Brian Tyree Henry and Paul Dano got their start in the theater — which will come as no surprise to anyone watching them in their latest movie, playing characters with well-crafted backstories. In Lila Neugebauer’s “Causeway,” he portrays Henry James, a New Orleans mechanic and amputee who bonds with Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence), a wounded soldier desperate to get back in the fight. And Dano has had a stellar year, going from the Riddler in “The Batman” to portraying a benevolent 1950s dad named Burt, based on Steven Spielberg’s father, Arnold, in “The Fabelmans.” For Dano, going from darkness to light not only showed his scope, but was what he needed in his life.
Paul Dano: I am really glad to meet you.
Brian Tyree Henry: I’m not as excited as I am to meet you. I’ve been a big fan of you for quite some time.
Dano: Did you know that you will use your middle name from the start?
Henry: I was not. Apparently, there’s a charlatan named Brian Henry who already has the name, and I had to put in my middle name.
Dano: I made my first movie when I was 16, and I went to director Paul Franklin Dano. Then on the second movie I did, they said, “If you want your name on the poster, that’s too long.” And I said, “Okay.”
Henry: And you let them take Franklin away?
Dano: This is correct.
Henry: It looks very presidential. Being part of the three-name club is something very special. Have you been acting out something you knew you always wanted to do?
Alexi Lubomirsky for Diversity
Dano: Yes and no. I grew up in Manhattan. Maybe my mom wanted me to be a lawyer. And I remember at the school I went to, they spoke in public. We had to move out of town, so we got a house in the suburbs. Then the schools were different. You put me on stage. I started doing not only school plays, but community plays. This led to doing a regional play in Stamford, Connecticut. Then that led to doing an Off-Broadway and Broadway play when I was a kid.
The thing acting like a kid, I had mixed feelings about it. Because I think it’s hard for people to grow up if they give up school, friends, and sports. Fortunately, I still had something decent enough at home.
So today I googled our conversation.
Henry: Oh boy.
Dano: Have you been to business school for a while?
Henry: I was at Morehouse College in Atlanta, and I know this is where I’ve wanted to go since I was a kid. There was something going on when I told all these old black people I was going to Morehouse – I watched them light up. But there was no theater program or arts or anything on the Morehouse campus; All theater is on the campus of Spelman, its sister school.
I was in the middle of a business class, but I hated it. And I remember reading Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” during a lecture because I was like, “I don’t really care.” Two of my friends knocked on this window when I was in class. They were like, “There’s a test going on at Spellman.” I came out of this class and went to this test: I felt like I was among my tribe.
Dano: Did you drop out of drama school and go to New York?
Henry: I went straight to New York. So I had the luxury, frankly, of working and collaborating with some amazing people while I was at Yale. Tarell McCranie, who wrote “Moonlight,” is one of them. We did all of his plays when we were at Yale.
Dano: Let me pause for a moment. My wife, Zoe Kazan, went to Yale. But she said that whenever she was in a play, she made sure to see it. She was like, ‘This guy has it Thing. ”
Alexi Lubomirsky for Diversity
Henry: It’s crazy how small this world is. Because Zoe and Leela — who directed “Causeway” — I was just a crazy person at Yale. We saw it all. We talked about the stage. We were walking the streets. And I immediately felt it with Zoe. We used to have some great conversations. Also, I’m not going to lie – I was the guy who was always doing jobs. If I hear music coming from my apartment, if I see smoke coming out the window, you should probably just come in.
Dano: Tell me about “Causeway”. How did it feel to work with a theatrical director making her first film? Because it’s a completely different language with the actors, right?
Henry: really is. Theater is hard, but it’s always so satisfying. I feel like theater is a place where there is real collaboration. Lila and I have always advocated playing together. And so this script came to me at her request, and the moment I heard her name, it was yes. I haven’t even read it.
Dano: Have you and Jennifer Lawrence spent time together?
Henry: We did. I think the great benefit of doing the movie is that each and every one of us is connected to the clip in a way that we can argue a lot about where it’s going. Jennifer, this was her first production attempt, was really very hands on. She started out in independent film and then became a movie star. You could tell she was going back to her roots.
Was working with Steven Spielberg something you thought would happen?
Dano: I think it was a dream. I got a text saying, “Steven Spielberg wants to meet you,” and he was like, “Okay, cool.” was on Zoom. The second he started talking, he was so emotionally open, it kind of disarmed me. And when he started telling me about his family — his story in a way, his parents — my heart really leapt. I left our meeting feeling really good.
And then it took a while. I was like, “I hope he calls again.” Then he texted me, and we got to Zoom again. We talked about his father. And then, finally, we had a third zoom. And the third takbeer had a cigar in his mouth. And he was like, “I think you’d make my dad proud.”
Henry: The scene that really stood out for me in “The Fabelmans” is the beginning, where you tell your son, Sammy, about going to the movies. Can you talk about what that was like?
Dano: It’s amazing how you can see Stephen’s parents in it. His mother was an artist and a free spirit. His father was a really brilliant computer engineer. People haven’t become entrepreneurs yet, but if it were about a decade or two later, we might know his name: He literally helped build the first computer on which the first programming language was built.
Burt’s rationality is a really healthy thing for me, as a parent — to be like, “You can trust the way the world works.” The engineer sees things made a certain way: the chair he is. airplane He goes. There was something extremely powerful in his energy. I always saw mother and child as a storm, and Burt had to be the main one. So just trying to be my more grounded self through Burt, that was a good thing for me.
Henry: Can we talk about The Riddler? I did something that stayed with me after I watched it.
Dano: My personality was like both sides of the shock. That was the first conversation I had with director Matt Reeves. Bruce Wayne is wealthy, but this kid, Edward Nashton, had nothing. I always thought the only positive feedback he ever got in his life was when he said a riddle or puzzle, “You win.”
This happened to me with The Riddler and also in a movie called “Prisoners” – where I really have to start separating space. Because if I had a book about trauma or serial killers, it couldn’t pass by my bed. For the big scene, at the end of The Batman, I remember thinking, “Okay, let me get a hotel room and be away from my family. Because none of this needs to be mixed up.”
Henry: Dealing with trauma? What did you find most helpful to go beyond that?
Dano: A lot of energy goes towards one day, right? one scene. And you’ve got a lot of stuff piled up no matter how long your preparation takes. And then you have to edit it.
Henry: I find I’ve gotten to a place now where I’m just trying to figure out how to release him – how to leave these guys where I found them. Because many of them are tracking.
Dano: I don’t want to sound too hippie, but things come at the right time. Especially with Bert and the Fable Mans. I needed that. I think that’s an ongoing learning curve for us.
Henry: I like being a student first and foremost.
Dano: I also.
Design mode by Jack Flanagan
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