I need to have some distance, but honestly I couldn’t be prouder of films that I’ve made to date—and I feel nervous because I want these lives for the films. So I enter the next steps with anxiety. I know I’ve got a taste of what it is to go off and work with an auteur, make it, and feel pride for the shooting process. But then you kind of want to nurse it through its commercial life.
Aftersun is one movie where, for me at least, there’s so much discovery in the editing and how innovatively the whole thing is put together. Which leads me to ask: Do you watch yourself?
I would love to get to the point where I don’t watch myself. I actually don’t have a strong dislike or hatred for watching myself, but I also think it’s important early on in my career to figure out what’s working and what’s not from a craft point of view. I wouldn’t know how to do that if I wasn’t watching it back.
As you’re doing the play and gaining Oscar buzz, news of you getting these huge roles started coming in—the Linklater, then the Gladiator sequel. I’d guess it wasn’t quite as much of a one-two punch from your perspective, right?
Yeah, it was a wild week with those two things being announced. The Linklater thing, I’m so excited by, but I felt like I’ve literally had that job. I started shooting last year. But Gladiator is such a beloved film and it was just a big old announcement. It’s all firsts, but I feel relatively okay with it all. If this had happened two years ago, it might be a different thing. But I feel like I’ve been on six or seven movie sets in the last year. I’m starting to learn my way through it all and whatever love I have for acting hasn’t gone anywhere. If in any capacity, it’s gone in the other direction. I love this job.
What kinds of things have you picked up on sets?
Just confidence that I can survive it. [Laughs] And in the choices that I’ve made, those decisions haven’t let me down yet. That’s where the confidence on set arises for me, fully believing in the project the minute you step on. Well, before you step on is half the battle. [Laughs]
So how did Gladiator come to you? Was there a sense, for you, of feeling ready to do a bigger movie?
I was looking for something—it wasn’t actually to do with scale, but I wanted to pin my shoulders back and step into something a little bit more physical. Literally as I was formulating these thoughts, this came in. And I was like,”Oh fuck. This is meant to be or something.” I met Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher in L.A. last year for a coffee. It was a very preliminary conversation—no script—about what would happen. And I was giddy about the story, the little bits of information that I got about the story. I was like, “Fuck, this sounds amazing.” Then met Ridley, read the script, and it just kind of fell into place.