Ari Aster’s star-filledEddingtonis a contemporary Western where “the guns are phones,” that reunites the auteur with Oscar-winning actorJoaquin Phoenix,who plays a small-town sheriff stacked against a world spinning out of his control in the wake of COVID-19. The film takes place in May 2020.
While talking with Collider’sSteve Weintraub, Phoenix discusses why Aster’s script resonated with him after their collaboration on 2023’sBeau Is Afraid. What was it about the pandemic, five years on, that piqued his interest? “It felt like it was the right time to be able to examine our behavior,” he says simply. In the movie, Phoenix is Sheriff Joe Cross, a man disgruntled by mask mandates, the neighboring county police, and Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). As the world takes initiative to adapt to a global crisis, Eddington, New Mexico, begins to implode, all in the looming shadow of an impending data center. The movie also starsEmma Stone,Austin Butler,Deirdre O’Connell,Luke Grimes, andMicheal Ward.
During the interview, Phoenix also discusses working opposite the charismatic Pascal. “You can’t take your eyes off him,” he says, telling the story of their first dinner with Aster and revealing Pascal’s reluctance to get physical. He also talks about finding common ground with a character as prickly and off-putting as Cross, why he’s found a kindred creative partner in Aster, and who therealvillain is inEddington.
Ari Aster’s ‘Eddington’ Examines Humanity “Through a Humorous Lens”
“I loved his vision.”
COLLIDER: I want to start with how much I enjoyed the movie. Obviously, you are offered a lot of scripts and a lot of opportunities to do different things in Hollywood, so what was it about Ari’s script for Eddington that said, “Yeah, I want to make this?”
JOAQUIN PHOENIX: Several things. First, I enjoyed working with Ari so much and felt a real connection to him and what he’s interested in, and his observations of the world. I loved his vision. Then, I think that in some ways, I was surprised because I felt likeI recognized pieces of myselffrom my experience, or my friends and family, in many of the different characters, and that’s so rare. It felt very important and vital to see ourselves and the things that we hopefully did right, the mistakes that we made, and to have a little bit of understanding and forgiveness to ourselves and to our friends and our families and to strangers, and also to maybe be entertained and laugh at ourselves. Becausethere’s something that is so absurd about what we experienced collectively. I think because the stakes felt so high in many ways, and they were, there’s also this moment where we kind of crossed a line and became just ridiculous to each other. It felt like it was the right time to be able to examine our behavior and examine it through a humorous lens.
Without a doubt. I think it will be triggering for some people to remember what it was like back in May and June of 2020, and what we all went through.
PHOENIX: Yeah.
Who’s the True Villain of ‘Eddington’?
“It was much too powerful for me.”
I read two quotes by Ari that I thought were fantastic. He said, “If I had to boil it down,Eddingtonis really just about a data center being built.” It really struck me because the movie really is about how money and corporations will always win, no matter what is going on.
PHOENIX: Yeah. They don’t really care where you stand politically or what your philosophy is, as long as this machine is moving forward. And I think part of this is thatif there is any kind of overarching villain of this, it would be Big Tech. It would be this moment in which, at the height of when we were having this very human existential kind of anxiety and fear, we were becoming less human and more removed from the thing that makes us human, which is community. To interact with others and to share ideas and to go through that fear of whatever it is that we’re experiencing, and to talk about it. We kind of became isolated and funneled into our own individual echo chambers. Obviously, there’s something just very dangerous about that and not helpful. So, I think in some ways, these characters are at odds with each other and fighting against each other, and yet they probably have much more in common than they don’t, and I thought that that was really interesting.
The other quote I read said, “Eddingtonis a Western, but the guns are phones.” It’s perfect. I have a lot of thoughts on phones and social media, and none of it is positive.
PHOENIX: Listen, I’ve never really been on social media. I had a brief moment. Strangely enough, it was after we made this movie. When there are scenes where I’m flicking through Facebook, I’m literally saying to Ari, “Okay, what happens? Where do I put my finger? When it says I’m clicking, what am I clicking on?” Because I’ve never been on Facebook. So, a lot of it was very foreign to me. Then, after we made the film, I kept getting sent these Instagram videos from friends through text, and at some point, you just couldn’t open them. So I joined, very briefly, and I realized thatit was much too powerful for me. There were too many humans who were smarter than me, and they had too much money, and then they were now being assisted by artificial intelligence, and that was too powerful for me. I just had to remove myself from that situation.
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The other problem is that these companies have perfected the art of the dopamine hit, and these algorithms are designed to keep you on these programs and using them, and they’re very effective. Look, if you enjoy it, more power to you, but it distracts you from the important things of life. But I’ve gone off on a little bit of a tangent.
PHOENIX: I like it, though. I like it. I like your passion.
Joaquin Phoenix Explains His “Affection” for Joe Cross
“There’s no value to me in making a judgment about a character.”
Do you find it difficult playing a character that you completely disagree with, or is it fun to inhabit someone so different than you?
PHOENIX: Well, what I find in some ways is, “What are the things that I identify with or agree with?” While Joe, politically, we may differ in our politics or some of our philosophy, I think what was important to me was finding where we connected. How does he remind me of my father, or an uncle, or a friend, or somebody that I’ve met? How can I move towards that, towards some kind of understanding? Because again, that felt really important.There’s no value to me in making a judgment about a character, and mocking them or standing in some position of self-righteousness and telling the world what I think of this character that’s different than me. That wasn’t valuable and that wasn’t interesting. I wanted to know what did Joe care about and what was he afraid of, and what was he holding onto? Because I think that when I do that, it reveals something about myself.
I realized that oftentimes, and more often than not, I probably have a lot of those same fears and concerns. Maybe the way that we want to solve them might be different, but the most important thing is just recognizing that we bothsharethose things, that there are these fundamental needs and desires that we have as human beings. I think in some ways, that time that we went through, and maybe we’re still going through, was one in which we were so separated and unaware and disinterested and outraged by each other’s opinions, andthere’s something really dangerous about that, that we can’t come together, at least even just to disagree. So, that’s the way that I approached the character and what felt important to me, because honestly, I found that I had a real affection for Joe. And while he does things at times in the film that disappoint me and I disapprove of, I never lost this affection that I felt for him, and a sadness over some of the decisions that he made. I think that’s important. I think it’s something we don’t do often enough. So, that’s important for me to try and do with these characters.
“There’s Something Amazing About Pedro”
We know! But tell us more.
I have to ask you one other thing. I thought your scenes with Pedro [Pascal] were so excellent. I especially loved the scene where he slaps you, and Katy Perry is blaring. It’s such a well-done scene. Can you talk about collaborating with Pedro, and what surprised you about working with him, and filming that scene where he slaps you?
PHOENIX: I remember seeing him in a movie calledTriple Frontier. Honestly, I don’t remember the movie, but I remember him. I was like, “Who is this actor? They’ve come out of nowhere.” I don’t think he has come out of nowhere. I imagine he’s been doing a lot of work, but that was when I was really first aware of him. He was in this film with all of these other amazing, charismatic, talented actors, and he really stood out to me, but I didn’t remember his name or anything. I just remembered him as an actor. When Ari first mentioned him, I was like, “Yes, I know this guy.” I said, “Wow, he’s really good.” So I was excited to work with him. He arrived, and we went to dinner, Ari, Pedro, and I, andhonestly, I just instantly felt this intuitive connection to him as a personand as an actor. I don’t know how to explain it, but I just felt like, “I’ll do any scene with him and I know that it’s going to draw something out of me.” Because he’s so full of curiosity, and he just has this charisma. You just want to hear him speak, and you can’t take your eyes off him. So, there’s something very exciting about him as an actor.
Then we started talking through scenes in rehearsal, and it was like, “Okay, we can really explore this together.” That felt really important because I knew that I had that with Ari, and I knew that we could get into a room and we could start dissecting a scene and taking it apart and putting it back together and all those things that you do, but you don’t know how another actor is going to react. And I knew immediately, “There’s something amazing about Pedro.” One of our first scenes was the scene that was in the supermarket, which is early in the film, and it’s kind of the second time that we meet. It was something that Ari and I were really finding where Joe was coming from in that scene, and really trying things, as you do — things that might throw off other actors. And I remember Pedro was always so kind and receptive and curious. He had averyclear idea of who Ted was in those moments, and yet it never felt like he was forcing me to behave in any particular way because he had something in mind for his character. He was just always receptive. So, I immediately was like, “Well, this is an actor that I can really work with.” So, I liked him as a person, and I liked him as an actor.
I’m sorry that I spent all that time and I didn’t answer your question about the particular scene. I’ll just say that when we shot that scene, Pedro’s just a nice guy, and he didn’t want to hit me. [Laughs] He didn’t want to slap me in a real way. We did the first take, and he kind of just brushed it gently along my face, and I was like, “Pedro, you have to slap.” Then I think once he did that, that take, there’s just something electric and charged between us.
It’s fantastic.
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It was a crushing success.
Joaquin Phoenix on Why He’s Found a Creative Partner in Ari Aster
Phoenix discusses working with Aster to find a “really charged” moment for the final scene while filming.
I love the ending of this movie. It’s so unexpected. What was your take when Ari told you how this film was going to end and where you would end up?
PHOENIX: It’s something that we talked about a great deal, honestly, the ending, because I think that we both really wanted to try to capture a very unique tone. That was something that I know I was really concerned about. But you might be surprised thatthere are many moments in that whole last epilogue section that we literally decided on the daythat we were shooting it. So, it was a really charged, amazing moment, I think for both of us, and necessarily for me as an actor, because there are all these kinds of vignettes, and many of them were things that we were just figuring out that day. So, it’s very meaningful and special to me because of that.
I’m so surprised to hear that, but at the same time, that’s so interesting to hear that that’s how Ari and you work, that you allow for such freedom and flexibility while you’re making something like this. I would imagine that Ari has all of that already locked down before you’re stepping on set. Are there other scenes in the movie that are that spontaneous, or is it just this particular scene?
PHOENIX: Ari has it locked down, and because of that, he’s able to step out of his plan at times or to fold something into his plan. What was really so incredible about making this film, the second film with him, is that I saw a massive — I don’t want to sound patronizing — growth as a filmmaker. So, he does have a very specific plan, but there are things. Like, there was no attendant that was meant to be in those scenes at all, and several of those little vignettes were just things in the moment. There was always going to be sitting and watching the computer, and seeing this character. That’s why I love working with him is that he has a very clear plan, he knows what he wants, he’s very specific, and yet if something else develops that potentially is interesting, he will explore that.
