Jeremy Allen White - 'Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere' [LIVE]

26:10And I was reading the pilot for the bear. And I think I just had a moment where I was like, this is it's too it's too good for me to say no to, regardless of the environment, regardless of the city of Chicago. I have no right to say no to something that is this good. and that's how I ended up. Thank God. I know, truly.

26:27Jeremy Allen White:That's how close we came. Wow, I didn't realize that. Okay, so just for the record, prior to the bear, did you possess any kitchen-related skills? Not at all. Not at all? Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. In terms of, I don't know if it was how much could be done specifically before the pilot versus the rest of the first season, but what did you do to rectify that? I think we took it most seriously before the pilot. I mean, Io and I went to culinary school for weeks in Pasadena. I worked in Michelin star restaurant, Paz Jolie in Santa Monica. We just committed quickly. We had about two months to prep and I spent those two months in culinary school, working the line at a Michelin star restaurant and cooking at home every chance I had.

27:17And then, you know, we filmed the pilot in the summer, in the summer then. And I had vegetables in my hotel room and a cutting board and my knife kid. And I was, you know, I was cutting onions and carrots every night.

27:30Jeremy Allen White:Housekeeping must have been wondering what was going on. Yeah, they were confused. Now, and also just another, not hugely important, but just out of curiosity, you also briefly were at another restaurant people may know in Hollywood, Republic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I spent some time at Republic, yeah. Yeah, there was a couple days after going to culinary school, I would go there. That felt so, I mean, a wonderful restaurant. But the machine of that restaurant, I mean, Pasturely is wonderful and they have a star, but it's a much more intimate setting. Republique was so massive and the staff there was so big.

28:08I think I was too afraid to kind of join the ranks there. But yes.

28:13Jeremy Allen White:so from all of these different places that you were in a very short amount of time less than less than two months right like more like six weeks I think something like that like having to crash course all this I know that you're learning things about how people as you say like from chopping things in the kitchen to other but like I think one of the things that people have often talked about and it applies to Springsteen too and we'll come to that but like the physicality that you bring to these characters. And I wonder if you can talk about, we know that Carmi is such a tightly coiled guy that there's part of that and hunched over often.

28:53Jeremy Allen White:And I wonder how much of this, obviously it's considered, but how much of it is just the nature of being a chef versus the nature of what he is holding in his body from what we know is going on in his life. I think the two went hand in hand in a really nice way. And I made the discovery of kind of like where Harami Carmi holds his anxiety and trauma in witnessing these real chefs and their position at a table. I mean, that's the position you're in all day. Your shoulders are hunched over. Your head is down. That's the position. And I also think, you know, I got to spend a lot of time with these really gifted cooks and chefs and people and restaurants.

29:35And all this stuff is true. I mean, Anthony Bourdain was right. It does attract a certain group of outsiders and misfits. And in my opinion, people that need that sort of structure and obsession in order to move through the world, and it's actually quite meditative and such a relief to be able to focus on a task for 10, 12, 14, 16 hours a day, it's taking a break from your mind otherwise. And I think that's certainly the case with Carmi, and that's a reason that he is so attracted to that world. It settles his mind, you know.

30:18Jeremy Allen White:You also, I think probably this is the case most of the time when you do a performance or when you're getting ready, but maybe you look at other references, performances, other people. I read that in this one, and I'm trying to connect the dots, and I'll leave it to you. Yeah, I think I know where you're going. Right before he did The Godfather, Al Pacino played a heroin addict in The Panic and Needle Park. Great movie. Great movie. But he was not yet really known. No. And it was a... He'd done The Indian Wants the Bronx on stage, and the casting director saw him in that and cast him in Panic and Needle Park.

30:52Yeah.

30:52Jeremy Allen White:Which then, I think, directly led to The Godfather opportunity. What was it about The Panic and Needle Park that you were able to pull from for Carmi? There was a drive in that performance. Obviously, you know, his drive was usually to get a fix. But I thought of Carmi's kind of drive in his work and obsession to also be a fix. I think he needed that structure so badly. He needed success so badly. That was going to fix him. And, you know, Pacino's character was looking for heroin. But there was also something, I think I've just always admired that performance. And that's really the first time I think that he was on screen or certainly on screen in a lead role.

31:36And it was like the format of filmmaking. He hadn't figured out how to perform for a camera yet, but that made the performance so excellent. Everything was so unexpected, all of his movements. He had these incredibly wide eyes. there was something really unpredictable in that performance, and that was just something that I wanted to try and bring to Carmen. That was great. And what I also wonder is how much, obviously, you are first and foremost,

32:06Jeremy Allen White:you're creating a character when you do anything. But at the same time, how much does the environment in which you're creating the character, how much can it affect the performance? And what I'm referring to here is that apparently Chris Thor would only do Yeah Two or three takes Which this is a For every scene And this is a character Who's already stressed and intense And whatever Yeah Does that feed into that? Absolutely I was a wreck Shooting the first season Of The Bear I didn't understand Why Chris was moving so quickly There were some days We would go home At 1pm or 2pm And just waste Half the day Sorry Chris Sorry FX or whatever, but that would happen sometimes.

32:53And I was like, I need more. I mean, I spoke early on in this. I like rehearsal. I like feeling like I understand kind of the world that I'm standing in and sitting in, and I find my confidence that way. And Chris didn't allow myself or any of the actors to really ever feel settled or like we got it. And I think after seeing the show, I mean, at the time, I loved Chris. You know, I admired Chris, but I didn't really know what kind of filmmaker he was. He'd done some episodes of Rami. He had directed a lot of like stand up specials. He'd helped make Eighth Grade with Bo Burnham, which is a great film.

33:31But I didn't have a lot to go off of. So I didn't trust him entirely yet. And then I watched the first season and it clicked that he was creating this environment. He was creating the structure for us to exist in. And I also learned that, yes, like that anxiety was a necessary part of the process. But I also know that Chris wouldn't have, you know, if we didn't get it, he wouldn't have moved on because we were shooting it so quickly because we only knew we were going to get one or two takes. Everybody again came very prepared and knowing what they wanted to do.

34:04Jeremy Allen White:which your your john wells experience would have helped prep you exactly the first season of the four that we've seen so far uh was described by the new york times as quote a war story that happens to take place in a kitchen close quote that show the the the eight episode first season dropped in its entirety on june 23rd 2022 and absolutely exploded just to remind folks the kind of way people talked about it and reacted to it again New York Times quote the bear didn't just get food and cooking right it got Chicago right it got the culture of the workplace right it got the complexity of grief right it got the devastation of addiction right it got the beauty of good hospitality right along with the tortured ache that can lurk behind it close quote great viewership you and the show were recognized with every accolade there is uh for the first season I think SAG, Golden Globe, Critics' Choice, and Emmy for Yourself.

34:57Jeremy Allen White:The show's second season later received 23 Emmy nominations, which was then a record for the most nominations ever for a comedy series in a single year. The whole world began going around tweeting and saying, yes, chef, ironically or not. But I wonder for you, how quickly and in what ways did you realize that this thing had taken off? I was in New York. I live mostly here in Los Angeles, but I was in New York that summer that the show came out. I was just a, you know, you live a different life when you're living in New York. You're just around people far more often that you don't know, I guess, you know.

35:37And I remember pretty immediately recognizing the reach of the show because in just a week's time, I was getting recognized for Carmi for the show on the train, on the sidewalk. People were really excited. Shameless was a popular show. We did it for a really long time. But I did always feel like in some cities, maybe it wasn't as popular as in others. And I remember, you know, walking around New York and, of course, getting recognized every once in a while for Shameless. But it felt very different with The Bear. And then just very quickly having kind of writers and directors that I admire a lot sending me things.

36:24Weeks after the show came out where prior to the show, maybe I would get a couple movies like that, like once or twice a year. I would get five or six in in a week and and that response from kind of the the industry was was was

36:41Jeremy Allen White:fast yeah I just want to ask you a couple of other quick follow-ups about the bear and then we'll talk about the other things that that kind of came out of that which you're alluding to so many people you know and so many projects came out of that but with the bear in the first season two episodes in particular that I've got to hear your experience with the seventh of the eight episodes as intensive as any of them everything's going wrong in the restaurant in his life it unfolds in real time 18 of the 20 minutes are shot in a single take yeah it's one of the craziest episodes and to speak to how great the first season and the show overall have been that's not even the one that you You ended up, you're required to submit one for the Emmys.

37:27Jeremy Allen White:That's not even the one that you submitted and were recognized for it. That one is the other one which I want to ask you about, which is episode eight, which is the one in which, which ends with your seven minute monologue at Alcoholics Anonymous about Carmi's late brother with the camera tight on you. Can you just maybe as case studies of what it was like to act in that first season before you knew the whole world was watching those episodes. I mean, it felt so fun. I mean, shooting the first season of that show, it felt like we had this secret. And we had no idea kind of the reach of the show because you can never predict that sort of thing.

38:06But we knew how fun it was. We knew how special it was. We knew how much and how quickly we all connected with one another. And I remember episode seven was kind of the perfect... Shooting something in one take has become this kind of like almost like joke of a thing, and it's done really frequently. It's done in the studio, and it was done in adolescence, and there's films. It's been a whole film can be shot in one take, and I think sometimes it can be kind of like a masturbatory pursuit, but if it really serves the story, then it works. The wonderful thing about shooting something in one take is everybody, not just your castmates, but the entire crew, props department, the camera department, wardrobe, hair and makeup, like everybody has to be working together at the highest level.

38:56And that's what makes doing a single take, you know, so exciting. And it feels like theater because you do get to exist in the moment for five, 10, 15, 20 minutes. And I think that just normally, I think allows an actor to get a little more like lost or carried away and into the fantasy and the environment and everything like that. We shot that episode, I think we just did three takes. So we shot it again before noon and everybody went home at noon that day. I remember the excitement. I remember finishing a take in its completion and Video Village being so excited. And the cheering because everybody was involved in it.

39:36And it was like in the moment everybody was involved with it. In episode eight, I think it's like the opening of the episode, there's another very long take. It's Carmen going to Alcoholics Anonymous and speaking about his brother Mikey, and it's really the first time that the audience is really getting an understanding of who Mikey was. But it's also really the first time you're being led into Carmi's mind. You know, there is a lot of question marks, and it's one of the things I loved about the first season so much is you're kind of just dropped into the world of the show. not a lot is explained to you.

40:13And Carmi in this scene at Alcoholics Anonymous is really explaining himself for the first time or trying to make sense of things for himself being witnessed by others. Chris Storer directed that episode. He never shared with me that he planned to shoot that in one take. We shot that in a very traditional way. Tight shots. There were wider ones. There's even like a dolly kind of like moving amongst the group in this Al-Anon meeting. and I don't think he even told me that they were using that single take. I think I saw it on TV for the first time. I think if he had told me, it might have been too much pressure and he was kind of protecting me in a way.

40:54I think because I thought that I had the safety net of great editing and several setups, I could do this scene and I could fail or I could have moments that were good and moments that didn't work as much and that allowed me to perform it. the way that I did, but that monologue, that piece of writing that Chris Storer did was so, so beautiful, and it was about four pages, and I had those four pages folded up in my back pocket for the entirety of filming the first season of the show because it was such a map to the character of Carmi.

41:30Jeremy Allen White:Between that season and the three that have followed, season two, we learn about the the rest of the team and we see about you know you're talking about the family family right the the price of on relationships of require of the attention required of of chef season three somebody called it a volcano of self-loathing it goes from there on and on uh i think season three and season four were at least partly filmed concurrently right correct and we'll be getting a fifth season yes soon is your understanding that that's it or there's more beyond potentially in fact the bear was a feature at one point and i think chris had the show created in three acts and i think there was a period where it was always three seasons and and then i think he found more story or or or i was bringing something that needed more exploration or ebon was bringing something or or or you know lionel who plays marcus and i think he started falling in love with the world more, you know?

42:33And it became not just Carmi's story. I think obviously the feature version and the three season version was you're with Carmi the whole time. And then I think Chris, the world got bigger and wider. The fourth season was going to be the last. Chris called me on like Christmas Eve last year and was like, we're going to do some more. And I don't know, that could happen again around this holiday time. There's no plans for it to be the last. There's no plans right now for us to do more I think it's just all dependent on kind of what Chris wants to do But if it was up to me, I just feel so lucky to to read, you know, Chris's words and also work with These actors who've become some of my best, you know friends and and so I'd I'd do it for a very long long time

43:21Jeremy Allen White:Well, the very last thing on the bear is that I wonder in your opinion and I guess I'm not going to say I'm not going to give any color I want to get It's been this big discussion Is the bear A comedy As it is often categorized Yeah Or is it a drama I don't know I mean It's a It's a comedy Because we call it a comedy Or because it can be funny Or because like I think it's a dramedy And you have to choose one When you're in this Like in between Space And I think There should be almost like another category at a certain point television has changed so drastically in the last few decades and the structure and award system has remained the same and that feels strange to me I guess well and I think just as a last comment on that I believe the show would have thrived on either side of the ledger whichever it was and but at your point about you know nuance should be rewarded not punished yeah like like maybe there should be another yeah category good good thing to raise um now during the hiatuses throughout the bear you've continued to do movies and some of them you know smaller kind of gems there's a movie fingernails with you and jesse buckley jesse buckley and riz out on the circuit this fall festival yeah she's amazing as uh i saw hamnet and telluride and you guys are gonna love that movie it's it's unreal So that was 2023, as was The Iron Claw, which we mentioned earlier.

44:56Jeremy Allen White:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Carrie Von Erich, the kind of favored son in this family of wrestlers. And then we have the third of the examples of movies that were made during these periods between seasons of The Bear. And that, of course, is Springsteen, Dornity From Nowhere, which I want to just I don't know if people. Yeah, thanks. Thank you.

45:25Jeremy Allen White:I don't know if people are aware that, you know, it's not like somebody woke up for the first time in 2024 or 2025 and said, wouldn't it be great to make a movie about Bruce Springsteen? It's just that he's never been willing to work with anyone until now. And I wonder if you can share just what you know of the context for why now he was Open to it when he hadn't been in the past why Scott Cooper might be the filmmaker He was willing to do that with and why as at least in terms of how it's been communicated to you both Scott And he were very excited to approach you to play him. What do you know about all that?

46:04Bruce will say He's old as shit now and he just doesn't care anymore but that's not the truth I think Scott Scott the world that he creates time after time in his films Bruce had seen Scott's films and felt very close to those and I feel like Bruce tells similar stories to the ones that Scott chooses and he wanted Scott to make a Scott Cooper film because the film focuses on this period in his life and focuses is on the record of Nebraska, which he's incredibly proud of. I think that was of great interest to him and having this focus. More in Zane's book, you know, Deliver Me From Nowhere, which was born out of real like exploration of this period of time.

46:53You know, Bruce wrote a memoir, Born to Run. His recall and memory is outstanding, but there's a chapter about Nebraska in Bruce's book and It's about a page and a half long the books like 800 pages long and so Warren's book was really an investigation what what else was going on during this time and turns out there was there was a lot And it was a very important period in Bruce's life and and I think that's kind of the main the main reason why they wanted me to do it I don't know well, I

47:25Jeremy Allen White:I have heard a few things Okay, sure sure so Scott has said that two things that Jeremy has that I thought were critical are humility and swagger, close quote. So that helps. And then Bruce, I guess, had become aware of you through The Bear. I think it was The Bear. Yeah. That is something I want to talk about, him responding to you in The Bear, because I think it gets a little meta, because Bruce in this film, at the time you're portraying him in Springsteen Delivered Me From Nowhere, is already famous, but not sell-out stadiums world famous. However, he's clearly on the precipice of bigger things and seems very conflicted about that.

48:07Jeremy Allen White:Now, when you signed on to this project, you were blowing up with the bear and getting attention for underwear ads and all kinds of relationships and all kinds of other things. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You seemed a little conflicted about what you were on the precipice of. Was that in any way something you were conscious of or drew upon in addition to all the research and things that you did about Bruce? Could you feel a connection yourself? Yeah, I think yes. I mean, he was on the precipice of this new level of sort of, like public perception is something I thought a lot about in the preparation for the film.

48:51And when you're having periods in your life where you're not feeling particularly self-assured, self-confident, or your self-awareness isn't quite there. And if you're in a position where that's going on and these ideas are getting kind of thrown at you from the public, from the outside world, it can be very crippling, and you ask yourself this question, who am I? I think so much of what's going on with Bruce in this period where the film takes place is he's really trying to listen to himself. He's really trying to witness himself and quiet, really, the rest of the world, the pressures of the rest of the world.

49:33And I think, you know, there's a really beautiful lesson in there for any artist or anybody, really. But yes, I mean, that was something I was becoming sort of familiar with. I mean, I do feel very lucky where I have been acting since the age of 14 or 15. And while to many it seems that the bear came out and I was kind of shot out of a cannon, that wasn't the case. It's all felt very gradual to me. And so I feel lucky in that sense in my relationship to sort of like fame or public opinion. It's felt gradual and not too crazy. But yes, it was something that I considered often.

50:11Jeremy Allen White:One thing I gloss over is that Scott Cooper wanted you. Bruce Springsteen wanted you. But you were not immediately sure you wanted to do this yourself, right? Yeah. What was your hesitation? There might be some actors that any job that looks good, they go, yeah, I can do that. I'm not one of them. I want to make sure that I'm the right person. There felt to be a lot of responsibility with this particular role because I was portraying a real person and a person who is so well known. And so many people have their kind of like idea of who Bruce Springsteen is and what he stands for. and there was a part of me that didn't want to interrupt that sort of understanding.

50:52And then I think the most plain and obvious sort of thing was Scott Cooper said, I want you to do this movie, and I said, I don't know how to sing or play the guitar. Don't you think you should hire somebody who already knows how to do these things? It'll just make your job a lot easier. And he said, that's something that we'll figure out. You've got six months. I said, that's not enough time. and he said well that's what we have and we you know we just jumped

51:20Jeremy Allen White:so in those six months because I think it's useful for prospective actors or filmmakers to understand alright so you're never nothing you can do is going to make you or anyone else in six months the exact replica of somebody who's you know I'm not going to be able to play the guitar with the confidence of Bruce Springsteen in six months that's clear but you did a wonderful and very convincing job and that is when we see you singing on screen that's you singing on screen and you're playing guitar a lot play guitar sometimes yes and so how did you get yourself to the point that you are in the film which is very impressive what what were just what were the i think there's a bunch of people it sounds like who you kind of leaned on and consulted yeah there's a wonderful vocal coach um eric vitro who who works with really amazing singers i mean he He works with Ariana Grande and Rosalia, and he works with Sabrina Carpenter.

52:17And he also helps a lot of actors like Austin Butler and Timothee Chalamet and myself get ready for films that demand this kind of work. And so I got together with Eric almost right away. And we worked together four, five times a week for six months trying to find... Well, first, just trying to see if I knew how to sing a song, then trying to sing it honestly, and then trying to sing it like Bruce Springsteen. That was kind of our process. And then the guitar I found to be the most, I mean, to pick up an instrument really for the first time like that, it feels so foreign. I remember getting together with Dave Cobb, our music supervisor, and he was like, Nebraska's not that many chords.

53:06It's going to be no problem. and he just put a guitar in my hand and he was like, so this is an A and this is an E and my fingers just wouldn't behave. They wouldn't do what I wanted them to do and I saw the kind of light leave his eyes and he was like, maybe he made a big mistake. But I got together with a great guitarist, J.D. Simo out of Nashville. He's a great musician, great studio musician, great performer. I got together with him mostly over Zoom in the beginning and we got together five, six times a week and I remember the first time I met with JD, you know, I said, Hey, I'm so excited to meet you and I'm really excited to learn how to play the guitar.

53:43And he said, we don't have time to learn how to play the guitar. We have time to teach you how to play these four Bruce Springsteen songs. And so so I learned the guitar in a very strange, strange way. But the truth is, when you have to do something like that, it's just will and time and repetition. There's no shortcut with those things. It's just a big commitment of of time. And your life is just gonna look different for those six months and you take

54:10Jeremy Allen White:Some big swings in other ways, too. I believe you how did you I mean Bruce has a little bit of a rasp We could say yeah. Yeah, for sure. How was how was that's you can Study his voice and you can learn to sing whatever but like you tried some things to get that Yeah, so I pre-recorded born in the USA about a week before we started making the movie were in pre-production. Born in the USA is a very hard song to sing because he's not really singing as much as he's shouting in that song. Six months wasn't enough time to teach me how to really sing that song. And so to get the sound that I wanted, I was singing from my throat and I was singing from my chest, which isn't something you should do.

54:52But that's what I did because I liked the way that it sounded. It sounded closest to Bruce. I lost my voice entirely, and we thought we were going to have to push production because I didn't have a voice. For three days, I didn't have a voice. And then my voice started to come back. And I went, damn, this sounds good. And so I tried to hang on to that as much as I could. And whenever I started losing it, I would scream into a pillow. So every morning, I would wake up and I would scream into a pillow, especially in the first couple weeks, to try and kind of like recapture that sound. And then I had a Zoom with Eric Vitro, my vocal coach, and I told him what I'd been doing.

55:31and he said, you have to stop that right now. You will lose your voice entirely and there will be no movie. And so I had to stop at a certain point, but that was something I explored, yeah, for sure.

55:46Jeremy Allen White:And then back to physicality, we talked a little bit about it with Carmi, but in this case, Bruce carries himself and walks in a pretty distinct way. What was done to help you nail that? I think I was very lucky. I mean, I was very lucky. Our wardrobe and our costumer was so excellent. She did a lot of things with the wardrobe that I think helped me change my posture. I mean, everything was very tight as it was, you know, on him and on a lot of people during that during that time. But we also had boots on and I had like like a heel in the boot to try and give me some more height like Bruce's height.

56:35And that changed the way that I walked and that changed the way that I stood and and the way that I moved. And I had a lot of footage of Bruce and not not an incredible amount of footage of him around this this period, but enough. and especially on stage. And so I was able to watch him a lot there. And then he's so noncommittal in this period. Very early on, there was this kind of like one foot out and one foot in idea that I had with Bruce. And kind of any time you see him sitting in a diner or sitting at the radio station, I wanted it to feel like he could kind of like stand up at any moment and just walk away, you know, and be by himself.

57:17because I think that's what he wanted to do during that time. And then there was a lot of beautiful photography that I looked at, a lot of black and white photography that was at the Colts Neck house, the way that he stood, the way that he kept his hands around his waist, the way that his shoulders kind of slouched. So it was just trying to watch that man a lot, I guess.

57:39Jeremy Allen White:Yeah. So we've established all the things that you had to tackle aside from also just learning the script as you would any other time and figuring out how you wanted to approach just the non-physical aspects of non-vocal aspects. And then on top of everything, he was there. Yes. For a lot of this. And I know he availed himself to you beforehand, but he was also, you guys are in New Jersey, so he could, for a lot of this, right? Yeah. He could just mosey on over. was that reassuring or daunting or you know were there things that you wanted to pick his brain about or get feedback about or did you kind of maybe privately want him to go home I think I think you know I spent a fair amount of time with him prior to shooting and I got to ask him a lot of questions and and and I learned a lot about him just in witnessing him and especially witnessing him with his wife Patty and trying to figure out what was important to him but I I expected when we were on set that my attitude was kind of like, thank you for all your time.

58:48I'm going to go make this movie now and I hope you like it. Did not know he was going to be on set. Nobody did. I mean, he just kind of started showing up and never stopped.

58:59Jeremy Allen White:And bringing friends, right? Bringing friends. I mean, yeah, we had he was there often with John Landau, who Jeremy Strong plays. He brought Steven Spielberg to set one day. It was a very good friend of his. Yes, he was around. And that added, certainly in those first couple of weeks, it was very, it was hard for me. I talked to him about it. You know, when you made the album Nebraska, you kind of needed a little bit of time on your own and separation from, so you could understand that perhaps, you know. And he did. He understood and he was wonderful. I mean, he was wonderful throughout, you know.

59:34But I think he left Thursday and Friday and then he was back on Monday. but I think in the beginning it was just you know I'm insecure any first week on any job you know I'm trying to figure out what's going on who I'm trying to play what the what the world is I'm trying to feel out the crew and the rest of the cast and and having Bruce there was was hard because I felt like he was there to judge me I felt like he was there to pick apart you know my my choices and kind of what I was showing up with. And then very quickly, I realized he was there really as a supporter. And he was there to give me permission.

1:00:12He was there to give Scott permission. And that's the balance that we found over the months of filming was, you know, most every night I went home, I had a text message from Bruce Springsteen about a particular moment that day that felt true to him. And I think without those messages, I would have had a really hard time showing up the next morning because I was feeling doubt, certainly, in the process of making the movie.

1:00:41Jeremy Allen White:Well, I will just say, and I think I mentioned this to you last time I saw you, is that I had the very surreal for a journalist opportunity to speak with him. Went to Jersey a few months before the movie came out for an interview. He was promoting a documentary that was on TV. road diary exactly road diary and of course i had to ask you know what are you what can you tell me about the movie very excited to see it this was not even necessarily going to be included in anything we were doing there just genuinely curious and he had no reason he could have set off the record or whatever he didn't have to he was so excited yeah and gushing about not just you but of course you but also odessa young who plays your love interest and germy and like i think it's got to be a pretty weird thing for someone to have a movie made about them too and um but he just you know he since then i just want people to know came to the telluride film festival world premiere and just by being there is a big vote of confidence but also has ever since then been talking about how blown away he is by what you've done and what scott's done and so anyway i mean you passed the i wanted his approval desperately and i got it yes yes all right so what we are going to do with our remaining time is turn this over to student questions great after I remember as I've just remembered to ask one very last thing which you're going to be happy I remember to ask because may I ask you to share what right now you are in the midst of working on oh yeah um so I flying back and forth between LA and Vancouver were shooting a film Aaron Sorkin wrote which is a sort of continuation of the story of The Social Network it's called The Social Reckoning and and yeah it takes place a while after the inception of you know what the first film was about which was the inception of Facebook, the creation of Facebook and it's more about the effects of Facebook you know on on us and then play in that I play a journalist and and Jeremy Strong is also in this film and he plays Mark Zuckerberg nice yeah thank you yeah all right we have some mics that are gonna be handed to you when I call your name We are going to start with Scott Wood.

1:03:18Hi. My question to you was, you've portrayed a superstar musician, a world champion wrestler, and a top chef. What other profession would you most like to play at some point? Oh, boy. What other skills do I feel like I need? Like the life of an organizer, perhaps. or like I love the genre of sort of the action genre, and that's something I've never really gotten to do. And I think as a young man, I love to play soldiers and all that. I don't know. I'd love to do something where I got to drive like a fast car or make things explode, you know?

1:04:05Jeremy Allen White:Let's go to Evan Spinner. So several times now you've inhabited characters who carry immense internal pain which is visible in their physicality. So when you're building these characters do you start from the inside out or from the outside in? That's a good question. I think it's from the outside in. I mean I've been really lucky in these last couple jobs I've taken where I've gotten to sort of learn skill to portray the character that I'm playing. a chef, a wrestler, a musician. And I think, you know, in Bruce's case, it's specific because he's such a well-known person. And so I felt like I needed to understand him in such a broad sense before I got really specific about kind of what was going on in his head during this time.

1:04:52But I find it very helpful to start with sort of environment and in these cases, skills. And And that kind of leads to, well, who are these people? What do they have going on? What are they struggling with? That was certainly the case for Carmi. First came an understanding of his world, and then the understanding of his pain became clearer to me through the understanding of that world.

1:05:19Jeremy Allen White:Let's go to Van Duong. Hi. Sorry about that. My question's kind of silly, and it goes back to like the bear so like obviously you prepared a lot for it you went to culinary school you worked in a restaurant so mine's like my question is has making the bear changed the way you see or think about food kitchens or like the restaurant environment in general yeah that's not silly at all um um yeah that's changed it's changed the way that I go to restaurants. I think sometimes people ask, you know, have I become a foodie or have I, like, you know, become kind of obnoxious in the way that I, like, go and eat at a restaurant?

1:06:05And it's quite the opposite. Like, I understand what a miracle it is to open a restaurant. And I have a tremendous amount of respect for the people that try to be successful in that world. And I've also been very lucky, and I've gotten to meet a lot of the chefs kind of at the highest level at some of the best restaurants in the world, and I've gotten to learn about not just the preparation of food, but kind of the creation of an experience. So yeah, my knowledge was very limited, I suppose, before the bear, but I have a tremendous amount of respect for that world, high and low. Dante Spragans.

1:06:50First of all, thanks for coming out. Yeah, of course. Nice to see you. Thanks for having me. My question for you is, when you first receive a script, what's the first thing you look for that kind of stands out to you? Is it the dialogue, the emotional kind of elements? But for the character and the story overall, what kind of comes out first when you're reading it? I think when I was younger, I would just like look for the character's name kind of you know I was like so anxious to just see like what's this guy about and what's going on and and now it's really just am I like interested and captured in the first 20 pages do I care about this world is there something that's keeping me turning these pages and it can always be something different and most often is something different that sort of keeps you there.

1:07:43But that's what's important, I think, for me and right now and this sort of lucky position I'm in where I do have a little bit of choice and say and sort of what's next is, does it capture me? Does it affect me? Is this something that I want to see? Thank you.

1:08:01Jeremy Allen White:Maria Curry.

1:08:07Hi. We attended the same Performing Arts High School in New York City. No way. way. Wow. What department were you in? I was in drama, but then they opened the film department, so I transferred to that. Do you have Mr. Perenni? I did. Shout out to him. I wrote it over here, actually. Shout out Mr. Perenni. Shout out to him, yes. How did the acting classes and the teachers, especially Mr. Perenni, shape and influence the actor you've become today? I think Mr. Perenni had not just with me, but with all students, a real understanding of their strengths, and he really knew how to support those strengths and build confidence, and that was the case.

1:08:51Certainly with me, I felt that he knew the sort of writers and works that I would gravitate to and really set me up to succeed. They also did a really beautiful thing. I think I mentioned this before, but I was a really bad student at that school specifically. The dean at the time, Chuck Vassalo, was he? Yeah? Okay, good. What I would do at the school was I would just leave all the time. And you're not supposed to do that. And one day our dean, Mr. Vassalo, brought me into his office and was like, we want you to graduate and you can't if you keep leaving all the time. He asked, you know, what can we do to help you?

1:09:31And I asked if you would allow me to go work at Susan Chopmaker Casting, which was 10 blocks south. It was like 38th and 8th for school credit. And Mr. Vassalo knew that I would end up working, if not as an actor, then in the industry in some way. And he knew I wasn't going to be successful academically in any way. And so he was supportive. And I'm always very grateful to him and the school for that.

1:09:58Jeremy Allen White:Eric Farafino. Hi. Thank you so much for coming. I don't want to speak for myself, but I really appreciate you coming here. in the bear carmy is often shot in extreme close-ups or with really intense camera movements like you're mentioning the 18 minute one shot how much do you discuss with the director and the dp how you're being framed in the shot and how do you balance a sort of naturalistic acting with those elevated camera setups i think there is something i think like nick cage has famously kind of like spoken about this where you know if you're gonna do something big you know you do it in a wide and the closer the camera gets, you know, you try to make it a bit smaller and more nuanced.

1:10:37And, and there is like, there is truth in, in that, um, when the camera is so close to you and the way that I know the camera is close to me is because Gary, our camera operator is like this close to me. So I know it's going to be a particularly tight shot. I know that if I have something going, if I have something going on, like if I, if I'm having real thoughts and feelings in that moment, nothing else has to happen. I trust that camera and Gary will pick that up. And I love that part of the show. I love that Chris and our DP do those kinds of shots because there's a tremendous amount of trust in not just myself but the rest of the cast that there is something real going on.

1:11:23And the camera knows that close when you're lying. And I feel lucky that we were filmed in that way and given the opportunity to try and create something in a very small and nuanced way. Julius Schoenholt. Hello, Jeremy. Hi. Thank you for coming. Happy to be here. Thanks, man. What I wanted to know was if there was a particular Bruce Springsteen song or song or lyric that helped you connect to the film's story or that you connected with that helped you understand the story better or helped you understand the character or Bruce Springsteen better? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, obviously, Nebraska was my top listens last year, the album, Nebraska, and the song.

1:12:20But I remember recording in Nashville, Tennessee. I recorded a lot of the record of Nebraska. This was maybe two months before we started filming. and I had rehearsed a lot with Eric Vitro, but there was something about having this kind of, like, shared experience of being alone in a recording studio the way that, you know, Bruce has been hundreds, thousands of times, where I felt very connected to him in singing his songs, and My Father's House was a song that I sang for about two hours on this weekend where we were recording the majority of that album, and I felt so close to Bruce for the first time, and I felt so understanding of him for the first time really.

1:13:05And I found a lot of confidence in that period, in that weekend, in that recording studio, but most especially singing that song. I think what that song is about to me is a real longing and longing for connection and fear, and fear of a life of regret. And I think there's a lot of that going on, or that was a way that I at least connected to this story and this period in Bruce's life.

1:13:32Jeremy Allen White:Marco Salazar. Hey Jeremy, thank you so much for coming to our campus today. Thanks for having me. I'm a filmmaker from Chicago and given that you've starred in two of the greatest TV shows ever set in Chicago, we all love you there and of course, you know, here too. So, has Chicago started to feel like a second home through all of your work there? And most importantly, how's the pizza?

1:14:01yeah Chicago I love the city of Chicago so I've been going to Chicago we would shoot the majority of shameless in in Los Angeles but I've been going to Chicago for at least two weeks a year at least two weeks for the last 16 years of my life Chicago I feel very at home there I feel very at home with the people of Chicago I love the people of Chicago and I love that city pizza is trash. Sorry.

1:14:30Jeremy Allen White:So sorry. Shots fired. Cameron Rivera. Good evening, Mr. Alan White. Thank you so much for coming. And my question is, after living inside such high intensity roles, from Shameless to The Bear to Springsteen, what do you do to reset yourself at the end of a day or a shoot? Yeah, I think it's always a little bit different. If I'm on location, specifically filming, it's not that I'm not in character or anything like that all the time, but I think when I get home or to my apartment or hotel or whatever it is, I'm definitely in the work or thinking about the next day or thinking about the next week.

1:15:16I think especially for Bruce, I felt so underwater water with some of the preparation specifically with the with the music and and all my evenings were really spent uh playing guitar uh listening to his music playing harmonica reading the script again when i'm on set it's not it's not time to relax i guess um but i do find it very easy to um when i'm home it's easy it's easy for me to like to drop it and go sit on the beach or whatever it You know, I have no problem

1:15:53Jeremy Allen White:Before we go to our last question Cameron's phrasing made me wonder is your last name white or is Alan? What your last name is Alan a middle name? Yeah. Yeah, my last name is white When I joined SAG there was already a Jeremy white Jeremy on whites like a stranger to me. I don't I don't respond to that name But it was necessary to to use that middle name to get like a SAG card Interesting. Okay. To close this out, Bina Candice. Hi, Bestie. Thank you for being here. I love hearing about your casting background because we have a class here called The Art of Casting. Yeah, I know. So cool. So I was wondering about your most memorable audition and why it stuck with you.

1:16:48I mean, I had some pretty rough auditions. This is like just a kind of like, I don't know if it was a good audition, but I auditioned, how many of you guys have seen The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford? So not many. Okay. It's a really great movie. it's Brad Pitt and it's Casey Affleck there was a part in that movie that it was a young man who was pretty much getting abused by Brad Pitt he's getting a cigar put out on his wrist and he's getting stomped out so the audition, I was like 15 at the time, maybe 14 at the time in New York, and the audition they put down a mat on the ground and the casting director was like, okay just kind of throw yourself on the ground start crying and screaming and you know.

1:17:43But I really wanted the part so bad. And I was on the ground for like five, maybe ten minutes. Just like twisting my body and contorting my body and screaming and crying. And they'd been asking me to stop. For such a long time. But I was so loud and annoying and crying and in it that I didn't stop. I didn't get that job. But it was a part I really did want and a memorable audition.

1:18:22Jeremy Allen White:That's great. Well, thank you.

1:18:29Jeremy Allen White:Jeremy, I was going to say Mr. White, not Mr. Alan White. On behalf of all of us, thank you again so much for being here. And this has really been wonderful. I really appreciate it. Thank you guys for having me. nice to see you all thanks so much man that was so nice yeah yeah

1:18:53Jeremy Allen White:thanks for listening to Awards Chatter we really appreciate it and would really appreciate you taking just a minute more to subscribe to the podcast and to leave us a rating and review on your podcast app and to follow us on Twitter and Instagram where our handle is at Awards Chatter On those platforms, we announce upcoming guests and provide details about special live recordings of the podcast that you can attend. Until next time, thanks again for tuning in. Good energy in. Good energy out.

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