company was to create a theater troupe type structure but for film. To have a space that fosters a continued collaborative process. One of the most frustrating parts about filmmaking for me is you cultivate these incredible collaborative relationships that blossom half way through the process and then you finish the film and oftentimes never work with that person again unless you’re lucky. This felt like a way to take the reins a bit in that realm, to put wind in the sails of artists we believe in.

When you’re out of work mode, how do you like to spend your time and how do you recharge?

Family. Friends. Dog. Montana. Drumming. Drawing. Reading. Sometimes living too deeply in the brain space of making movies can kind of trap me in a mode of operation where I forget that there’s actually a bowl of apples on the table if I peek my head out from behind the easel. I can lose sight of what the subject of all these stories really is in the first place. I hate when I catch myself thinking “Oh, that would make a great movie” or “I want to steal the way that person picks their nose and use it for a character”. I try to do the most non-movie stuff when I’m not making movies. I think that probably serves both sides, at least for now.

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Lewis Pullman Steps Out of the Shadows

It’s a sunny Saturday in April, and in about two weeks, Lewis Pullman’s life is going to change. On May 2, Thunderbolts*—Pullman’s first foray into the industry-defining, fan-obsessing, billions-of-dollars-generating Marvel Cinematic Universe—will debut in theaters around the world, to above-average reviews and a weekend-winning $76 million domestic gross. In the film, which at press time remains the number-one movie in America, most of Pullman’s co-stars (including Sebastian Stan and Florence Pugh) are reprising roles they've played in previous Marvel movies. Pullman, on the other hand, plays a new character named…Bob.

Sounds underwhelming, but as comic-book fans figured out the minute the trailers dropped, Bob is also the Sentry, a Superman-esque figure who’s canonically stronger than the Hulk and almost as smart as Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four—and who, in the course of the film, loses control of his malevolent alter ego and becomes the movie’s primary antagonist. We’ll refrain from further spoilage, but Marvel has already announced that Pullman will be part of the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday, the 2026 event film that Marvel hopes will restore the studio to its Phase Three glory; the Sentry will presumably play a key role in that film as well.

But at this moment in April, Bob is not yet a household name, and Pullman, 32, is still able to go unnoticed on the patio of his favorite burger place in Silver Lake. He’s still got some superhero bulk to his body, there’s a smattering of faint tattoos on his forearms, and he’s wearing a sick vintage T-shirt with a dragon on it, but the other customers pay more attention to a friendly dog who is enjoying the weather. Pullman, whose only public social media profile is a sporadically-updated Letterboxd account, seems like the kind of guy who’d want to maintain this low-key presence for as long as he can. Besides, during his decade inside the entertainment industry, he’s realized there are no guarantees.

Pullman is best known for playing characters with a dopey naivete or a churning intensity. In Thunderbolts* he gets to do both. The film is also the first time he’s been part of a project that’s kicked off the summer movie season, but he’s trying to moderate his expectations.

A little while later, once he’s devoured a burger and repaired to a dark bar up the street, he offers his sensible perspective. “If there’s anything I've learned—and I learned this from my dad too—it’s that you hear often, This is really going to move the needle, or whatnot,” he says. “That can be a kind of dangerous thing to think if that's something that you want and it doesn’t happen. I've heard that enough times and the needle remained stagnant.”

When Highston didn’t go forward, Pullman dedicated himself to getting better at auditions, since the idea of doing them terrified him so much. “That's scarier than any other part of the process. It's just so many unnatural elements in that room,” he says. “I grew up a very anxious kid and not very socially apt in a lot of ways. I was like, If I can do this, I can be a ninja conversationally outside of that.”

As Pullman honed those skills, he started appearing in his friends’ movies and music videos as they too were entering the industry. “I said yes to everything,” he explains. “I wanted to just do as much as possible, no matter how embarrassing or humiliatingly clownish it was. I was like, it doesn't matter, because I just need to be able to not treat the camera like a villain and treat it like a friend.”

Then he adds, “There's so much blackmail material out there of me where I was just trying to figure it out.”

Pullman got his first big break with 2018’s Bad Times at the El Royale, a Tarantino-ish film from writer-director Drew Goddard, set in a hotel that straddles the California-Nevada border, and might also be purgatory. He played an outwardly meek bellboy harboring his own sinister secrets; it was the last role cast in the movie, because they couldn’t find the right young actor. Too many of them played up the damage and potential danger in the character, but Goddard was searching for something else, and immediately saw it in Pullman.

“It's what you're looking for in casting, which is someone who is deeply connected to the soulfulness of the character, and Lewis just accessed that,” Goddard says. ”There's something about men, and young men in particular, where they're afraid to be compassionate and earnest. Whereas Lewis—his beating heart just comes out on the screen immediately."

Though El Royale underperformed at the box office, critics took note of Pullman, even as he shared scenes with Jeff Bridges, Chris Hemsworth, and Jon Hamm giving uninhibited performances. Over the course of his brief career, he’s also performed alongside consistently great workhorses including Lili Taylor, Bill Camp, Kyle Chandler, and Jason Clarke. Pullman is an eager student of the acting craft, but has realized that maybe not everyone on set is as down to talk shop as he is. “I always want to get right into asking questions and geeking out about it, but everyone's different and everyone has different processes and sometimes don't want to crack their bubble of imagination to be like, ‘How was Hell or High Water for you?’” he says.

That wasn’t his experience on Top Gun: Maverick, the domestic box office champion of 2022. In that movie, Pullman played another character named Bob, whose bad-ass call sign is also… Bob. In a room of cocksure alphas, Bob is an oblivious beta. The supporting cast of the Tom Cruise vehicle was stacked with hotly-tipped young actors—Glen Powell, Miles Teller, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez—but the star at the center of the film made himself readily available to them.

Ramirez joined the MCU a few years before Pullman, taking on the role of the new Falcon alongside Anthony Mackie’s Captain America. When the Sentry offer came, he encouraged his friend to suit up and he’s been impressed—but not surprised—by how fast Pullman’s been able to excel at this type of performance.

“It's this beautiful universe that started before we joined and is going to continue after, and to fully trust fall and be as vulnerable and open in those moments, it feels different than doing it for an indie, obviously,” Ramirez says. “For him to do that and to be caught by the filmmaker and the rest of the cast, and to continue delivering every day, it shows the stamina he has as a performer and the willingness he has to investigate the truth."

Before Pullman returns to the world of superheroes with Avengers: Doomsday, he’s been doing some more low-key work. He just returned from Vancouver, where he filmed a Netflix movie called Remarkably Bright Creatures, based on Shelby Pelt’s enormously popular novel. The film mainly revolves around him, Sally Field, and an octopus inside an aquarium—though the octopus will be added entirely as a special effect in post-production. “We were just looking at an empty tank the whole time,” Pullman says. “The amazing part about that though is that if I ever was looking in the tank thinking, How do I imagine the fucking beauty of this alien creature?, I would just look over at Sally Field. It was like she was fucking seeing the octopus.”

The commercial success of Thunderbolts* could put Lewis, for the first time in his career, in a position where his involvement might help a movie get made. To this end, he recently started a production company, Buckwild Pictures. He has plenty of friends who write or direct and can’t get the money to move beyond the short film stage and make something bigger. “There was something really alluring about that maybe I could be some sort of an asset for driving these things to the finish line, if possible,” he says.

I asked Pullman if he ever talked to his dad about how his life changed after Independence Day. He has; Bill told him the best thing about starring in the highest-grossing movie of 1996 was the possibilities it opened up.

“That's what I'm most curious about, is if something does shift, whether that will give me the opportunity to potentially tell stories that I've always wanted to be a part of, but was never really considered for—whether that be because they couldn't imagine me in it, they hadn't seen me in anything, or because I didn't have any sort of pull in this demographic and couldn't get financing here or there or whatever,” he says. “I'm not looking forward to it, because I don't want to say that, but I am curious about if that were to happen.”

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Lewis Pullman On 'Thunderbolts*,’ Quitting Instagram, & Relationship Privacy

“When was your last panic attack?” Lewis Pullman asks me. We’ve been talking about how we’re both too anxious to enjoy psychedelics — “I don’t like feeling out of control in my brain,” he says — which is not really the conversation you’d expect to be having with a newly minted Marvel star on the eve of his blockbuster hitting theaters. But during the course of a nearly two-hour, three-rounds-of-Sancerre lunch at The Odeon, Pullman — now starring in Thunderbolts* alongside Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan — is gladly game, maybe even a little relieved, to go off script following a breakneck press tour.

“All the actors in Thunderbolts* are so darn good at [the publicity] part of things. Everybody’s biology is different… but I need time to refuel the tank,” he says, wedging a wintergreen Zyn into his upper lip. “My mom was saying, ‘You got to remember: You’re in a flesh suit. You’re still a human. You still need to rest.’” He’s hoping a boozy meal will lead to a snoozy afternoon: “I might just do one more glass, because I want to take a nap.”

Pullman doesn’t read as self-conscious. He’s generous with eye contact, easy to banter with, and immune to checking his phone. But the 32-year-old has always considered himself highly sensitive. The youngest of three siblings, Pullman says he put a lot of pressure on himself to “stay out of the way” as a kid. By 14, his mother sensed there might be something deeper happening beneath the surface. She put him into therapy, and he was diagnosed with social anxiety and OCD. “I’m such a reactive person. Even being in this loud space, I feel like I'm taking in a lot of data,” Pullman says. “I think all my senses, the valve is a little too open at all times.”

This has made figuring out what to do with his life occasionally tricky. Pullman studied social work in college and volunteered at AHOPE Day Center, a homeless service center, in Asheville, North Carolina. But he just couldn’t close the valve. “One of my main mentors, Asia, told me, ‘When you drive home find a marker on the road, like a telephone pole. Once you pass that you���re not allowed to think about work anymore,’” he says. “Creating boundaries, holding your own space, and monitoring your emotional energy is actually what is required and that was really hard for me to grapple with. There’s a lot that can bleed over.”

Was a life in the arts — disappearing into roles, summoning emotions the second a director yells “Action!” — a better match for those open-valve gifts? Yes and no. In Thunderbolts*, Pullman plays Bob Reynolds (and his superpowered personas, The Sentry and The Void) — one of the New Avengers with a history of addiction and mental health struggles. Pullman talks about the impact of the role with the intensity of someone who just played, well, The Joker.

“He has a pretty barbed past, very traumatic, with just a rough family situation, so you meet him when he’s like that and constantly having these flashbulbs of grief, of just strangulation of his past,” Pullman says. “I’m still kind of shedding it.”

He doesn’t mind going deep, though. “I just went through a phase where I stopped doing therapy because I was like, ‘Well, what if I fully fix myself and then I have nothing to draw from?’ It was so douchey,” he says. “To think that by ignoring something, you’re going to be able to [tap into it]? If anything, by looking at it closer, you’re able to understand it more and control it better.”

Pullman grew up in a family of creatives: His father is actor Bill Pullman; his mother, Tamara Hurwitz, is a modern dancer; and his siblings are both in the arts. They lived in Los Angeles but spent summers on the family’s ranch in Montana herding cattle. Today, Pullman’s low-key combo of button-down shirt and jeans gives more Yellowstone than 90210. Drumming was his gateway into performing — he’s played in the band Atta Boy since high school — and he starred in a few short films during college. But acting professionally always intimidated him, so much so that Pullman would sometimes take his glasses off during auditions. (You don’t have to worry if the casting director looks happy if you simply can’t see them.) “There’s a lot of stimuli that has nothing to do with what’s happening, so it was a way of softening the edges where I was more in control,” he says.

Early roles in projects like Battle of the Sexes, Bad Times at the El Royale, and Catch-22 assured him he was on the right path. By the time 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick came around, he was hooked. In the long-awaited sequel, Tom Cruise reprised his role as alpha pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, who returns to his old training school to both teach and make betas out of a new crop of hot-shot pilots played by Miles Teller, Glen Powell, and Jay Ellis. Pullman’s bespectacled character, however, is already plenty submissive: He gets partnered with the only female pilot and keeps his shirt on during the film’s beachside biceps bonanza. Pullman jokes that between Maverick and Thunderbolts*, he’s carved out a niche playing the “shirt-on characters” in blockbusters otherwise populated by sun’s-out-guns-out types. “I relate to that cripplingly self-conscious, keeping-the-shirt-on-at-the-pool-party kid,” he says.

He did, however, bulk for Thunderbolts* just in case.“I was ready for a scene where this whole SWAT team was supposed to shoot this shirt off of [my character’s] body. I got fitter than I’d ever been in my life and we didn’t even shoot it!” he says, laughing.

Top Gun was formative in other ways. Between takes, Pullman was happy to sit on the sidelines and soak in the wisdom of those higher up on the call sheet. “Tom was putting himself in our shoes every day and consciously giving us the experience of working with a veteran like him. But then there was also another tier of experience where I got to learn from Jay Ellis and Glen Powell,” he says. (When I blurt out that Jay Ellis is also extremely hot, Pullman meets my gaze: “Absolutely, smoldering hot.”)

For Pullman, Powell’s path from entry-level script reader to actor-screenwriter was particularly inspiring. “From Glen, I learned about the long game and planting seeds for ideas that might not happen in two or three years,” he says. “But if you keep your nose to the grindstone, they will happen, and they’ll be that much more fully fleshed out because you’ve been existing with them for that long.”

Pullman’s career has already been extremely fruitful. He earned an Emmy nomination for his work in 2023’s Lessons in Chemistry opposite Brie Larson, and he’ll star in the next project from the husband-and-wife team behind last year’s Oscar-winning The Brutalist. Yet he’s still adjusting to the pressures that come with superhero fame. Like, Reddit-threads-about-whether-he’s-dating-Kaia-Gerber pressures. How does he deal with that?

“That’s a fair question. I think one of the great benefits of growing up with my dad is he always really prioritized and valued his privacy,” Pullman says. “You know the casualties of the landscape that you’re signing up for, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be proactive in creating an armor for the things that you love most.”

Staying off the internet helps. Pullman has an iPhone mini, but the only form of social media he uses is Letterboxd. (“I got rid of [my Instagram] for stupid actor reasons,” he says, cringing at himself. “I was like, ‘I don’t think my character would have Instagram.’”) Everything else is just stimuli to tune out.

After lunch, I walk Pullman back to his hotel, and he immediately appears lighter while taking in the relative calm of Tribeca in the late afternoon. With the sun shining down on us and that well-earned nap on the horizon, he seems properly recharged. “I really want to bring my best self,” he says of taking his career to Avengers-level heights. “I just have to get used to: Sometimes wherever I am is what they’re going to get — and that’s as good as I can do.”

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Lewis Pullman Is Becoming More Powerful

LEWIS PULLMAN KNEW he was going to have to look ripped—he just wasn’t sure how much of him anyone was actually going to see.

There’s a moment fairly early on in Thunderbolts*, the 36th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, when the 32-year-old actor’s character—then just known as a dude named Bob—is shot many, many, many times with machine guns. But Bob isn’t just a dude named Bob; he’s actually the Sentry, the end result of a secret government project led by CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) to create the perfect superhero. And, as it turns out, Bob will rise from the literal ashes. But how much of someone’s shirt remains after getting shot approximately 1,000 times? Pullman worked out his whole body extensively in the months leading up to filming; whatever happened with the big reveal, he was going to be ready.

“I had to be prepared for whatever felt plausible for when people are shooting you with automatic machine guns,” Pullman says on a late-April morning at Men’s Health’s Manhattan offices, just a couple days before the movie will officially be unveiled to the world. “How much of your shirt is actually going to come off?”

The answer: only about half of it, if that. The result looked like a singed crop top, a comparison Pullman himself makes and later laughs about. “It was the most extreme transformation I’ve ever done,” he says, “and you don’t even see that much of it on camera.”

He had experienced a certain type of last-minute physique cramming before, on the set of Top Gun: Maverick (coincidentally, another movie in which he plays a character named Bob). While he keeps his shirt on during that film’s famous football scene, many others did not. It was there, Pullman says, that he first saw costars dehydrating themselves to increase their vascularity and doing pre-shoot workouts until the very last minute. (“In the days leading up, there was more male insecurity than you’ve ever seen on any set ever,” Glen Powell told Men’s Health in 2022.)

“I was just sitting on the sidelines for that one,” Pullman says. “But now I got a taste of it—and a heavy dose. You look shredded, but you feel like shit.” He adds, however, that it was all worth it to look exactly how he needed to look. In that Thunderbolts* scene, it becomes clear that Val’s experimentation is affecting not just Bob’s mental state (he’s experiencing bouts of amnesia, exacerbating his history of mental health issues), but his physical state as well. And, well, the superhero part sure appears to be working, because this guy just survived a wave of bullets and has a core that would make Thor jealous. “After that scene was done, I had one of those ice cream Snickers. Maybe three of them. And then I had a milkshake. And a burger, and ice cream, and French fries,” he says. “Just going all in. It was a serious Last Supper moment.”

As we talk, Pullman has the easygoing, down-to-earth demeanor of someone who’s been around the movie business his whole life, someone who takes the work seriously but doesn’t need to make a big deal out of all its attendant fanfare. At times, he can be the spitting image of his dad, movie star Bill Pullman, exhibiting the same charm and artistic curiosity that have made his father such a unique presence in films as varied as the blockbuster Independence Day and David Lynch’s surreal Lost Highway. Lewis, too, has already been in a diverse mix of movies and major TV shows over nearly a decade—highlights include the cult-favorite 2018 film Bad Times at the El Royale, Hulu’s Catch-22 series, and Apple TV+’s Lessons in Chemistry, the latter earning him an Emmy nomination—but his complex and surprisingly intimate role at the center of Thunderbolts* feels likely to launch him to a new level of stardom.

With Thunderbolts* now leading the charge in the MCU’s run toward next summer’s Avengers: Doomsday, Pullman spoke with Men’s Health about landing the role, playing a superhero whose story revolves around mental health, and what comes next.

MEN’S HEALTH: I want to start with a quote from writer-director Drew Goddard about casting you in Bad Times at the El Royale: “It was one of those good old-fashioned casting searches. After meeting with lots and lots and lots of actors, Lewis came in and you just felt that immediately. The last time that happened, quite honestly, was when Chris Hemsworth walked in for Cabin in the Woods. You’re just looking for actors who inherently fit the role—and then also transcend the role.”

LEWIS PULLMAN: Jesus. God love Drew Goddard.

MH: He was referencing Chris Hemsworth partly because you were both in Bad Times at the El Royale. But now that you’re also playing a superhero in the MCU, it takes on a whole new context. Does any part of this feel like a full-circle moment to you?

LP: In some ways. I mean, the circle hasn’t really come to a full connection yet, because it’s a hard thing to realize and come to terms with. I always try and keep my expectations low. I never really expected to be a part of the MCU, you know? I just expected to be an admirer of it. So it was trippy to see it at the L.A. premiere with my family. I held my mom’s hand the whole time. I was like, “Oh, I didn’t actually do that. I wasn’t actually there.” It was very surreal, very trippy.

MH: You had a bit of an unusual casting process for Thunderbolts*. What was that like?

LP: Steven Yeun was going to play the Sentry, which I think was such awesome casting. It was a testament to the quality of the role and of the world. And then, due to scheduling and life happening—which always happens—he had to drop out. They were in a bit of a scramble to find a guy. Obviously, knowing that, it was a big pair of shoes to try to step into. And in that massive world, it’s hard to remember that you have your own things that you can bring into it. Your job is to fit into the world and assimilate into it, but it’s also to enhance it and bring any sort of relatability you might have to the character. That was something [director] Jake Schreier constantly reminded me of, which was beautiful. He empowered me in that way. He was asking how I related to Bob, and there was much to relate to in that sense. I really found a kinship with this character.

MH: You mention Jake, the director, who previously did such great work on Beef. Just like Beef, Thunderbolts* captures a lot of complexity in its characters—more than you might expect in a superhero movie. Did you look back at that series?

LP: I rewatched Beef once I got the role, just so I could see Jake’s eye, what he’s curious about, and where his lens tends to land when he’s telling a story. That was very helpful. He’s very comfortable venturing into the uncomfortable, which is such an interesting mix to add into Marvel. Uncomfortable things can be polarizing. It was a cool, fun risk they were taking with it. There are a lot of topics in the movie that are uncomfortable. It deals a lot with mental health, which can feel too close to home for some people. It can be an area and a topic they want to steer away from. But I think it was a great opportunity for us to say, Growth comes from one’s ability to sit in the discomfort. I’ve already found a few people who have seen this film, and it connects with them, in a way, because I think they were able to sit through some things that aren’t commonly seen in massive pop-culture movies.

MH: What was the most difficult part of physically preparing to play this godlike superhero?

LP: Finding a body type that worked for both Bob and for Sentry. They’re very different people, and they have very different purposes within the story. To make that transition both believable and shocking within a very short amount of time was very challenging. But I was lucky to be in the hands of this awesome trainer, Brendan Johnston, who just said, “We’re not trying to build a lot of mass.” We were trying to build definition, and all those small, intricate, sinewy muscles that will pull the light. That was done a lot with boxing, which I hadn’t done much of but that I really loved. I’ve continued to do it since we wrapped production, because I don’t like cardio. I don’t like feeling like I want to die when I work out, because then I’m not going to get back in the gym. I have to make it fun for myself so that I can continue incentivizing getting my butt out of bed and into the gym. Boxing was a great way to do that, because you forget that you’re exerting yourself as much as you are, and you’re working so many parts of your body. You’re recruiting all these muscles that are normally kind of dormant.

MH: There’s some really intense action in the movie. You’re literally taking on a full team of superheroes at one point. What kind of fight training did you have?

LP: It was some of the most hands-on, intense stunt training I’ve gotten to do. I was lucky enough to work with an incredible stunt double, Alec Back. He’s a great buddy of mine now. He’s so well-informed, and he has such a good, versatile background. So we were able to design how the Sentry fights in a way that was very specific to me and specific to how we wanted this superhero to look.

I did a lot of research prior too, wanting him to have his own signature style in fighting and in his silhouette. I also really wanted to differentiate how Sentry fought versus how Bob fights. That meant working on allowing some of my more naturally sloppy instincts to come through with Bob, to look more like he was in a schoolyard fight. I wanted it to be very messy and scrappy and not have any form. And then with the Sentry, to have these very controlled, very effortless, very minute movements so that the reaction to his impact, in comparison to how little effort he’s actually outputting, looks drastic. You get a real sense of just how much power is harnessed within him.

MH: One of the movie’s most climactic moments is the Void fighting Bob. Did you have to learn both parts of the fight choreography for that?

LP: Thank you for asking that! Nobody’s asked me about that, and it was one of the most difficult sequences to do! You know, as I mentioned, I just started boxing, and it’s sort of a boxing match in some ways. I had to do both sides, but luckily I was with Alec, my double, and so he would play my other self when I was playing whichever was going to be seen on camera. It’s very difficult to remember that choreography because it’s a long fight. For each setup, you have to switch back and forth for the whole fight. So you do the whole fight dozens and dozens and dozens of times. You’re oscillating back and forth, you’re strobe-lighting between which part you’re doing. So it’s really hard to remember in a split second whether you’re supposed to be the one punching or the one being punched. Luckily, Alec is very good at reflexively moving on his feet, so we were able to think on our toes. It was almost more mentally exhausting than it was physically exhausting.

MH: I think the idea of both literally and figuratively fighting yourself is really interesting conceptually and, in that scene, visually too.

LP: It was such an operatic, climactic thing for me, personally, to actually walk through and experience. Because I do feel like often we are our worst enemies. We always assume we need to keep those negative voices around because they’re within us for survival reasons, to protect us from danger. But oftentimes they’re assuming the lowest version of ourselves, and they’re extremely cauterizing in our growth as people, as emotionally available beings. So to actually walk through the act of suppressing those negative feelings was really powerful for me.

MH: The movie then expands the visual metaphor about mental health by having characters traverse a series of “shame rooms” that confront them with their own insecurities and failures. Did you know the movie would grapple with these themes so directly when you signed on, or did that reveal itself over the production?

LP: It felt like a theme amongst many themes when I was first pitched the film. It didn’t feel like the driving force. Once we were on set and we were moving from shame room to shame room [in the film’s third act], I realized the power of the symbolism and getting to visualize these labyrinths of anxiety and trauma we subject ourselves to. It really uses the format incredibly intelligently because so much of what we’re talking about takes place in our minds. Wyatt Russell [who plays John Walker] said something brilliant the other day. He said, “A lot of Marvel is about the exploration of outer space, and this is the exploration of inner space, of the mind, which is just as limitless as outer space is.” I thought that was a good way to frame it.

MH: Bob and Yelena have great chemistry in the movie as two people who understand what it’s like to grapple with trauma and self-doubt. What is your real-life relationship with Florence Pugh like?

LP: So much of it comes down to Florence just being an outlier of a person and an artist. She is so full of joy and humor, and she experiences life in such a rich way. She doesn’t let any moment pass without being very conscious and deliberate about it. I grew very close to her, and very fond of her, because she also took me under her wing. I think it was very much reminiscent of when she first joined the Marvel Universe and how intimidating it was. I felt instantly like I was in good hands. I trusted her. And so I owe it all to her. You know, anything that feels like it was real on camera was the result of Florence being so gracious, and human, and embracing.

MH: Julia Louis-Dreyfus is also amazing in this film.

LP: She’s a legend, and a queen, and a GOAT.

MH: You get some really great moments with her.

LP: I was constantly trying not to break. I mean, it’s like being thrown into a hockey rink and you’ve never held a stick, but you’re expected to just play with a pro. She’s so dexterous, and she’s so thoughtful. Of the entire cast, she’s been the one who has spent hundreds of thousands of hours in front of camera, and she’s so comfortable. She really knows how to maximize her time with every take and every scene. And she has such a dry confidence in this, which is just inherently hilarious.

One of the most bizarre things we had to shoot was when I actually have her by the throat—and that was terrifying. I felt like I had a national treasure in my hands, and I was like, “I don’t want to do this!” But she was game. She was like, “You’re really supposed to be strangling me here.”

MH: A big scene between Bob and Val is when he first walks out in the Sentry costume she’s basically focus-grouped for him, along with new, blond hair. How did it feel to go blond? Did you actually dye it?

LP: That was a wig. Lane Friedman was our incredible wig master, and she designed it in a way that felt like it was just a little off-putting. It’s not supposed to look like our ideal version of a superhero; it’s supposed to be a little off-kilter. It’s supposed to make you think, There’s something wrong here, and I can’t quite put a finger on it. And so there’s something a little creepy about it. It’s not as glorious as Thor’s hair! I felt weird with blond hair—it’s probably not something I would do in my day-to-day life!

MH: Speaking of this big, exciting blockbuster movie that you’re in, I’m also a big fan of your dad’s work as an actor…

LP: Me too.

MH: Something he did that I loved, especially during a particular run in the ’90s, was star in a big blockbuster movie like Independence Day and then do a very filmmaker-driven movie like Lost Highway with David Lynch. In the last couple years, you’ve done something very similar, where you’re in both big-budget movies and smaller indie films. Is striking that mix something you think about when picking projects?

LP: It’s definitely something I’ve wanted to do, and I really love the process of indie filmmaking—it’s sort of where my heart lies. There are so many things that make the process far more difficult. Obviously, there’s a lack of resources and time that you don’t struggle with on a movie like Thunderbolts*. But there’s also an urgency to it; there’s this fiery flame you’re trying to catch because you know you’ve only got three takes per setup. So there isn’t this disposable ideology around time. And there’s something very exciting and very theater-like in that way of working, which I love. It’s also a great opportunity for a lot of new voices and perspectives to be heard and seen. There are a lot of really great brains out there that just need a platform—and the indie world is where they can sharpen their teeth.

MH: One indie project you have coming up is Ann Lee, the new film from Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet. I became a big fan of theirs last year after The Brutalist came out. What was that experience like?

LP: I loved that experience so much. They are such pros at being very economical with their process, but also not feeling restrained or constricted. You forget it’s on a shoestring budget, because they’re so resourceful. And Mona is such a guttural and fearless director. Talk about somebody who’s not afraid to dive headfirst into the weird, the disturbing, and the beautiful. I’m so excited to see it, because just hearing how she talks, and what she’s curious about, and the questions that she asks…I know she’s going to have a very, very, very specific perspective.

MH: You and Danny Ramirez were roommates at a certain point after Top Gun: Maverick, and now you’re both in the Marvel Universe. Do you guys talk often?

LP: I just saw him at the Thunderbolts* premiere. We talk all the time. It’s a friendship that I’m so lucky to have, because we’ve been on such bizarrely similar trajectories. I’ve just been one step behind him, and he’s had such great advice and encouragement for me.

We are just really trying to hammer home that we will not let people down if they let me and him interact in future films. We’re really going to milk it for all it’s worth! We’ve been trying to get projects off the ground together since Top Gun, and we’ve got a couple in the oven, but we’re so excited to have one finally happen [next year’s Avengers: Doomsday]. And we didn’t even really have to work for it! We have so much fun working together; we both have the same kind of attitude about why we do what we do.

MH: By the end of Thunderbolts*, the Thunderbolts have rebranded as the New Avengers. Where does Bob—who isn’t sure he can ever keep the Void from returning—go from here? As you mentioned, he’ll be back for Avengers: Doomsday….

LP: It’s a great question. I’m really excited to find out. The Thunderbolts don’t want to let him out of their sight, because they realize that if he’s caught in the wrong hands, or if he’s not being supported enough by the right people, he might be dangerous. But they also want to keep him close in case they can figure out a way to use him. He’s a very good asset. It’s a hard situation they’re in. With all the other characters that are going to be in Avengers: Doomsday, there will be so many opportunities to figure out how each might come into play—and how Bob might come into play with any of them.

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Lewis Pullman on Tom Cruise’s ‘Top Gun’ Training — and That Beach Scene

Feeling the need — for taking notes. Lewis Pullman and his costars underwent grueling training in order to pull off their Top Gun: Maverick fighter pilot duties — and it couldn’t be done without Tom Cruise.

“I had to just transform into a sponge and just absorb, absorb, absorb because it was a new lesson every day. I mean, he is a Titan,” Pullman, 29, exclusively told Us Weekly of Cruise, 59, on Friday, June 24. “I’ve never seen anyone approach filmmaking the way he does, and I’ve also never seen someone that far into their career who still has such drive, has such curiosity, has such passion has such a reluctance to settle, is always trying to make even the smallest scenes better. And he’s so invested in learning about, I mean, he’s already learned about it, but in every asset of filmmaking, he seems to have a vast understanding of every particle that goes into making a good movie that everyone around the world can relate to. And so that was just incredible, incredible to watch.”

The Outer Range actor plays Lt. Robert ”Bob” Floyd in the acclaimed sequel to 1986’s Top Gun. Since its May 27 debut, its already soared past the $1 billion mark at the box office. Cruise returned to reprise his role as Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell and insisted that the film needed to be seen in theaters. (It was initially delayed due to the rise in coronavirus cases.)

“He’s not really competing with anyone. The only one person that he is really competing with is himself. So to watch somebody have that kind of internal push and pull tug of war is really inspiring and really contagious,” Pullman said, adding that Cruise took the lead on mapping out the training course the cast took part in.

“We had to do all this swim training in order to get certified in order to get into the plane that wasn’t even in the movie,” Pullman recalled, laughing. “But despite all that, despite the challenges, Tom really set up this course himself, he designed this training, this training program himself. And so who better to do that than Tom Cruise? Who knows exactly what an actor is gonna need from the ground up to get to be able to perform at that level, and that training two and a half months, what that had to look like. And so it really, he kind of gave us this really gradual program and in such a way that it felt manageable and in these kind of like bite-size digestive portions where it was like, ‘OK, I think I can do this. I think this is absolutely insane, but I think I can do it.’”

“Learning how to handle G’s is one thing, learning how to handle motion sickness is another thing. Learning how to kind of just be able to be really aware. And there’s a lot of stuff that you have to do on the day when you’re up there shooting,” Pullman explained to Us. “And so to kind of be able to handle all these different biological shifts and environmental shifts are going on and kind of like claustrophobia and you’re up in the air doing insane maneuvers while also trying to get a good performance, get what we needed for the story line, make sure that it was dynamic, make sure that the continuity worked, make sure that the sun was in the right place between two and three o’clock otherwise, the shadow of the camera [will be] on your face.”

Other newcomer pilots — Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Monica Barbaro and Jay Ellis — also needed to get prepared physically. Safe to say, the iconic football beach scene was one of the many reasons why. Pullman, however, kept his shirt on for a strategic reason.

“The whole cast was undergoing some serious battles of impulse to get ready for that scene. Everyone was working out like crazy. I was playing Bob, who’s a bit more of a library dweller. I was like, you know, I think it’ll just feel a little dissonant if Bob takes his shirt off and he is a little ripped. I also think Bob wouldn’t take his shirt off. I think that’s kind of maybe an uncomfortable thing for him to do. I think he’s a bit more of a kind of reserved, quiet guy. He kind of likes to watch how things play out before he really inserts himself into a situation,” he said. “And so I was one of the only people who really wasn’t hitting. I mean, I would go into the gym just out of camaraderie. Glen Powell infamously one time was doing some lateral flies and was whispering something to himself really intensely. And I was like, ‘Glen, what are you saying?’ He was like, ‘Montage’s last forever.’”

The line, of course, took on a life of its own. That was his mantra. And then everyone started to just chant that,” he recalled. “But it was a pretty fun scenario to be a part of.”

As for whether his costars may have been jealous he didn’t have to go as hard at the gym, he mused: “I mean, maybe. But then you see the scene and everyone’s like, ‘Yeah, it was worth it.’”

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‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Actor Lewis Pullman Dissects His “Quiet Burning Ember” Character And Shares Advice From Iconic ‘ID4’ Father

In a conversation with THR, the actor explained how much he values the bond with his flight partner Monica Barbaro and how impressed he was with Tom Cruise's devotion, not only to the picture, but to each and every pilot actor.

There was a fleeting moment when Lewis Pullman considered he might be in over his head.

The Top Gun: Maverick actor could never have imagined just how intense and daunting the training was going to be for the highly anticipated sequel to the 1986 Paramount classic. But it was Tom Cruise, the film’s leader both on- and offscreen, who got Pullman where he needed to be for a masterful performance.

In Top Gun: Maverick, Pullman plays the shy, reserved (but extremely capable) Lt. Robert “Bob” Floyd, weapon systems officer (WSO) for mission pilot trainee Lt. Natasha “Phoenix” Trace (Monica Barbaro).

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Pullman explained he took great pride in playing the “quiet burning ember” Bob, as his modesty and humbleness were reflected in several of the actual United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (TOPGUN) pilots whom the actor met while working on the film.

During that same THR chat, Pullman also discussed how much he values his bond with his flight partner Barbaro and how impressed he was with Cruise’s devotion, not only to the picture as a whole, but to each and every pilot actor. In addition, Pullman also shares the kismet advice he received from his iconic Hollywood dad, Independence Day star Bill Pullman.

Did you wonder what the heck you got yourself into during the rigorous training?

(Laughs.) Yeah, man. I mean, it really kind of snuck up on me, the reality of what we were actually doing. Tom Cruise’s only true competition is himself. So, every time he goes into a movie, it’s not like he’s looking around to see if anyone else is trying to do the same thing — because nobody is. (Laughs.) It’s just about if he can top the last thing that he’s done — and he always does!

Tom was so darn generous with his time and with his energy. And you know, he set up the entire training regiment for us himself. He designed it in a way that really crept up on us. In the beginning, it was like this is a summit that I don’t know if I could reach. It’s just crazy. But he gave us a very gradual on-ramp, so by the time we were actually pulling 8.5 g’s — it was there before we knew it. He understood the assignment and what we were going to need in order to be confident and give good performances up in these [F/A-18 Super Hornets] while actually pulling g’s and doing these serious aerobatic maneuvers.

I have no doubt Bob will be an audience favorite. In a way, he reminded me of Miles Miller from Bad Times at the El Royale. Do you enjoy those characters the most, the quiet guys who can take care of business when the time comes?

(Laughs.) It’s all on the writing, but it’s a pleasure to be the vessel. I really enjoyed playing Bob. I wanted to make sure that there was a pilot — because I was a pretty shy kid growing up — who represented maybe not the cockiest or most overly confident. He’s more of a quiet burning ember who knows he can burst into flames at any moment. His only real need is to perform at a high level in the sky. That was an honor because so many of the TOPGUN pilots who I met, they’re geniuses, and they’re badass — but they’re also incredibly modest. So, I just wanted to make sure that was captured in some sense.

Did you and Monica spend extra time together in training? How did you build that bond and trust the characters would need to convey onscreen?

We were doing all this flying and flight training, and Monica was one of the biggest badasses of any of us! She seemed to have no issues with what was going on, whereas I had hurdles with fear or motion sickness. So it was very easy to have that onscreen dynamic because we lifted each other up a lot. She gave me a lot of advice and encouragement, and vice versa. Because we knew what their relationship was like early on, we spent a lot of time hanging out. She’s exceptional in this film, and she’s an exceptional person.

How would you describe the g-force you experienced to someone who has no idea what that kind of pressure is like on the human body?

(Laughs.) I’m trying to think of like how would I describe this to myself three years ago before we started training because it’s so outside of anything that is normal. It’s like you’re a marionette and all your strings are being dragged down to the center of the earth. It’s like a very heavy animal is sitting on top of you. It is wild, man. And the fact we got a chance to make that feel like it was normal, so we not be overtaken by the biological shift, was a great opportunity.

We would do these flight briefings, where we would fill out these forms about how many g’s we pulled and what difficulties we were having. We then emailed them and thought they were just going out into the ether, but then you’d see Tom Cruise the next day. And he’d come up to you and be like, “I read your brief, and I just wanted to know if there’s anything I can do.” And if you said you wanted to try new things and push further, then the next day, you’re doing it. For the busiest man I’ve ever personally met, he was remarkable at taking the time in such a generous and caring way to make sure that we were confident and had every resource at our disposal.

Everybody seems to have an amazing Tom Cruise story from this film. Would you mind sharing one with me beyond what you just said?

In the F/A-18s, we didn’t have monitors that could go back to base camp; they couldn’t watch the takes we were doing. So they built this little wooden mock cockpit called “the Buck.” And we would go in before each flight to do rehearsals and run through safety procedures. And there was this amazing moment, actually, it happened a bunch of times, when I was sitting in the Buck, and Tom Cruise was sitting on a stool giving me advice and direction on how to make the scene as dynamic as it needed to be. I was like, “This is as good as it gets, right here.”

Due to the pandemic, the movie was pushed several times. Can you share the emotions you’re feeling right now, knowing the moment for Top Gun: Maverick has finally arrived?

It’s quite overwhelming. I don’t really know how to identify some of the feelings I’m having. But it is really comforting to know that people who were questioning why it was taking so long to come out, why don’t you just put it on streaming — there’s no need to answer that question now. All they have to do is sit in the theater, and it will all be made clear. This has all the elements that theatrical experience needs to have, and audience members want to have. So, I am super jazzed that we didn’t put it on streaming — and I think everyone else will be, too.

Finally, since I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing him a few times, I must ask: Has dad seen the film yet, and did he offer any advice from his fighter pilot days against aliens in Independence Day?

(Laughs.) He hasn’t seen it yet, but I cannot wait for him to see it. He’s working on a play right now, doing rehearsals. I always run everything by him before I start a job, and he always delivers me gold. He used greenscreen in Independence Day, but he gave good movement advice, to really convey the physicality of what’s going on. Mainly, he offered to make sure this character felt real and grounded and to absorb everything from the real TOPGUN pilots, so I could do justice to what they do.