‘Slingshot’ Exclusive Interview: (‘Evil’) and stars Oscar-winner Casey Affleck (‘Manchester by the Sea’), Laurence Fishburne (‘The Matrix’ ‘), Emily Beecham (‘Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant’) and Tomer Capone (‘The Boys’).
Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with legendary actor Laurence Fishburne about his work on ‘Slingshot’, his first reaction to the screenplay, his approach to his character, the incredible sets and working with Casey Affleck.
(L to R) Laurence Fishburne, Casey Affleck and Tomer Capone in Bleecker Street’s ‘Slingshot’. Credit: Bleecker Street.
Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about your first reaction to the screenplay and why you wanted to be a part of this project?
Laurence Fishburne: Well, when I read it, I was very surprised that I couldn’t understand where it was going. I thought, OK, I want to do this because if it surprises me, hopefully we’ll surprise the audience. Also, Casey Affleck was attached, and he’s a brilliant actor, who I’ve admired for years, and I really want to work with him. Then I found out that Tomer Capone was going to play another character, and I love his work on ‘The Boys,’ and I just thought, yeah, we’d make an awesome trio. So those are the reasons I wanted to do it.
MF: Is that what you’re looking for when you’re reading scripts and choosing a project, which surprises you with a good cast and director?
LF: I don’t necessarily approach it with “what am I looking for”. I always approach it with an open mind and an open heart. If there’s something that I find surprising or funny or it makes me cry or whatever it is, then I really have to connect with the story on some level. That is first and foremost. Then of course, if there are amazing people attached, like our director, Mikael Hafström, on this, an amazing director whose work I wasn’t familiar with, but once I met him, I was like, oh, this guy is fantastic, and We are going to do something really cool together. It doesn’t matter if anybody gets it, you know, we’ve got a good piece of material, we’ve got a great crew, we’ve got a great cast, and we’ve got a leader in us. A director who has a vision he believes in. So, if he’s confident about it, he’s someone I’m willing to follow.
(L to R) Casey Affleck and Laurence Fishburne in Bleecker Street’s ‘Slingshot’. Credit: Bleecker Street.
MF: Can you talk about your approach to playing Captain Franks?
LF: It’s a role that I’m comfortable in, people buy into me completely as an authority figure. I’m a ship captain, so I have that sort of military bearing. I’ve played a ship captain in space before, so it’s not a big stretch for anyone to trust me. So, it was about the tone because it’s such an intimate film, it’s such a small kind of space. It’s three people on a ship together, at times claustrophobic, and then in moments because you’re in space, it’s so vast. Then they introduced the idea that the ship could be compromised, and the mission could be compromised, and our lives could be in danger. So, when you have a small group of people floating through space on something the size of a golf ball, the stakes suddenly become very high.
MF: Can you talk about how Captain Franks deals with the mutiny on his ship and the different dynamics between his crew members?
LF: It’s cool because there’s this whole triangle thing that happens between the three characters. So, in moments, my character Captain Franks sits at the top of the pyramid and then he changes, while the other two are alone and they’re plotting whether they’re going to obey my orders or whether they’re going to rebel. . Then when I convince one of them to see things my way it changes again. Then it keeps changing and changing and it builds tension and you’re like, okay, what’s going to happen here? Who will captain the ship, as it were?
Casey Affleck in ‘Slingshot’ from Bleecker Street. Credit: Bleecker Street.
MF: What was it like working with Casey Affleck and having him as a scene partner?
LF: Oh man, that was great. Casey is like the Chet Baker of acting. I mean, it’s lyrical. It is eccentric. He has this amazing sense of melody that’s in the emotional range, and he plays it all with great subtlety and a kind of beautiful melancholy that’s just captivating. So, it was great to work with him.
MF: Finally, do you think the small spaceship set helped add a sense of claustrophobia to your performance?
LF: Well, it did then. It was very misleading because it is shaped like a circle, right? So the scenes where we’re walking down the hall, you keep going round and round, but you can’t, because the way those corners are designed, you can never see the end of it. So, it seems to go on forever in some ways. What Mikael Håfström was able to do with his DP was that he was able to sometimes make it feel like it was quite spacious, and then other times to make it tight and feel very claustrophobic so that your perspective changes. You’re not sure if it’s up, is it down? It was a really beautifully constructed and designed set.
“Some fears are darker than space.”
Showtimes and tickets
An astronaut struggles to maintain his grip on reality on a potentially deadly compromise mission to Saturn’s moon, Titan. Read the plot
What is the plot of ‘Slingshot’?
An astronaut (Casey Affleck) struggles to maintain his grip on reality on a potentially deadly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan.
Who is in the cast of ‘Slingshot’?
- Casey Affleck as John
- Laurence Fishburne as Captain Franks
- Emily Beecham as Zoe
- Tomer Capone as Nash
Casey Affleck in ‘Slingshot’ from Bleecker Street. Credit: Bleecker Street.
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