Spiderhead' Interviews | Miles Teller, Chris Hemsworth Jurnee Smollett
“Spiderhead” stars Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller and Jurnee Smollett, as well as director Joseph Kosinski and producer Eric Newman discuss their Netflix original film with CinemaBlend Managing Editor Sean O'Connell. Watch them discuss the film’s twisted script, the vague timeline, how Miles Teller and Joseph Kosinski are celebrating “Top Gun: Maverick’s” success, and much more.
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00:00 (laughing)
00:01 - I've been asked that a bit lately.
00:03 You know, who knows?
00:05 Anything's a possibility, isn't it?
00:07 I'll lean over and ask my wife
00:08 and then lean over and ask Netflix and then I don't know.
00:10 (upbeat music)
00:12 - Miles, this movie is fantastic.
00:22 It's so wild and everybody in it's so great.
00:26 I'm curious how far you even get into a screenplay
00:29 like this before you just say,
00:31 "Yeah, I'm totally in, I'm doing this."
00:33 - Probably not too far with this one
00:35 just because it came from Joe and Joe and I have,
00:39 you know, this was before this movie,
00:42 we had just done two movies prior
00:43 and I had such a great experience with him.
00:45 So I don't know, I mean,
00:47 I'm not gonna say he could offer me anything,
00:48 but he could probably offer me a lot of stuff
00:51 and I would say yes, but I just really enjoyed the world.
00:55 I thought it, I think Joe coming into this,
00:58 having done "Oblivion" and "Tron"
01:00 and the worlds that he's able to create visually,
01:03 but still maintaining it, you know,
01:06 with really rich characters and performances,
01:10 I was excited, I'd never done anything in this genre before.
01:14 So luckily for me, the script was also very good.
01:17 - I think I was so,
01:19 I was leaning into so many themes and ideas about it.
01:22 The Milgram experiment was something
01:25 that I kept thinking about as I was reading it,
01:27 which was an experiment that I had read about
01:29 when I was in high school and it stuck with me.
01:31 And then, you know, when I met with Joe Kosinski,
01:35 our director, you know, I had ideas and opinions
01:40 about ways to really bring Lizzie to life
01:42 and things that I wanted to do to just flesh her out more.
01:46 And we, it became a brainstorming session
01:50 right the very first time we met.
01:52 And I was like, I wanna work with him.
01:54 You know, I'm buying into his vision.
01:55 I mean, he's such a visionary.
01:57 - You know, the music choices,
01:59 the presence of an Etch A Sketch,
02:00 all these things that make you think it's the past,
02:03 but the tech is obviously the future.
02:05 Did you think about what timeframe it was?
02:07 Did it even matter?
02:08 - Good question.
02:10 I mean, I think we had had that discussion.
02:13 It was kind of, I had assumed it was a little further
02:16 in the future than today, than present day.
02:20 I bet it's up to interpretation.
02:22 And as you say, it's, again,
02:24 it's just something unsettling
02:25 about what era am I in?
02:26 Where are we?
02:27 What country is this?
02:28 You know?
02:29 And I think Joe did such a great job
02:33 at combining all of those elements
02:36 to have it feel unexpected and slightly unsettling.
02:41 - I mean, I think it should feel present day-ish
02:46 or as science fiction goes, you know,
02:48 in the not so distant future at times.
02:51 I think that's kind of the dystopian reality
02:55 that we're creating here.
02:56 But I think it feels kind of parallel
02:59 to the life that we're living now.
03:00 - Well, I think it's timeless, you know?
03:02 Like that's the thing.
03:03 Like Lizzie's costumes intentionally are from another era,
03:08 you know, very influenced by like the 80s
03:10 and the 90s period.
03:12 And even like Lizzie's Walkman is like not from now.
03:19 It's not like some high tech thing.
03:21 And yet everything else in the facility is high tech.
03:24 And I think one of the things we spoke about was like,
03:28 well, Lizzie has to feel like analog to digital.
03:32 - Okay. - You know, like,
03:33 she's got to feel like vinyl player
03:37 when everything else feels like, you know, an MP3.
03:41 - I liked the kind of hermetically sealed world
03:44 of the Spider-Head where you don't understand
03:47 what time it is just as Jeff and Lizzie have no idea
03:50 what time of the year it is.
03:51 You know, it's this, you're going off on this journey
03:54 to this place that is tightly controlled by Steve.
03:58 Everything's designed.
03:59 The soundtrack is curated by him.
04:03 It's all a part of this elaborate plan centered
04:07 on the theme of control.
04:09 And so it was a fun world to create.
04:12 - Let's do this.
04:14 (upbeat music)
04:18 - This film is amazing.
04:21 The story is incredible.
04:23 It's a terrific exercise in how far along you're able
04:27 to string an audience before they finally start,
04:29 need to receive some answers.
04:31 So I'm just curious what kind of conversations you guys had
04:34 as you were assembling the picture in terms of,
04:36 in terms of when you can just dole out some of the details.
04:41 - I think it was important.
04:43 And if you've read the George Saunders short story,
04:46 you like this guy, Ebnesty.
04:49 There's a sort of facile quality and a charisma to him
04:54 that makes you think, oh, you know what?
04:56 I'd follow this guy, you know?
04:58 And I think that was important that his villainy comes out
05:03 at some point when you realize he's taken this too far.
05:07 I think that was also why Chris was the perfect choice
05:12 because you like him, you know?
05:14 And I think there is a long history of charismatic villains
05:18 that under different circumstances,
05:21 you would very much follow.
05:24 So I think that to me was the goal,
05:29 getting people comfortable with this thing
05:33 before it becomes uncomfortable and then unpleasant
05:37 and then terrifying.
05:39 - Beautiful people get away with too much.
05:40 And I say that having benefited myself from time to time.
05:43 - You know, it really read to me
05:44 like a piece of theater, this film.
05:46 And it takes place in one set, basically, one environment.
05:51 And because I had a lot of dialogue and American accent,
05:55 I didn't want it to start to sound repetitive.
05:58 I wanted to have it be,
06:00 there was a sort of intimacy and a very personal way
06:05 he spoke to people and individuals
06:07 and very welcoming and opening.
06:09 And that was the goal,
06:10 to constantly be kind of luring people in
06:13 and drawing them in.
06:14 - You like that word, but no, I mean,
06:15 how attractive is she?
06:17 - And the script allowed me to do that.
06:20 And what was great then was the moment they're drawn in,
06:24 you're kind of hit with,
06:25 "Whoa, hang on, this is not what I thought it is.
06:27 And this individual is not who I thought he was."
06:30 So yeah, I had a fantastic script and a great cast
06:34 and Joe Kaczynski to collaborate with on it.
06:37 - Have you even had a chance to celebrate Top Gun's success?
06:40 - I mean, I guess, yeah,
06:43 I'm being able to celebrate it when we're doing
06:45 all of these premieres really,
06:47 because that's when you,
06:49 because as actors,
06:50 that's really the only time you get to kind of
06:52 experience it with the fans.
06:54 It's not, you know, we're not,
06:56 it's not theater where it's live and we're not rock stars.
06:59 We don't get that kind of live feedback, but from,
07:03 yeah, but I have felt it,
07:05 even just a little bit I've been out,
07:06 if I'm at the grocery store or something like that,
07:08 the people are very generous
07:10 with their kind of praises for that film.
07:13 So it feels nice.
07:15 - Well, we can't talk too much about Spider-Head
07:17 'cause there's a lot of secrets.
07:18 Joe, have you had a chance to celebrate Top Gun's success
07:21 or have you just been nose to the grindstone?
07:23 - You know what?
07:24 I am happiest when I'm working on something.
07:28 So it's great.
07:30 Obviously, you know,
07:31 the Top Gun release has been phenomenal
07:34 and being able to go around the world
07:35 and talk about it was great.
07:36 But now I'm pumped to be able to talk about Spider-Head
07:40 and then right after this,
07:43 jump into prep on the next thing.
07:45 You know, that's how I like to do it.
07:48 - All right, how do we get the Interceptor
07:50 and Extraction franchises to cross over Expendables?
07:53 (Chris laughs)
07:53 - I've been asked that a bit lately.
07:56 You know, who knows?
07:58 Anything's a possibility, isn't it?
08:00 - Yeah, keep it in the Netflix family.
08:01 - How do I do it?
08:02 I just have to lean over and ask my wife
08:02 and then lean over and ask Netflix and then, you know.
08:05 (Chris laughs)
08:06 - Thanks for your time, Chris.
08:07 I appreciate it.
08:08 - Thanks so much.
08:10 - The time to worry about crossing lines
08:11 was a lot of lines ago.
08:13 (upbeat music)
08:16 (upbeat music)
08:18 (upbeat music)