'The Fabelmans' - Cast Interview
CinemaBlend sat down with the cast of Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” including Paul Dano, Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Judd Hirsch, and Gabriel LaBelle. They discuss what it was like working with Steven Spielberg, the pressure of portraying his family on film, the film’s strong message about family and much more!
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00:00 Steven has a way of ending things that is so hopeful and so beautiful in every one of his movies.
00:06 At what point does the excitement of getting cast in a Steven Spielberg movie meet up with
00:23 the terrifying pressure of playing him and what is essentially an autobiography?
00:27 When I show up, I'm folding every scene I'm in so to make sure what I have to prepare for,
00:32 folding every page and then I just stop folding it because it dawns on me that I'm going to be in
00:43 every minute of the movie afterwards and that was very weird. Nobody told me that. Yeah, I think
00:50 that's when it was, oh man, this is a big responsibility and I think that's when the big
00:57 fear happened but then that's when the work happened too. I really also enjoyed the process
01:04 on this film. It never kind of stopped learning, moving, changing, shifting. I think part of that
01:11 was what Steven was searching for in the material and Steven and Tony talking and rewriting stuff
01:16 and us all coming together so that was always evolving including where maybe Paul meets Bert,
01:24 meets Arnold too. I'm one of those guys that said, can't we, don't do it with him,
01:30 he'll know a little bit better. So my trust was perfect. I mean, absolutely, not only necessary
01:38 but if you were there, you would trust this guy because not only does he know what he's talking
01:43 about, it's his family and it's his person, right? So he owned the character and then said to me,
01:50 would you share him with me? I mean, that's not what he said but I can understand it and I thought,
01:54 oh, move you. How's that? Okay, you know, make you feel something about something that you wrote
02:05 and a man you knew, tell me about him. No. That good? Yeah. Okay. So this is an actor's dream.
02:14 Day to day, he's so entirely in the moment so he's really responding to, even though these
02:19 are his parents, he hasn't laid out a plan for you to follow in order to be them and to please him.
02:28 He is completely in the moment and responding to what's happening in front of him and so each
02:33 take changes what he thinks he wants or what he wants you to try and then you find yourself in
02:38 completely new territory because you're somewhere that you haven't planned. Everything that happens
02:43 is Danny having a statement and, you know, it was him and Tony organized it in a way to tell,
02:49 to write a script and to tell the story of a movie and, you know, using literary devices,
02:55 whatever they do, but everything happened to him and so I just wanted to ask him everything
03:02 about his life and what it was like for him growing up and I could really just understand
03:08 what's going through his head, therefore the character, and half the times he would just
03:14 want me to figure out and but then we just talk about it and he'd tell me stories of
03:19 what it was like for him growing up in Arizona with his sisters, his parents, his uncle,
03:23 his whole perspective on life in the world. That's what I was really after and that helped me a lot.
03:30 I just dove right into it. Yeah, I, you know, it was a personal journey we were being invited to
03:38 go on so it didn't seem, you know, inappropriate to ask pretty personal questions, you know, and
03:46 yeah, and I wanted to really dive into the specifics of the dynamics, especially as we
03:53 were playing different scenes, like, yeah, really kind of at least having an internal understanding
04:00 of like, what, where are we in this journey, in this scene, you know what I mean? And so,
04:05 it really, yeah, and he really seemed to welcome it, but also at the same time he made it very
04:12 clear that he doesn't love talking to the actress about the scene. So I would actually talk to Tony
04:15 a lot, like Tony, because also like what's real doesn't matter, it's more like for the movie,
04:19 you know, so he was more than happy, yeah, like me and I would talk to Tony for hours and hours
04:27 and he loved to talk about the scenes and Steven was more,
04:29 I asked him from the get-go and he was like, I don't love to talk to the actors about the
04:34 scenes. So I was like, okay, won't do that. Yeah. - Knowing you as someone who likes to work loose
04:41 and with a lot of improv, I'm curious just how, to what degree you had to adjust the way that you
04:45 worked on this movie, especially knowing that Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg wrote this
04:49 essentially for you? - I, you know, I was in a movie Aaron Sorkin wrote, not a lot of improvisation
04:55 on those sets, I can confidently say, probably less than on this one, which did not have much,
05:03 you know, but it's honestly, it's a pleasure. It's not, it's in a way the alleviation of a
05:13 responsibility to not be asked to improvise and to just be told to say what is written and say it
05:20 as though it's improvised, but to not actually improvise it, you know? And when it's written by
05:25 Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner, it's a lot easier to do that, you know? And often, you know,
05:30 I think people are drawn to improv 'cause it is at times making up for a lack of writing, you know,
05:37 which is not why we ever did it, but I think that at times is why people feel as though they need to
05:43 like add stuff. But this was written very conversationally and very naturalistically
05:49 and was a pleasure to say, you know? - You're only in two scenes, but the bombastic
05:54 nature of the character plus just the lesson that he imparts to Sammy. - I'm sorry, but I'm in three.
05:58 - I'm sorry, you're in a few scenes. - There's the beginning, the middle,
06:01 and the end. - But I am curious just how,
06:04 kind of knowing the impression that Uncle Boris is going to have, is going to leave on Sammy,
06:09 how does that ultimately impact your performance and your approach to the character?
06:12 - Well, it becomes the challenge to begin with, right? Why would you do it that way? Why, well,
06:16 you know, it's almost like being asked to play a part that you don't really know how it's going to
06:22 end in the other guy. And that's a question that went on forever, you know? So this man was
06:31 necessarily brought in in the middle of a family situation to make this boy understand who he's
06:41 going to be, right? Even if he doesn't know it. And if you looked at the face of poor Gabriel
06:48 LaBelle, if you looked at his face, you would never think it was going to work.
06:52 It was almost like the firing squad was in his room. That's the part I really love so much.
06:59 It's almost hilarious, you know? I'm going to dance in front of your face until you get it,
07:06 you know what I mean? And I was hoping that Steven would go along with that much energy.
07:14 And he's going like this. I loved it.
07:18 - To what level did you get the opportunity to talk like director to director with Steven Spielberg?
07:23 And did this have an impact on you as far as just wanting to jump back into directing a feature
07:29 film yourself? - You know, yeah. I mean,
07:32 what's funny is early in my career, the first times I met was as a writer. I was a much more,
07:38 I was kind of more sought out as a writer than an actor when I was first going on meetings with
07:43 people like Steven, you know? And that's what's really nice is I think a lot of these people that
07:50 I've known, I've known him a long time in some capacity, kind of know me as someone who works
07:55 more behind the scenes than in front of them often, you know? So it was incredibly instructional.
08:01 And he was outwardly, you know, yeah, like articulating his process, why he was doing it.
08:09 I would ask him a million questions. I would just kind of bombard him with questions about why we
08:16 were doing what we were doing. Why'd you do that? Why'd you move the shot there? Why'd you decide
08:20 to do that? And yeah, it was not something I was gonna like squander, like the opportunity to
08:26 really absorb as much as I could from him and the crew and Rick Carter and Janusz. I got to work with
08:36 him on another film, but I kind of remained friends with him over the years. But like, yeah,
08:40 just really getting to ask everyone a million questions all day. It was really fun and it was
08:45 great work. It's a very engaged set. Sometimes you work on a set and it feels like the movie is one
08:51 of several things that is happening. That set is not like that. Everyone's really, every conversation
08:56 is about the movie that's taking place, basically, which I like. You know, he's been working with a
09:00 lot of the same crew for a very long time and they were saying to me that this was different than
09:06 any other one. So I think we were, you know, on a special one, yeah. What was your favorite part?
09:19 [BLANK_AUDIO]