The Who's Next Oscar Draft, Plus Tom Pelphrey on Task

0:00Right. And you all know, I think you're all with me and believing deeply. I think we'll win an Oscar in the next 10 years. Yeah. We would all be so happy if that happened.

0:12Hi, everyone. I'm Katie Rich. This is the Prestige Junkie Podcast. And what you are about to hear is the extremely fun, very long inaugural edition of what we're calling the Who's Next Oscar Draft. Chris Rosen and I have teamed up with our friends, Joe Reed and Chris Bile of This Had Oscar Buzz to try to predict who will be the next people to win Oscars in the next 10 years. And because it's us, we have made a game of it. You will hear the first half of this draft in today's episode. If you want to hear the other half right away, you can go to the This Had Oscar Buzz Patreon called Turbulent Brilliant.

0:48So hear it now, or you can stay tuned for next week to hear the second half of it on this very feed. It was super fun. It was rowdy. We went really late in the night to record this. It is a great thing to listen to. I hope you enjoy it. And after that, you will hear my conversation with Tom Helfry, who is an Emmy nominee this year for his really moving, wonderful work on HBO's Task. All of that and more coming right up. Welcome to the show.

1:15Okay, everybody, if you know Joe at all or really have followed Cinematrix or any of Joe's work, you would guess that the idea for A Good Game would have started with Joe. And Joe, you so generously came up with this idea and said this should be a crossover event. I think you said it was private practice and Grey's Anatomy. Private practice and Grey's Anatomy crossover events. Yes, exactly. To be clear, we're happy to be private practice. I can't really decide who the Kate Walsh is in this scenario. But this is an idea that Oscar nerds talk about all the time. Who's going to win an Oscar next?

1:45Joe and Chris, I think you guys personally have a bet about two specific people. Yes. Yes. What's your running bet exactly? Amy Adams or Michelle Williams, who's going to win an Oscar first? I have Amy? Wait. Yes. Correct. And you have Michelle. And I said Michelle Williams. It's been going so long that, like, it's genuinely blended into my mind. We really thought one of them would have done it by now. I did win a previous bet that I had bet that Colin Farrell would win or would get an Oscar nomination within X number of years. And I got it under the wire with Banshees of Inesheron. Well, that's sort of the vibe of what we're doing here.

2:20So, I mean, I am thinking of this as like a longitudinal boyhood type project where every year we check back in to see. Absolutely. Oh, my God. Yes. Yes. So we all have to continue. Richard Linklater's daughter is still not an Oscar winner. Every year we'll check back in. Yeah. We're going to continue doing this until Glenn Close wins that Oscar or die trying. Joe, as the Games Master, do you want to just a little bit explain what we're trying to do here? Yeah. So anybody, anybody who has not won a competitive acting Oscar is eligible for this draft. We have divided it up into eight distinct categories of a potential Oscar winner, which we will reveal as the game goes along.

3:06It will be eight rounds of drafting. I have randomized it so that we each draft the same number of times at each different slot in each draft. So we'll all be going first, twice, second, twice, third, twice, and fourth, twice. And we're going to go category by category. So I have a very handy A24 bucket. It's going to rattle so loud you can't even hear me in the microphone. And within it, there are Marty Supreme ping pong balls with numbers on them. You think we're not going to make use of the swag that you send us, Smoothie Studios. You are wrong. A24, send me all of your swag. I still use the NIAID towel and Katie is using the Marty Supreme ping pong balls.

3:47My NIAID water bottle is in the kitchen. I use it every single day. I'm in my two-pope slippers. Oh, I love my two-pope slippers. I mean, I have been saying I want to do a swag. We should do a swag draft someday. 100%. Absolutely. For the record, I never got two-pope slippers. I am just the type of person who cannot let that go. You can have mine, but I've worn them a lot. What studio was that? That was Netflix. That was Netflix. That's right, Netflix. You can still send Chris Files slippers. Yeah, it's not too late. You know there's a warehouse somewhere that has old T-Polpe slippers. Just send Chris a pair.

4:21Maybe they're selling them on eBay. I'd ask you to declare what your shoe size is, Chris, but that's opening a can of worms out on the internet that I don't want to have for you. And do you want the fans to know your shoe size is personal information? Maybe I already do have a WikiFeet page. Who knows? So we'll go category by category. I will pick the one and we'll each draft within that category. So there's not going to be like a first overall draft pick in this. It's going to be more about who fits the category. But people are eligible in multiple categories. So if you say Austin Butler is eligible in multiple of the categories that we've picked here, Tom Cruise, various other people.

4:59So there's a lot of ways. So if someone gets taken in an earlier round, then you cannot get them and they're the fun will lie. One of the categories that will spoil is wild cards. So there is a catch-all category that will, if nothing, if nobody fits in any of your other categories, there is a wild card category. I mean, I don't know about you guys. And Chris Rosen, I think you told me you chose not to prep too much for this and just go with vibes. So how are you feeling about that strategy? Nervous. Nervous. But I was like, I'm just going to go vibes. Joe came up with a nice list, and I've been Googling all day, looking at people.

5:31It's good. It'll be good. Very good. I just, even just going down, like, Wikipedia pages of previous Oscar nominees, there were just so many people where I was like, oh, my God, they would be so good for this. Like, the variety. Like, whenever Wild Card comes up, it's going to be tough because there's so many people who don't fit other ones, but I would like for them to have an Oscar. The other thing is, like, if you asked any of us two years ago if Amy Madigan is going to have an Oscar, you know, by now. Uh-huh. Well, we would probably catch on that you were asking for a reason. So you probably did come in from the future.

5:58So like we would be suspicious. We would ask other questions as well. Yeah, we would follow up. But like the real answer to that is just like, that's crazy. Of course, like what an odd choice. But like, you know, these things happen with a quickness. And so you never know. That is what is fun about it. I mean, we're going to look at Oscar history trends. I think this question of like hot young men versus hot young women is obviously very relevant. We're trying to get people who are winning Oscars over the next 10 years. Uh, there's the kind of famously overdue people we'll be talking about. Uh, it's a wide spectrum.

6:29To be clear, they're all hot is the other thing. Like, let's not, like, all the character actors are hot. The, you know, the leading men are hot. Nobody in Hollywood isn't hot. So like. No, that's true. I'll put some respect on Stanley Tucci's name here. That's right. He is not under 40, but still hot. Yes. Um, okay, Joe, you're in charge. So you've set up this draft order, uh, just, you know, anonymized. So we need to determine who gets to go first in the first round, and then it will shuffle from there. So what will our draft order be? So I randomized our four names. For round one, I will be going first, then Katie.

7:05Uh-huh, go figure. You randomized. Randomized, listener. Randomized. Interesting, interesting. Me, Katie, Chris Rosen, then Chris File. All right. So, and we will move on from there. Like I said, everybody drafts the equal number of times at each slot. Okay. All right. So then without further ado, we'll pull up this loud. Get them ping pong balls to roll in. Get them ping pong balls. Let's show off the, what logo are we seeing here? Highest to lowest. Highest to lowest. Yeah. I'm asking you to read back. You really just have all the swag. Everything. I know. I mean, just the inclusion of movies, like, bring her back on this.

7:40It's like they don't leave anybody else. So, okay, we've got for our first ball number four, which is the category of three previous, three plus previous losses. Okay. This is a great one to start on. It's such a good one to start on. This is the prototypical overdue Oscar person, right? Overdue, yes. Someone who's been nominated at least three times and has not won. And again, because this may came up, this is acting nominations only. So if they've been nominated in other categories and haven't won, Or if they've won in other categories. Exactly. Exactly. Still doesn't count. Correct. Okay, Joe, you made your bed, now you've got to lie in it.

8:18Right. So to kick off the draft, I'm just going to go with Timothee Chalamet. I think. Anything, any defense of him you want to give? And you want to dig anything up from the past six months or anything? You don't have any feelings about this, right? I don't have any strong feelings. No, here's the thing. Right now, Timothee Chalamet could care less about winning an Oscar. And I think that's only going to help him in the world run. I think he literally said that courtside at the Knicks game. He absolutely did. And you know what? Good for him. Because that looked like fun that he was having. And what didn't look like fun was everything that was going on for most of that Marty Supreme Oscar campaign.

8:58And that's been talked to death and I don't want to go through that anymore. But I think even if Chalamet takes this post-Dune 3 sabbatical that we're hearing he's taking or whatever, all of that I think ultimately works out in his favor. I think he is now somebody who has been nominated three times, Call Me By Your Name, then A Complete Unknown, then Marty Supreme. And for two of them, at least, was considered not just like runner-up, but like real, real close runner-up, like toss a coin runner-up. And so I think for as much sort of ill will for where, however we want to seriously, we want to take that, you know, last year, the sort of drummed up ill will against Chalamet last year.

9:52I think in the long run, it's just going to be remembered that like, oh, he came so close to winning an Oscar two years in a row. and the narrative for him now is less, is he going to win an Oscar? But when is he going to win an Oscar? And I think that to me makes it a really strong pick. Also, he clearly isn't an actor who is looking to make interesting projects, like is actively looking to make interesting projects. They're all, not all going to be Oscar-y, but like enough of them will be that I feel very confident in this pick in a 10-year span. I want to let the Chris's talk, but I just want to point out that I think the people who cared the most about the opera and ballet thing who were online also are the people who watched all the videos of him dancing with people underneath MSG.

10:41It's the Knicks one. I think that so effectively got rid of all the bad vibes perfectly well. He was leaning into his silliness, but having such a good time. He's had the vibesiest summer of anybody. He really has. And I mean, Chris Rose, I'm going to throw to you as someone who's deeply invested in New York City sports and also Marty Supreme and Timothee Chalamet. Are you just jealous that Joe got this first? I was going to pick him if I had the opportunity to. I'm not going to lie. I think everything Joe said, I totally agree with. I'm on Team Joe here and Team Timothee Chalamet. I also think that when he lost, it felt like a message to him.

11:16I don't think they're that calculated, but it does feel like, oh, we're not going to actually let him win for Marty Supreme no matter what. And like Joe's saying, the next time, 10 years from now, within the next 10 years, I just feel like, yes, he will. He will win. I think that's a great pick. So I'm all in on this. Thank you. Have you noticed his hair? That his hair is like back to its grid, wavy. Like it's like almost call me by your name era fluff. It's a great move. People like it. People like it like this. So yes, good for him. Not just us. Chris Filony, any thoughts here? Two thoughts.

11:49One of which is I have a very long, long list here of names I would like to include. Do you have a printed stack of paper? No, I love handwriting. I like to handwrite my notes I did not even write down Timothee Chalamet because I was like well Joe's gonna pick Timothee Chalamet and second of all him not wanting to win an Oscar is how he wins an Oscar for Dune Part 3 and I'm lonely that's it or something like that at this point I think he wins his Oscar when he cares a little bit less about winning an Oscar If he finally goes to the Governor's Awards, I will know that it's really for real. This is your bugaboo, yes.

12:30I know. And he didn't win. And when he finally, he'll listen to me specifically. Okay, I draft next? You draft next, yes. Okay, I am so glad that you did not take what to me is the number one with a bullet pick in this category. And something that I know you and Chris are specifically very aware of because I'm picking Michelle Williams. I think her time. I know, Chris, that's how the draft goes. I was just going to have to find someone else. Not only because she has a really good shot this year, I think. Chris Rosen, you and I were just talking about how the best actress race is looking pretty thin, but she has a place in hell coming from Neon from Chloe de Montt, who directs, oh my God, what was that movie called?

13:12Fair Play? Fair Play, yes. Yes, which was pretty good. This one seems in a similar vein. It's like weird Generation War stuff that was in the new season of Beef that I really loved. And Michelle is sort of like Amy Adams at Also Gland Close, who I think are the most famous versions of this, but seems to be getting more opportunities, has better taste. You know, she had Dying for Sex on TV just last year, which was so good. And I think she won an Emmy for that. I should have looked that up before I started talking about this. No, she lost it. No, but her Fosse Burden. Oh, she did. Her Fosse Burden Emmy win proves that she gets a great award speech.

13:47She sure does. And she's someone who's done really well for herself on TV, but doesn't seem to be kind of stuck there in a way that almost Amy Adams seems to sort of be. Maybe this is me not giving enough credit to Kate Fear. So I'm really bullish on her for this year specifically, but I think she's one of the greats who is currently working and her time is going to come. I would love for it to be for a Kelly Reichardt movie, but it could just as well be for some other version of The Fablemans. The overdue drumbeat is coming for her, and it's not as high profile as somebody Chalamet's, but that might also be in her favor.

14:20Women tend to either win when they're 29 or get into their 50s. So it might take her a little while to get to that point. I think she's like 44. But I feel very confident that it's coming for Michelle in the next 10 years, as does whichever one of you guys bet on her. I already forgot. Me. Oh, there we go. All right, Chris Biles. So you would have picked Michelle if you'd had the chance. Well, I felt like I kind of had to. But hey, you freed me up to pick someone else that I'm equally as passionate about. All right. Well, that's exciting. Anybody else have Michelle Williams thoughts? I mean, I'm very interested in this Chloe Dumont movie.

14:53to see what it ends up being. And if she can end up winning, I think by the time you get to this many nominations, I think the question becomes like, oh, I hope she wins for something that's good and exciting rather than something that's perfunctory. You don't want someone to win for their Revenant, even though that's less perfunctory than more just like, oh, hello, give me an Oscar. And what the female version of that is, I don't know, because we all like Still Alice, So like that, that feels like kind of a classic, like you're finally going to win for something that's less like important than the other movies.

15:26But I don't know. I don't know what the good best actress version of that. Maybe Eyes of Tammy Faye or something like that. Something like that. I mean, like Hillbilly Elegy for Glenn, if that had worked, then like, yeah. Well, a bullet we all gladly dodged. Yes. Chris Rosen, what were you going to say? No, I was going to say I feel like she's in the right spot because I think when you keep racking, no disrespect to Glenn, but I do think when there's like, when you keep racking up nominations and lose so many times, it does feel like, and Amy Adams is kind of in this spot too, I think now we're just like, they're just over it, even if you get nominated.

15:57So Michelle's not at like the saturation point of like losses. And so I feel like if she could get in for this movie this year, sure. But obviously she's talented enough to get in for anything she does and maybe she will win. This could have been all avoided if she would have ran in the right category for Fable. Exactly. Unfortunately. Thank you. Who wound up winning that? Was that the Jamie Lee Curtis? Oh, boy. I mean, that's like such a monkey spot situation. Yes, yes. Jamie Lee Curtis won an Oscar for that movie. The other thing about Michelle Williams is that her nominations are spread out enough that it never feels like, it's like, oh my God, just like give her an Oscar already in a way that has happened with people like Glenn Close and Amy Adams.

16:35Yeah, that's a really good point. And also there hasn't been a year for her the way there was for Chalamet where it's like, oh man, she really almost had it. Like if she hadn't done that or if this person hadn't cut on so strong, Like, in the Fableman's year, she was barely part of the conversation. I'm trying to think of even the closest that we think that she's gotten. Probably it was Brokeback, and it was right at the beginning. But she was so new. Exactly. There was no urgency at all. Right, right, exactly. Yeah. If we could go back and do Right by Brokeback Mountain. So much Oscar history.

17:05Seriously. Might change. Seriously. Okay, Chris Rosen, you get to draft next. Well, I'm so excited that I'm going next, because I think I'm in a snake. maybe Chris Weill here, but I don't know. I'm going to take Saoirse Ronan in this category. That's a good pick. She's absolutely going to win an Oscar in the next 10 years. She should have probably already won one of these four, I think, you could argue. I'm very excited for her to win an Oscar, and I think she's like a very good value pick here for me. So that's it. She's just fantastic. She doesn't have a lot coming up. She's playing Linda McCartney in the Beatles boondoggle movies, and I'm like, maybe they love a biopic.

17:41The Beatles boondoggle. So that could work. But if not, that's something else. Would that feel like the perfunctory Oscar win that we want her to avoid? I think a little. I mean, who knows? Depending on what the performance is. But yeah, I think maybe a little. She should have just won for Little Women, right? Correct. That's the one. Well, I think in retrospect, knowing that like Frances McDormand was going to win another Oscar so soon after. When was she Renee Zellweger beat her? I just had to look this up. Right, but I mean for Lady Bird. Oh, I'm going to say you're saying for Lady Bird. Yeah.

18:10Um, yeah, I think the Francis one is very easy to look back and just be like, well, let's maybe just retroactively give that to Saoirse and like solve a lot of problems. Yeah. Yep. Uh, justice for Lady Bird and all things. Yeah. Um, did you see the trailer for like Bad Apples or some like Irish thriller that she's in? I saw Bad Apples at TIFF last year. Oh, okay. Any good? Not good enough that Saoirse should be in it. Like that's, she's way too, like that is significantly below what she should be doing. and that's my only concern with her because like the Outrun was a pretty good movie but it's also like - It was pretty good.

18:46But it wasn't gonna ever, I don't think it was ever gonna win her an Oscar. I know she got buzzed for it and everything like that and we'll probably end up doing it on our podcast at some point but like - Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I might have had that in the movie Fantasy League draft or something. That was a tough year because she had that and the Steve McQueen movie that doesn't exist. Yes. Which I like. Wasn't that - I will ride for Blitz whenever you need me to. Yep, yep, yep. But she's great in that too. Yeah. And she's in The Three Incestuous Sisters, according to Wikipedia. Let's go.

19:12That I'm excited for. Yes, yes. Black and white silent movie from Alicia Rorovache. Let's go. It's black and white and silent. I did not know that. Rumored, rumored, rumored. Wow. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. It's her, Dakota Johnson, and Jesse Buckley, and Josh O 'Connor, and Isabella Rossellini, and Mick Jagger? Josh O 'Connor with a lot of tattoos, too. Fuck yeah. A lot of tattoos on the set of this movie. People lose their mind when Josh O 'Connor gets a tattoo in a movie. It's a power that he has. All right, Chris Fowler, you've suffered long enough. We've taken so many of your faves.

19:47Who are you going to pick? Everything is going exactly to plan. Everyone is done in the realm of what I wanted to happen because then I get to say the person who I think, you know, I think especially in the buildup to people winning Oscars that it's like they should have an acting Oscar by now. you do get a lot of like career narratives for performers that you know it's just like sometimes the pieces just have to lock into place and then it's like there's no stopping it once it's happening and then the person that i think it is so shocking that we haven't had this happen for yet is ethan hawk good pick multiple acting oscar nominations also writing nominations uh And, like, Blue Moon, it just probably wasn't going to be Blue Moon last year.

20:40But I do think the, like, kind of momentum that he has in his career to receive that type of honor is a sign that helped that movie get through. The time that he got that nomination is a huge credit to his popularity with this group. Yeah, for something that was, you know, maybe a little more on the bubble. Though less than we probably expected at the beginning of the season. because he got nominated at a lot of precursors when there was decent competition from people like Jesse Plemons. Yeah, I think the industry is just at one point going to be like, oh yeah, all of us have worked with Ethan Hawke and we love him.

21:17And Ethan Hawke never stops working and by never stopping working, he makes a lot of things that you may never hear about. But then he's also in huge, massive movies too and movies that get Oscar nominations, et cetera. So I'm saying Ethan Hawke. Yeah, I think that's a great pick. I wonder, like, the fact that the lowdown got completely blanked by the Emmys, I mean, doesn't concern me for this entirely hypothetical thing, but, like, felt like a bummer for his star power kind of getting stopped in its tracks, but that's probably a bigger factor. The Oscars in general like him so much more than the Emmys do, because, like, the Emmys also didn't touch that show, that The Good Lord Bird show that was, like, very, very, very well-reviewed.

21:53Oh, yeah. Did you watch that? That was, like, a big COVID-era hit. I didn't, but, like, I've heard from, like, several people that it was very good or that they really liked it, so. All right. Yeah. I love that. Chris Rosen, I feel like Ethan Hawke's your guy. I can be rooting for that. I would love Ethan Hawke to win an Oscar, so I'm weighing in on Chris there as well. I think that's good. I mean, I feel like he was, there was enough smoke around him for Blue Moon, which was probably never going to win, but like that he got in for it and then also that people were like, maybe he could win. And people really liked him.

22:21We saw him at New York Film Festival, right? We saw him at Best Actor and being like, Wagner, we're right, he can do this. This is how he wins. That was fun. I look forward to doing that again this year. I'm sure we're all going to lose our minds. Oh, you guys. All right. You ready for the next category guys? Let's do it. Round two. What do we got? Even though Timmy's already, uh, underactable. All right. We're at number one. Oh, this is the fun one. This is where it all began. This is hot. Young Brit slash Aussie. And for our purposes, hot. We're young is under 40. Yes. We've decided. So, uh, I looked up a bunch of ages.

22:54I'm so happy. I'm still canonically young. Canonically. Yeah. Exactly. And, and, and canonically, uh, Brit or Aussie? Right? You identify as that. Okay, for our purposes, we defined hot young Brit Aussie as under 40 and Chris File, canonically under 40, you get to have the first pick. By the skin of my teeth. Everything, once again, is going exactly to plan. Oh, man. Because this means I get to draft my Joshie. Josh O 'Connor, who... You can't just claim him like that. I have long since claimed him as my Joshie. Can we share? Absolutely not. Gardening Icon does not stop working. He only stops filming movies enough time for him to promote his movies.

23:47And he's just working consistently with interesting directors in interesting projects. do we know what the story is with his Joel Cohen movie? Is that coming this year? It seems like it, I guess by the time people hear this, we might have the Venice lineup or the TIFF lineup and know if Jack of Spades is coming out. So it does seem like it's coming. Does he play the titular Jack in this movie? We can only hope. We shall see. I think it's, he's just such a safe bet. He still has not been nominated for anything. Yes. But that does feel like it's like any minute now. Like it's going to bring, he's going to break that scale.

24:28And especially the projects that he's picking, and especially because the man desperately needs a vacation. How does he do all this gardening when he's working all the time? I don't know. This is why he needs to get one of those like Palm Springs Film Festival Awards or like Santa Barbara, like, you know, and just like give him an excuse to like take a weekend in a vacation community or something like that. Yeah, that was, he deserves it. And we should all be there as well to give him the award. Oh, 100%. Clearly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Chris, I certainly also would have taken Josh if I had had the first pick like I initially thought I did.

25:02I mean, it doesn't seem like this. I guess Jack of Spades is the question mark. Disclosure Day is not going to be the one. Last year he had like four movies. None of them were. He hasn't made as many movies as we think. He just feels like that way. So it's not like there's been some obvious like near miss for him, I don't think. Well, plus the huge part of him getting famous was The Crown. Yes. So that, you know, is a whole other different, you know, ball of wax. But yes. Yeah. And he did win an Emmy for that. So he's got, he's in the club in some way. Do we think Three Incestuous Sisters is going to be the movie?

25:31Fingers crossed. My fingers are so crossed that they're like cracking. With this new Academy, you just, you just never know. So this category is one of the ones where it's like the head in the, because I'm next, right? No, I'm not. I keep jumping ahead. Oh my God. I got to pay more attention. You're chomping at the bits and make this pig. Shut up. I just want to draft Chris Rosen. You. Start talking instead of me. Well, I was like, I'm not sure what to do here because I obviously would have taken Josh O 'Connor too. I think there's so many options that you could take. And this feels stupid, but I'm going to take Margot Robbie because even she's still 36.

26:06She still qualifies. At least she's allegedly 36. Oh, are there rumors? Yeah, we're going by stated agents. Yes, yes. Yeah. That's a funny conspiracy theory. I mean, I think she, again, like works with a lot of great filmmakers and just seems like a person everyone in Hollywood. Like I'm also trying to figure out with these like who do people like in Hollywood? Like Josh O 'Connor is definitely like already beloved, right? Like he's got the Spielberg like stamp of approval now. I'm like he's definitely going to win. But everybody loves Margot Robbie. Seemingly they love working with her. She missed for Barbie.

26:36So next time she's like actually in play for something, you could be like, oh, you know, she's due. We missed her for Barbie. What a shame. Are you saying Wuthering Heights is going to be a dark horse contender? It's not going to be Wuthering Heights, I don't think. So the best actress field is pretty soft. It is. And I still don't think so. But the next thing she does, and she obviously is willing to work with interesting filmmakers. And yeah, I also think she's actually a really good actress. I'm a Margot Robbie fan. So yeah, I feel like she'll be, within the next 10 years, I could easily see her getting the role that just is like, oh, well, now Margot Robbie's an Oscar winner now.

27:06And we're just all accepting that. And then it happens. So that's why I'm going to take her. I buy her in the next decade having an acting Oscar and a best picture Oscar because she's producing so much and she's producing movies that people care about that's a fun one the only thing I'm worried about is that she was so popular because she's got the Oceans movie and I'm like she could easily just make non-stop like real movies like movie movies popcorn stuff and then it's like oh she's not going to do it but I do think within there she could find stuff like emerald fennel coated that's not emerald fennel that like works, you know, that kind of thing.

27:43My only question for her, because I feel like Josh O 'Connor could win lead actor, supporting actor. You can fit him into a lot of places. Is she so famous and powerful that it is like best actress or nothing, which is a narrower path to go like within the next 10 years. I do think that's what it is. Best actress or boss for her. I don't think she would win supporting. Which is tough. Like it's a, it can take longer. a dual lead movie where they just flip a coin and decide she's the supporting one like of the two equally lead roles. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's her and Cooper who are the leads of the, and imagine that Ocean's whatever is a best pressure contender.

28:17Like they're the two leads of everything. The Ocean's is Bradley Cooper's Departed. I don't know what you guys are talking about. The Ocean's movie is obviously winning 10 Oscars. What if it's Departed? That's a good call. Bradley's like, fine, I'll stop gunning for Oscar. You give me an inch, I will take a mile with this. Yeah, yeah. Bradley's just like, fine, And I'll stop trying so hard. I'll just make a thing that everybody likes. And everyone's like, yeah, like, good. Every year we're going to come up with a, what is this? His ex has departed. And like, it's going to be, I mean, one by left or another, sort of, I don't know.

28:49I don't know if it really counts. No, it's a little. Yeah, it counts. No, Margo's a great pick. And so, okay, it is. Now it's your turn. Now it's your turn. So the thing I was going to start monologuing about is I think if you're picking people under 40, it is statistically much smarter to pick women because of the way that big Oscar wins go. Like even in supporting categories, young men have a much harder time winning. And let's see, Michael B. Jordan is like 38. He's definitely not 40 already. So he, you know, is evidence that it doesn't happen, but Chalamet obviously was part of that. So as much as I'm like looking at this like long list of like male actors who I really like and have been in the Oscar mix before, and I think could very well be in here, I feel like the smarter move is to pick a woman.

29:29so I'm going to pick Florence Pugh. Yeah. Oh, great. That's a good one. And we have been wondering what's up with her for a while. I mean, she showed up in that Dune 3 trailer looking unbelievable. Yes. So that was very exciting. Her, like, post-Little Women choices have been a little over the place. Like, it doesn't feel like she's been able to capitalize. I guess Midsommar was after Little Women, right? Or, like, the same year? Anyway, she, like, burst in as, like, the person everyone could not stop talking about. And then Marvel gets its hands on her. I liked Thunderbolts a lot. I did too. I get why not everybody else did.

30:02She does have East of Eden coming in the fall. I think that's going to be kick-ass. Yeah, it's TV. I think it's going to be awesome. I think it's going to be awesome. This is based on zero information. I'm just very excited about it. And she's got the best role in that, so yeah. Yeah, so that, as we have seen, if you get your big TV boost, as we were talking about with Josh O 'Connor, that could certainly lead her in a good direction. So I'm kind of hoping East of Eden, Dune 3, that's a really good fall for her. I don't know what else she's got on the lineup after that. I imagine she's still very booked and busy.

30:33And I think she's still, hang on, I should have looked up her age also. I have too many windows open. Like she's in the range. She's 30 years old. It's crazy. Like she's so perfectly in the pocket for when you would win Best Actress age-wise. So I'm a big believer in Florence showing, cashing in on the promise that we've all bought our stock in her in 2019. You know what she's great in is We Live in Time, a movie that, like, everyone forgot about. I've still never seen it. Oh, you would like it. Would I? Okay. The only thing I ever heard about it was just, like, it's just, like, it's aggressively sad.

31:06I mean. It's not aggressively sad. It's sad. But that's a movie that's. It has its charms. That's it. This had Oscar buzz special right there. Well, yeah. We'll end up doing that. I want to talk about the horse. And I will not be nice. Yeah. Yeah. The horse photo was the funniest thing that happened in, like, that whole year. It was really great. It wasn't really funny. I also, in all of this talking, just ignore the fact that she's in Oppenheimer, a Best Picture winner, which is, I mean, she doesn't have as much to do. She's nobody's favorite part of Oppenheimer. She's nobody's favorite part of Oppenheimer through no fault of her own.

31:33Right, right. But yes, that's another huge feather in her cap of being in here. For me is, is this, is the Marvel thing, which is that right now it's so open-ended. It's so depending on whether, um, Doomsday does or does not do well and how they decide to move on from that because she could very easily find herself to be like at the inner, inner circle of whatever the next phase of Marvel is with that character, or they could just decide to go in a completely different direction and she's like not doing any more at all so i'm sure she's contracted for like whatever but like um that to me is at least going to end up impacting the way her next 10 years go you know what i mean i may be foolishly optimistic that she will get free of their clutches uh after doomsday i like that the optimism involves like doomsday failing like it's just It's like you fail to rise.

32:31It's like you move on, leave. No, her name's not Natasha. What's her character's name? Yelena. Yelena. Wow, what a great, how could you bring it to such a memorable character in Phase Six and Marvel? She's good in these movies. She and Sebastian Stan, good together in Thunderbolt. They are. They're very good together. I will throw out, I forgot the thing that she is either filming now or has recently been, is the Andy Samberg Annette Bening movie where she's playing young Annette Bening, which rocks. That is incredible. And that may or may not come up later on this draft. Very exciting. I was going to say, knock a couple down with that one if you want to.

33:05Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's like a rom-com about a guy who's cryogenically frozen, so you don't want to go overboard on the Oscar hopes, but just good things happening for people we like is what we like about that. All right, Joe, you get to close this out. Katie, you make an excellent point about the fact that the smarter money on under 40 is with actresses, because that is the way that the Academy goes. With that being said, the whole point in me pitching this thing was to talk about this generation of under 40, especially British and Aussie actors. And so I at least need to acknowledge, without sort of going into every single one of them, but like the laundry list is significant, where it's Harris Dickinson, it's Nicholas Holt, It's Barry Keoghan.

33:54It's George McKay. It's Paul Meskel, Jack O 'Connell, Josh O 'Connor, Dev Patel, Will Poulter. I'm throwing Daniel Radcliffe in there because, like, he deserves. Does Jack Rayner still get included? Jack Rayner should absolutely be included in that. He's Irish. 100%. Are we offending people if we start killing it? You know what? Fine. British, Aussie, Irish. Actors from that little area and then that little area. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Like, leave me alone. What I'm saying is it's a lot. It's a lot to choose from. And part of that almost ends up being the thing where they're all trying to go through the same doorway at the same time and maybe they all get sort of.

34:37Well, that was your like iconic tweet. Am I allowed to say that? Of like in 2018, can you quote it or should I look it up for you? It was just like, it was a four, it was a four square of Harris Dickinson, Callum Turner, George McKay and Josh O 'Connor. And it was like, these four guys, we need to lock these four in a room and just let them figure it out. And that was back when like, I genuinely had Josh O 'Connor, Callum Turner face blindness because they were both in Emma with a period. Emma period. And without the ears. They have the ears. And they have the ears. And I kept genuinely confusing them for each other's character.

35:17And so now, obviously, they've all been in enough things that, like, I do not have this problem anymore. Yeah, like, they did what you said. They did. They all figured it out. They figured out each other's own thing. And then one of them married Dua Lipa. And then one of them married Dua Lipa. Callum Turner, I do feel a little bit bad for because, like, he is the one everybody's, like, you know, He's kind of the one everybody points to and is just like, it's doofus or whatever. But he's actually, he's a genuinely good actor. I'm kind of going outside the box here in that I'm picking somebody who has established a good several years before most of these people.

35:50But he started so young. I'm picking Dev Patel. I think Dev Patel, because of his pedigree, is a really good narrative for winning an Oscar. I think the slumdog millionaire of it all really will end up, if he ends up in a real Oscar campaign, will end up really paying off. He's also genuinely really good. Like, that Lion nomination gets kind of, like, asterisked because it's both, like, it's not category fraud, but it feels like category fraud where he's only in half the movie, but he is playing the lead of the movie. Like, so, um. And a movie that's kind of forgotten, but that both he and Nicole Kidman are really good in.

36:30And it's one of those movies that seems like it should be shitty, but it's actually good, you know, is the other thing. Like, it should be some sort of, like, Harvey Weinstein's trying to, like, you know, pull one over on you, but actually, like, it's a genuinely good movie. It was both. It was Harvey Weinstein trying to pull one over, and also it was a good movie. Yes. And I just genuinely think he's somebody who, the monkey movie aside, like, whatever, like, you know, he's trying things. Not all of it, you know, works, but he's like, he's trying for things. I think he's evolved into a really good actor.

37:05And I just think you put him in the right role in a movie that like is a Best Picture nominee or whatever, and he'll run a real charming Oscar campaign and he will be like really, really easy to vote for. and he is who I would have picked if I had wanted to pick a man because I agree with everything that you said and he's been the fact that he got into the Wes Anderson orbit with Henry Sugar you know this is us wish casting for two people we're rooting for we're not doing directors and I guess Wes Anderson has an Oscar for those shorts but like him in a Wes Anderson movie that could really do something like and he's clearly on the radar of these directors wanting to work with him like if you can like carry the Green Knight and make that movie work, like, you can do anything.

37:53Yes. And Green Knight's one of those movies that, like, I understand why it's been somewhat memory-hold because it doesn't really fit into any narrative or any context because it was, like, an Omicron movie and it's Lowry, so, like, no two Lowry movies are really alike, like, that kind of a thing. But it's so good and he's so good in it. And, yeah. The Lowry freaks know. We reported for duty. Yes. We are, yes. Present and accounted for For the Lowry freaks, yes. He's, I don't know what he has coming up, but like. His Wikipedia is a little thin. Uh-huh. I think he's directing something next. I thought he was directing something too.

38:32Yeah. I mean, that's a decent avenue for him too. You know what I mean? Like that's, that, it gets you well respected. So. You know who started directing movies before winning their acting Oscar? Michael B. Jordan. There you go. Mm. I like that theory. Chris, any Dev Patel thoughts before I draw the balls again? I love Dev Patel. He's great. The only other part, I thought when you were leading in there, Joe, I thought you were going to maybe do Nicholas Holt as well. You know what I hope, but Holt's very heavily castable in like big blockbuster stuff. So like, I think he's not going to have as many Oscar-y type opportunities as some of these people.

39:14We might be waiting until he's in his 60s. You don't think How to Rob a Bank is an Oscar contender? I'm excited to see it. I'm excited to see it. They just dated it for November. Yeah. Sounds good to me. I, Defatel's always one of the names I say for who should play Bond. And like, at this point, I don't think I want him to. Like, I would rather him go do, you know, direct his sequel to Monkey Man or whatever it is. Can we just end that franchise? I would. Well, You're trying to bomb one of the most successful IPs in history. Yes, yes. Listen, if you want to end the Marvel movies, I want to end the Bond movies.

39:45And let's just make a deal. previously pissed off all of the non-British Isles. Now he's pissing off everyone in the British Isles. Great. We're taking everyone's toys and smashing them so we can't have it anymore. I thought you were just going to say, can we just end the speculation and cast Bond, which I support. Well, that too. Yes. Like, I don't know. Yeah. I don't want... Joe, did you want to do any holdover who you didn't pick or are you worried about spoiling future rounds? I mean, we talked about a lot of these people. I was going to say, I ran down the list of those people. If we want to talk about, you know, the under 40 women who we did not nod to, but we could pick elsewhere.

40:22We could pick in wild cards, yeah. Right. Like Jodie Comer, Monica Barbaro, Elle Fanning now just sort of like having broken the seal. We got Americans still to go. Don't spoil the Americans. Sorry. My little cheat sheet here did not separate them by nationality. You don't see borders. I don't. You don't see Ireland. Clearly, I don't. Clearly, I see a pan-European, you know, vision. Do you speak English with an accent or not? That is all we know. Some say I'm the one speaking the weird accent. Others say they are. It's all perspective. It's all relative. And this is the season of the World Cup.

40:56Okay, I'm bringing out the Marty Supreme balls again. Here we go. It's time to do category number three, which is in the race this year. This is a fun one. People who, as far as we know, have films that are in the Oscar mix. This is very exciting. Oh, this is, I was so excited for this one. I know, well, because we went back and forth on it because it does feel like kind of like an obvious one. But like, as we know, there's only four acting Oscars to give out. So like, if we choose all four acting winners right now, like they will come to our houses. Like, canonize us right now, yeah. I know, okay.

41:36I do have first pick this time, right? Yes, you do. Okay, all right. And this is someone who does not fit into any of these other categories that we talked about, which is where when I started to get my wild card names and I started getting a little concerned about, like, who am I not going to fit in here? I feel like I had a number one with a bullet, whether or not it's this year or not. And it is Andrew Scott. Now that he is in the mix officially with Elsinore, the movie in which he plays a Scottish actor who is dying of AIDS while playing Hamlet on stage. I haven't seen this movie. I don't know anyone who has.

42:09There has been like various whispers coming from God knows where about how good he is in this movie. But I think he's been really good for a really long time. He's not under 40, so he didn't fit into that mix. But he is absolutely in that crop of like UK based actors who come out and you just want to see them in absolutely everything. And I don't I mean, all of the strangers had its moments, but I'm not sure anything has really like followed up on the promise of what he didn't fleabag. Like this is incredible breakout work. And Sherlock before that, too. Like he has this incredible charisma and also dramatic skill.

42:39And I would really like for Elsinore to be the thing that brings all that to the forefront. I think at least counting on him getting his first nomination feels like a good bet. Although best actor is going to be a wild ride. Yeah. Maybe actresses were the better pick in this because that category is so fuzzy. But also I'm just rooting for Andrew Scott. I've been excited for him. I think everyone has like kind of getting introduced to him on TV. I thought he was pretty great in Pressure, a movie that is fun. I literally just saw that last night, two nights ago. Okay, and? He, by a mile, is giving the best performance.

43:09I don't know if that, like, he's giving a good performance, but giving the best performance in that movie is not hard because there's a lot of people giving really, really bad performances in that movie. Is this more Brendan Fraser drive-bys? I can't, I'm not even gonna drive by. I am parking the car. I'm getting out. He's getting out. I am setting, I'm putting up a folding chair. He is Gloria Bell with a Nerf gun. I've got a David Lynch-style sandwich board and a cow. And I'm saying Brendan Fraser is so fucking bad as Dwight Eisenhower in Pressure. It's shocking. It's not great casting. It's not great casting.

43:47Not a wise choice on any level. But I agree that Andrew Scott is the best part of that movie. I also like how you say the buzz around Elsinore is coming from God knows where. I think we know where it's coming from. I mean, I still don't know which specific person originated this, but if you think you know a name, you can tell me a few. The Focus folks are doing their job. Like, good for, like, the Buzz was out before they bought the movie. Okay, well, they're... But also, they had pressure also. So they're in the Andrew Scott business. They are in the Andrew Scott business. That is true. I'll also say two things I didn't even realize before I started saying this.

44:21He's also in a place in hell. Didn't realize that. Given how good he is at playing, like, corporate suit on the comeback, that feels very promising. He's got that, like, great dead-eyed vibe. He's so good. He genuinely is so good. some kind of romantic drama with Emily Blunt coming up. Great. So, yeah, I mean, he's just, he likes to work. He was amazing in Blue Moon. Like, he just keeps showing up in things. Remember how great he was in Catherine called Birdie? I do. Like, best scene in the movie. So he gets so many at-bats that it feels inevitable, even if it's not this year. Yes. No, I think it's a great pick.

44:55Okay. Joe, I think you're next. Man, I really feel like I tiptoed past, I don't know how this pick got past you to me, but I'm taking Tom Cruise. Like, that machine. Chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga. Do you sense an Oscar campaign right now? Is Tom Cruise in a movie this year? I have a slight, I'm sensing, I'm putting my finger to the wind and I'm feeling something in the air. Yeah, yeah. This Tom Cruise getting an Oscar or bust thing is in full force and full effect. And you know what? I don't think, I'm gonna phrase this in a way that's going to sound backhanded. I do not think Hollywood or the film media establishment is equipped to resist it.

45:48Like, I just feel like we are, there's going to be no defense against this. Like, the tides, as inevitable as the tides is going to be this Tom Cruise Oscar push for Digger. So you think this is Renee Zellweger and Judy where it's like, bend over everybody. Like it's move out of the way. Bend over everybody is a great way to move it. Make us out. We should face it.

46:20Yeah, well, I mean, I think even more so because as much as we all liked that Renee was getting a comeback and getting her due, Tom Cruise is beloved by many, many, many people. For as much as, for all the weirdness of Tom Cruise and the Death Wish and the Scientology and all of this stuff, he's beloved. He's beloved for decades of work and he's saved Hollywood, per Steven Spielberg, He saved Hollywood in the aftermath of COVID and whatever. And in an industry that is really, really, you know, I would think very much concerned with self-preservation at this point, you want to spotlight an actor like that.

47:09And I just feel like put him in one in front of one podium and it's just going to be everyone's going to want that speech at their award show. You know what I mean? and everybody's going to want to be in the Tom Cruise business this year. I'm going to throw out one possibility. Yes. What if Digger's bad? Well, not an impossibility. I do not want to just, like, take a safety pin to your balloon, Katie, but, like, it's not going to matter. Oh, okay. So you are. People, I mean, like, there were fans of The Revenant. We also have Bardo, right? Like, you remember Bardo? It would have to be Bardo. I like Bardo.

47:48Yeah. We have the Bardo fan is in the room with us right now. So, yes. I think, like, because for you picking him here, you're saying basically it's this year or nothing. Because if it doesn't happen this year, I don't know how we get Tom Cruise to go back to making movies like this as opposed to just being weird and jumping out of your place. That is true. I am making a calculated risk. Yes, that is true. Yeah. Chris Rosen, you want to join me on the what if Digger's bad? I mean, I think I could definitely see it being bad, but I think I agree with Joe and Chris in terms of, like, Like, I could see Andrew Scott certainly winning.

48:19It would be very nice. And, like, I'm sure he's going to be great in this movie that we're all hearing about, like, secondhand. That's awesome. But I'm like, Tom Cruise is going to be Robert Downey Jr. or Will Smith. You know what I mean? It's just like, oh, they're going to win an Oscar. Like, it's like people do love Tom Cruise. Yeah. Everyone in Hollywood loves Tom Cruise. Less famous and beloved actors have won Best Actor in recent years for bad movies. Are we taking shots at Brandon Fraser again? I'm kidding me? I'm patting my cow. I just got out of the trunk of the car that Joe parked. We did also bring up Judy if we want to spread the wealth.

48:57Yeah, if we want to spread the shade around, yes. Okay, here's my one other thing, because I guess I didn't pick him, so now I have to say why I didn't pick Tom Cruise. He has to play the game in a different way to win Best Actor than he did to have Top Gun Maverick on the awards campaign trail, or even to accept his honorary Oscar. He got up there, they played the clip girl, he gave his speech, it was really carefully organized. like he I don't think can do the Brennan Fraser I'm looking back on my career like interview like he doesn't have that ability to open up and I do wonder if that's a limitation despite all the fact everybody loves him if like seeing him as like an actor not like a statue who belonged in Hollywood Boulevard could prevent him from getting to the finish line but Robert Downey Jr.

49:39is not a bad comparison either because Robert Downey Jr. didn't have to do much to tweak his general persona to But he was also in the Best Picture winner. Well, yes. So going back then to What If Digger Is Bad, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's maybe not as much of an open and shut case as I'm trying to say. You made a very good case for it, though. Me as the, like, you know, not the hugest Tom Cruise fan. I was just surprised that it fell to me to make this pick. But yes, I did it. It is the smart money. And I guess maybe I just want there to be a race, you know? Oh, yeah. I want the drama to come from somewhere.

50:19I see Chris File, you're next. My I see Chris File. This is maybe the hardest call that I've had yet in this whole episode. Because I'm like, do I want to be stealthy and be like, yes, they're in the race this year. I don't think they're going to win for this performance. Do I want to stand by previous bets that I've made on this very show? I think I'm going to go with the first strategy, and I'm going to say Zendaya. Ooh. It's not a bad one. It just feels like the time to, you know, sneak that one into my pocket. Do I think she's going to win for the Odyssey or Spider-Man? Absolutely not. Don't forget Dune.

51:03I was going to say, Dune would actually be the one for her to contend for in terms of the kind of role. A franchise that has received so many acting nominations. Right, but I think... But I have the absolute ironclad certainty, just like I was saying about Ethan Hawke, that his time is going to come, that her time is going to come. Yeah. So yeah, I have to lay my claim down for one of our finest movie stars. She won two Emmys for Euphoria. I think that matters. She got nominated even though nobody liked the third season. Exactly. And I also feel like, and again, we don't know what Dune 3 is going to be doing, but watching that most recent trailer, I was reminded that the way that Dune 2 ended really...

51:43does sort of point in the direction of them significantly kind of recalibrating what her character is doing in the rest of the story going forward, where I think she is much more of a protagonist in this movie and a main character in this movie than her character ends up being from this point in the story going forward in the book, um, books, but - Have you read Dune Messiah? No, but I've seen the sci-fi miniseries. So like. I've read the Wikipedia page. And it's great. Zendaya's character is a big thing, I think, in this. Yeah, I think like they're just like, they're having her be more of like an oppositional force to Paul Atreides in a way she wasn't, at least in the miniseries.

52:27Maybe the book is more in that direction, but I don't think so. To my understanding, no. Yes. So I'm very interested. So like, if that's the case, I think it gives her a really interesting angle. for that movie, especially if that movie ends up getting, you know, a ton of nominations just for looking and sounding amazing. Oh, go ahead, Chris. I was going to say, and hey, maybe if she wins a third Emmy for Euphoria this year. Which I do not think is unlikely. Yeah, it's not impossible. It's not. I was going to throw out imagining, like, what if she's the only acting nominee from Dune? Like Ian McKellen in Lord of the Rings, obviously a very different type of person, but like, you know, if it's considered a technical thing but supporting actresses week or she has like one big scene or something like that.

53:12And she's being rewarded for having this incredible year. That seems plausible also. Well, and as Chris Rosen said, like best actress this year is. Oh, you think she'd be in lead? I think she for Dune. Yes. Cool. For the Odyssey. And who knows how big of a role she has in the Odyssey. But. Oh, yeah. By the time this is coming out, everyone, including us, will have seen the Odyssey. And we're all we're all just sitting here in the dark about. I know. All these people right now. I know. All right. Chris Rosen, you close this out. I'm so happy that nobody took mine because I feel like this is a lockdown Oscar win this year.

53:46It's Paul Giamatti absolutely winning a fucking Oscar. We'll just pull over the best actor race right now. Oh, yeah. Just a full Oscar win. Like I was like, Paul Giamatti, no disrespect, a nice man, I'm sure, very handsome, but he's not a best actor handsome. He's a best supporting actor handsome. And he's going to win best supporting actor. Holdovers was very nice, but he was never going to win for that. and he's going to win for this. Is it the debut? They love their The A24. The debut. The Jesse Eisenberg movie. The debut, the invite, the drama. The drama, yeah. The only way they fuck this up is if he's in lead actor.

54:21If they somehow, if he's not, if he's in a different category. But if he's supporting actor, again, you have, this year, we're going to have John Goodman, probably Jesse Plemons, maybe, all these like beloved people, Steve Buscemi and Sam Rockwell again, right? All these people in supporting actor potentially. I think just the nature of that role, Like she's the actress, he's the director. He's like literally like, you know, She's the one making the titular debut. Yeah. And it's like, what if, what if JK Simmons in Whiplash was a nice man? That's what the trailer gives me. I mean, the trailer is giving me a streetcar named Marge, but in like the best possible way.

54:55And I'm very excited for that. And we know Jesse Eisenberg. I think Jesse Eisenberg actually loves writing, supporting actors, even though Kiernan Culkin was a lead, obviously in A Real Pain. But like, I think he loves writing that kind of, Like, I was just like, this is such a perfect, like, literally five seconds into the trial. I was like, oh, great. Paul Giamatti's going to win an Oscar. We really wanted this to happen, like, three years ago, two years ago, whatever that was. And I'm like, great. Jesse Eisenberg becoming the supporting actor whisperer would be the best thing to have. Yes. Like, I would love that so much.

55:24That would be wonderful. That would be a fantastic outcome. And yeah, the fact that he got so close in that Oppenheimer year when, like, Oppenheimer was just cruising everywhere. And we were like, yeah, but Paul Giamatti in the holdovers. Like, who's going to say no? And all of his speeches were so lovable. Like he was so endearing during that whole campaign. Everyone loves him. You know, like Dave Vindra ran off in all her speeches, like weeping about how much she loved Paul Giamatti. And him crying right back. That's why I was like, who needs to win? Yeah, yeah. And like Julia Moore out there, like helping, like Julia Moore people love.

55:52I'm just like, this is, this is like, like put this down like this. Like probably market this shit to the bank. Because like, you're making an Oscar. They're both winning. I said that the second I saw the trailer and I'm standing by it, they are both winning. 100%. Mark it down. Do you have any strong feelings about the debut? I haven't heard you talk about it.

56:11I'm doing laps. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. Do we think it's going to fall festivals is the rumor? Again, as people hear this, we may know more. It's rumored to be fall festival. It's coming out December, I think, 824, right? And then, I mean, I would not be surprised. Like, Telluride I could see, right? Or Tiff. It's a perfectly place to go to all festivals. Yeah. Yeah. No, this is a great pick. Okay, so is this the, do we have, no, we have too many actors. All right, so Andrew Scott's got to kill Tom Cruise to get in there, and then Zendaya wins Best Actress. She's got to beat Julianne Moore, and Giovanni wins Supporting Actor.

56:50Congratulations to us. Perfect. I feel confident in my long game on Andrew Scott, even if the Tom Cruise machine is unbeatable. Like, I feel Zendaya as well. No, I think that's a good pick. All of those are good picks. All right, so this is going to be the last round we do that's on this episode of Prestige Junkie. Again, we're going to have a split and have it on the Patreon. So here's the last for the first half. We have ball number two, which I believe is our Hot Young Americans. Okay. So Americans under 40, which Joe was trying to spoil earlier by listing out. Sorry. Sorry, everybody. Sorry.

57:24It's, you know, there's never a bad time to just say the name of Elle Fanning. Unprompted. And Chris Rosen, I think you kicked this one off. I mean we said Elle Fanning I'm so glad I want to take Elle Fanning I've wanted her the whole time I was like she is like truly like an Annie Hall away from a runaway best actress campaign like win I just think she's so beloved she could have gotten I mean that she got in for or that she missed excuse me for a complete unknown when she really could have gotten in and then got in for a sentimental value when she really could have missed honestly well yeah internal competition all that she was the first name that was listed and it was a surprise it was such a great start to that great nominations morning.

58:02I just think everyone loves her. Like she's got like such a high rating of people who love her. And I think if she gets the kind of role that is like a Diane Keaton-esque comedy or something like that, that's like a little like perfectly in her wheelhouse, she would just steamroll through. She's obviously like great on a campaign. She's incredibly personal. She went to every event for a complete unknown. She was really like the face of that, it felt like at times. I saw her like, was it MBR? What is the one they do? And I think it was MBR. She did like a tribute for something else. She presented to it at the PGA Awards, I remember.

58:31So she was like out there for that and people really like her. Obviously has like been an actor for her whole life. I'm just like, I was like, I couldn't wait to take it. Plus she's going to have a little bit of training wheels with this Margot's Got Money Trouble campaign that she's doing. I mean, she's not going to win this Emmy, but like, you know, she's fine. You liked her on that show, right, Chris? Yeah, she's good on the show. And if it was a movie, she'd probably get an Oscar for it. You know what I mean? Like more shows should be movies. People should make movies. That is definitely a show that very much could be a movie.

58:57100%. But I was like psyched. This might be too early, but I was just like all in on Elle Fanning. I love her so much. So I was like, I'm glad you got her. Next 10 years. Nice. No, she's, she is the perfect head. How old is she? Is she even 30 yet? I think she's 28. Oh my God. No, she's, she's in the perfect, I mean, I guess I keep thinking of Emma Stone as the prototypical, like you emerge like around the time that you're 30. Jennifer Lawrence, I guess was even younger than that. And Nell Fanning just feels like right in the Emma Stone pocket to get to that point. Two Oscars, who knows, but if we were at least one.

59:27Chris Vile, you're next. Here I am in this place and i in the previous category snatched zendaya because i was like she's gonna be gone so fast i'll never be able to draft her in this category um uh i'm going with someone who uh has already been nominated was uh very conceivably close to being nominated again and that is jesse plemons uh we we want nothing but gold trophies for the plemons dunst household um but yeah i mean jesse plemons has been in a uh has been in more best picture nominees than i think even us nerds on this call uh remember he's got to be up there with like the most for anyone alive like him and like pacino his numbers are crazy of his age range oh yeah that's that's easy and it's just like he just keeps working with interesting people doing very very different roles from his last one sometimes um i mean uh i thought that he's had the i'm not a i'm not a friday night lights person but i did love him in other people quite a bit so i've been in the tank for him since that movie what is other people that was the chris kelly um movie with what molly shannon molly shannon won an award for it yes yeah he is good in that he is uh and uh yeah I think things are going to stay interesting for him.

1:00:57And I think, again, performers who could have just as easily not been nominated for what they were nominated for. I think Power of the Dog, him getting that nomination for a role that does kind of go away throughout that movie, does show the strength of how much people like him and that performance. So let's stick with Jesse. You know, not to give someone else's Oscar credit for him, but like Michael B. Jordan winning with Jesse Plemons sitting there in the audience for the Friday Night Lights. I know, old co-stars. I loved that. It was really, and like you could see them like looking at each other.

1:01:29It was very sweet. That was cool. Michael B. Jordan had so many cool moments like that. Like one, I mean, me being me, the interview where they mentioned to him that like Susan Lucci had like sent him a like nomination morning, like congratulations tweet. And he spoke so kindly about Susan Lucci, his old All My Children co-star. Oh, yeah. I think I told you at some point. I asked him, both him and Wagner Moore, about working on soap operas, and they had so much to say about what Good Training Ground was. People love talking about that. Yes. They love talking about it. Yes. Well, no, this is a reminder.

1:01:59Like, we're picking people who've been nominated recently. Michael B. Jordan this time last year was like a when is he finally going to get nominated situation. So these things can change quickly. Exactly. Joe, you're next. Oh, this is a little daunting for me. Okay, so. And I'm really, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to make this pick, but like, it's really hard for me not to go with my heart and pick Mike Feist because I love Mike Feist so much. I think he's so talented. But I also think he is in a real crowded marketplace for roles. He's competing with all those Brits. He's competing with all of those Brits.

1:02:38He's like, and he's just like, and he's kind of towards the back of that line. You know what I mean? So it's just like, it's got, it's going to be tough. I almost, also almost picked Dominic Sessa because I think, I think he's, you know, on a real good trajectory. But I'm going to make a little, this is maybe going to be a little bit of a bold pick. I'm gonna go with Dakota Johnson. Ooh. Who is not as well regarded as the greatest actress, although I think she's a better actress than a lot of people give her credit for. I think a lot of people seem really invested in the idea that Dakota Johnson is a bad actress, and I do not think that that is the case.

1:03:26But I think the thing that Dakota has going for her is there's a, I mean, a star power to her, which is, you know, obviously, like a lot of these actors have star power, but like for real with her. And I think sometimes they give Oscars to, you know, the most acclaimed like thespians, but like sometimes they just give it to the person in the category who's like knocking it out of the park. You know what I mean? It's like, I don't, this is not a shade against Mikey Madison, but like Mikey Madison won that Oscar because she brought real star power to that role. You know what I mean? And I think you give Dakota Johnson a role with some meat on the bone in a movie that like people really like.

1:04:17And I could absolutely see her winning Best Actress. Like that is, it is not, some of the times like you really have to get over the hurdle of like, can I mentally picture them like holding an Oscar, you know, in their hand or whatever. And I absolutely can do that with her. I think she has like, you know, a real, you know, people are fascinated with her in, you know, in many types of ways. And I think, I mean, you look at something like Luca Guadagnino's A Bigger Splash, which was never an Oscar movie, but like the kind of thing she can bring to a movie like that, if she can do that to a movie that like is in the Oscar race, then like, yeah, absolutely, I think she can.

1:04:58I love the idea of her doing like a supporting turn. Like you're in two knockout scenes and you change the entire temperature of the movie. Like she has a bigger splash and like that being the thing that gets her an Oscar. Yeah. But I think like to me, this is like, this is a best actress win waiting to happen. Oh, okay. All right. It's like a Jennifer Lawrence style. Like, you know, she's obviously too famous now to get the like, you know, on the way up Jennifer Lawrence Oscar. But like, I still think she's, you know, in that kind of a box, in that kind of a wheelhouse. Yeah. I don't know if I have the same level of faith in her that you do, but I really like your argument.

1:05:37This is why I thought it was a little bit of a risk, but I'm standing by it. Well, like this whole category feels risky in a way that the Brits don't. And I don't know why. Like a lot of these names I just look at and I'm just like, Margaret Qualley. Like, is that going to happen in a way that you don't for Jodie Comer? Now she's going to have her post-divorce freedom tour that Nicole had. You have a post-divorce Oscar and not just an album? She's in the next Jeff Nichols movie. Well, Jeff Nichols, we're also rooting for him. We are. But no, I had the same thought about Dominic Sessa. I had Dylan O 'Brien on here as like someone who seems to be like doing well for himself.

1:06:14And is he going to break through? You said Mike Weiss. I was thinking of Lucas Hedges as someone who was like, where you been, buddy? Like, come back through. Hanging out with Mike Feist on the British stage doing Brokeback Mountain for a little while, at least. Which nobody seemed to like. So, didn't work out. Yeah. But I'm doing a real go with my heart here. And, like, it could happen. Just one thing has to break right. And you all know, I think you're all with me in believing deeply. I think Kiki Palmer could win an Oscar in the next 10 years. Yes! We would all be so happy if that happened.

1:06:46That's a great, holy shit, that's such a good pick. I think I want not more, but like seems more plausible. I think she should host the Oscars. I had been saying that four years. She would be an incredible host of the Oscars. And I think if she gets to a point where she's, you know, maybe even getting nominated, like getting in movies that get like just that extra pop of visibility. She's such an obvious star. Like I love boosters. I don't think it was like a huge hit, but much like one of them days, like thrives on just her incredible charisma that is coming through in this. And you imagine her bringing that in kind of like what I was just saying for Dakota Johnson.

1:07:18Like you come in a supporting turn, you just like blow the roof off the place and get out of there and no one can stop talking about you. She is so immensely capable of that. So she gets involved in a movie that's on their radar in that way. I think they are making one of them day sequel. Like I don't think it's going to be an Oscar movie, but I just want it because that movie was so good. Well, look at something like Nope where like, you know, if and I think Nope was good enough to be a best picture contender kind of a movie. Nope would have been a best picture contender now, it feels like. The Academy has changed enough in the last, like, five years to make that possible, is my theory.

1:07:51But I think she's great. And she ended up getting, like, you know, I think there was category confusion there a little bit. But, like, she ended up getting some critics' awards for that. And, yeah. Yeah. I know you guys are all on board with the Kiki Bomber train. Absolutely. She was on that roundtable, that actress roundtable. Nobody's going to remember in even a year what show she was promoting on that roundtable. Do you remember now, Joe? Nobody remembers the TV roundtables, period, and they will remember that roundtable. Exactly. Exactly. And she was the biggest reason why. So, yeah, she's great at that kind of a thing.

1:08:25She's great at, you know, God, like give her an honest to God Oscar campaign. Like we would weep. It would be so good. Yeah. I mean, I would love a Best Actress campaign, but I do think like a supporting actress, big turn. Like do the Sean Penn thing. Like have her be in three scenes of a PTA movie and run away with it. Sean Penn role in that movie. You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. 100%. Although if Jason Finney asks her, why is your shirt so tight? That conversation's not ending. Right. But she'd have been able to do that walk. She'd have been able to do the high-ass walk that he does in that movie.

1:09:02Kiki Palmer could play Sean Penn's role in one battle after another, but could he lead one of them days? No, he could not. Absolutely not. He could not. So he's the more talented actor here. No, this is like her Sufjan Stevens project. to see Sean Penn's on Hot Ones. Like, no one wants to watch that. Kiki Palmer's Sufjan Stevens project is her just, like, doing every Sean Penn role in order. Like, she's gonna be Spicoli. She would be an incredible Spicoli. Are you kidding me? She'd be an incredible Spicoli. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Is that my daughter in there? I would believe it from her. Yes, absolutely.

1:09:33100%. Speaking of Hot Ones, I didn't bring it up with Tom Cruise, but it is important that Tom Cruise goes on Hot Ones. Oh, my God. That will be the only real interview he gives this season. Yeah, but that would be worth it. The degree to which he will absolutely refuse to let on that he is in distress or discomfort is going to be studied by psychologists for decades. This might be a weird comment, but it's going to be fascinating to watch Tom Cruise eat. He's one of those people you don't really believe eat? Does he consume food? There's only one way to find out, and he's got to go on Hot Ones.

1:10:09Okay, that does it for For the first half of this, if you're listening to this on Prestige Junkie, you can now hear the second half on This Had Oscar Buzz's Patreon, Turbulent Brilliance, Joe and Chris, any further information about how people can find it to immediately hear the second half of this if they don't want to wait until next week. Patreon.com slash This Had Oscar Buzz.

1:10:34now let's hear my conversation with Tom Pelfrey who is an Emmy nominee this year for his role on task task is a crime story from Brad Inglesby who you may know from Arab Easttown but it's also this really fascinating two-hander in which Mark Ruffalo is playing the lawman and Tom Pelfrey is playing the criminal on the other side of the law but things are a little more complex than that as you might guess. Tom Pelfrey is someone who a lot of people saw for the first time on Ozark, and that was a show that got him so much attention that pretty much everyone in his life was convinced he would get an Emmy nomination for his first season.

1:11:08Then when it didn't happen, some really funny, awkward things happen, as you'll hear Tom tell me in our conversation. But it also really taught him a lot about how to handle things like these moments, like this Emmy nomination for task and take it in stride a little bit, which I think people who have had long acting careers like Tom has get really, really good at doing over time. So we talked about that, about getting to this point in his career and the really interesting work he got to do alongside Mark Ruffalo and Brad Inglesby in making Task. He was really lovely to talk to. I think you will enjoy listening to it.

1:11:40Hear all of that and more in my conversation with the Emmy-nominated star of Task, Tom Pelfrey. So Tom, I was looking back at some of the interviews you did around the Emmy nomination you got for Ozark. And you were kind of talking about how, like, when you'd been on the show, like, you didn't get nominated and then you came back from the dead and you did. And I wondered if that experience kind of made you, not blasé, but being able to kind of ride this, like, award season stuff a little bit better of, like, you just kind of never know. And one way or another, it's going to turn out somehow. Did that help at all?

1:12:11It did. It was a real teaching moment, you know. That was all new to me then, And the idea of even being nominated for any kind of awards or anything. And, you know, everyone was very convinced that for Ozark, for season three, I'd get nominated. Netflix was so sure of it, in fact, that they sent me this huge congratulations on your nomination package that arrived on the morning of the nominations. And this is this gets better. that year the nominations were slightly delayed and they took place on my birthday

1:12:55that's horrible you can go back and fact check this it was july 28th that year and it's my birthday morning and everyone's like oh this is the easiest like you not only will you be nominated you could win all this stuff and then the thing happens and it's like oh oh i'm not nominated you know and does everyone treat you like you've died like is it so well well a little though it's it then becomes strange we're like obviously you know nobody calls nobody says anything you're like it's also my birthday it's still my birthday you can't call me No, but I get it. And look, it's a really valuable lesson because you're like, because I had a really negative experience, you know, and I felt kind of bad and I felt kind of silly.

1:13:46But then you think about that and you're like, I don't want to be accepting that. Like everything about this experience, this experience being the job of Ozark, the character, and everything that happened from getting the job to filming the job all the way through to getting to see, to getting to hear people's reactions and feel them. Like every single part of that job was positive. And I'm not going to let something that's out of my control introduce the negative into something that was so beautiful. It did so many good things for me, for my life, for career, you know. So you just learn that, like, obviously there's a lot of things that are out of your control, and that's one of them.

1:14:30And it's one of those things where if it happens, you get to be excited, but you can't rest too much on it. It's just out of your control. But then when it does happen and 4-Guard Ozark later on, you're like, oh, I see. It can get better. Like, I could have had this great experience. and then this on top of it. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Yeah, no, it's, that's what I'm saying. Like with this for task, to be nominated for task is like such an incredible way to kind of finish the whole cycle of the job from casting years ago now to this is like, feels like a great way to get to celebrate something that was meaningful.

1:15:13Yeah, yeah. That's beautiful. Well, going and looking on your IMDb page to kind of see your Emmy history, there's also a daytime Emmy history for Griding Light in the very beginning of your career. And earlier this year during Oscar season, I talked to both Michael B. Jordan and Wagner Mora about their soap opera background. And they talked to me so much about how much it teaches you and like what kind of education that is. And obviously the kind of work you're doing on task is different from what you're doing that way. But I'm just curious for your perspective on it. Soap operas are so famously hard to make and they feel kind of like an actor boot camp to me.

1:15:44And I wonder how that felt to you. Yeah, I mean, it is a lot of work. You know, you're doing basically an hour of television a day, so you're filming 50 pages a day. Every day, five days a week, 51 weeks a year. We had off the week between Christmas and New Year's. And a lot of that stuff is a muscle, and you also, you just have to learn how to work super efficiently, or else you just can't survive there. You know, like the speed that you need, obviously, for something like that is pretty intense. So you learn how to shoot from the hip. Like you really learn how to trust your instincts because there's not enough time for anything else, you know.

1:16:33The memorization is a muscle. I don't know if those guys talked about that. But, you know, a lot of the skills I felt like I learned in soaps was really helped with auditioning afterwards, like getting material fast, having to process it fast, have strong, good choices quickly and all that. Like trust your instincts in some ways, just got to get through it. Yeah, and learning like how do I get to my good instincts faster, which all of that is just a process of like anything you do like that intensely with a lot of repetition. You start to learn things even if you're not fully conscious that you're learning them, I think.

1:17:11Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But, and I had a blast on the show. I loved being on Guiding Light. I was on one of the New York shows. We had a great cast, learned so much. And yeah, you saw a real work ethic because it was, like I said, it was, you had 12 hour days, five days a week, 51 weeks a year. and um you i've never i never missed i've never missed the day of anything work-wise but you you really like everybody's really depending on you every day in that situation you know well i'm thinking about you being part of a of a well-oiled machine like that and then you're on the set of tasks and you guys are out in the woods and there's bullets flying and it's so it's so hard to film anything especially out in the forest and just having those that muscle like it's got to help you in all these different situations, even though the role is so different, it's still training.

1:18:04Yeah, 100%. And to me, that's the most, you know, that's one of the most rewarding parts of the job is when you're feeling when you're really having the experience of being on a team. And, you know, there's something you can contribute and all that stuff. And yeah, you want to be you want to be having everybody aiming in this in the same direction, especially when there's a lot of chaos and when you have to do something difficult, like all the fight scenes in the woods and all that stuff. Yeah. Very helpful. Yeah. How was filming in those woods? I mean, Brad Engelsby's got this like whole like industry around him to help make him these things at this point.

1:18:37So everyone knows what they're doing. But I just I have to imagine it's so hard to go film in the woods in the summer with the mosquitoes or whatever else. Yeah. I mean, it was it was fun. It was I think I think I think Ruffalo got bit by a tick. I think he got some kind of Lyme's disease. Oh, God. I know. I know. That's East Coast summers for you. You just got to prepare accordingly. There's more bugs than you know what to do with it. Yeah, no, we had a few people go down temporarily. And it was hot, like you said, East Coast summers. But it was also beautiful. I mean, it's kind of cool to get to spend a lot of your days there.

1:19:20Where Robbie's house was, was also out in the woods. yeah kind of out in the middle of nowhere and uh it's really beautiful it's fun to be filming at the house when the kids were there and stuff going yeah yeah yeah you're not on a sound stage you're like out and you can go step out in the woods for a minute um i talked to brad anglesby a couple weeks ago i guess uh and he was just talking about your your two characters you're in mark ruffalo's characters as you know the fulcrums of the story and having to bring you together and kind of having to to cast you both and work with you both as these opposing forces who are going to come together in this way.

1:19:53And he kind of pointed to your laugh, which I thought was such a lovely compliment is something that drew him in. And this sense of optimism that he felt like you and Robbie shared, like a hopefulness about the world, even though Robbie, I think, externally is such a, can be such a negative character. I'm curious if you guys talked about that, if that's just something he's telling me, or if that was like a key part of you working with Brad, getting into this character, kind of figuring out how you were going to work on this show. That's really fascinating to hear that. We never talked about that.

1:20:22Yeah, no, we never talked about any of those things. That's, I mean, that's kind of beautiful to hear that. It's, you know, it doesn't happen every time, but when I read Task for the first time and I read Robbie, I felt like I understood him immediately. Like I just knew exactly what it was. It's funny, I was going through my phone the other day, and I was trying to erase some stuff because the memory or whatever was full. And I found my task audition. Wow. Oh, it's like on your phone, like a video. Yes, because it gets compressed into a file that you share, you know, and if you don't erase it, it's there.

1:21:01And I watched it again, and it made me laugh. but it was, it was, I remember feeling with the audition, like, I just know exactly what this is. You know, sometimes you think, oh, do you have questions? Is there anything else you need? And I was like, no, I just, let's just do this right now. Cause I just, I feel like this guy lives inside of me, you know? Did you have just like the first episode script? Like what were you working with that you understood? The first two episodes and the scenes were all from the first episode. I think that's true. Yeah. Yeah. So why, why was it so clear? Was there like a, it was like a scene or did you feel like you knew that guy?

1:21:41I think sometimes when you're, when you're pulling these characters from the invisible world, I think sometimes you just pull something that's, that's in that actor. I mean, that to me is, that to me is when the work becomes a kind of, it just feels so effortless and rewarding. Like you can keep mining for more subtlety and you really feel like you can't go wrong. So it just then becomes like this real exciting process of creating versus sometimes where it's kind of hard. Like you don't really quite get it at first and then you really have to come at it a lot of different ways until it feels like the way I'm saying Robbie felt.

1:22:29Because to me, unless it eventually feels kind of like that, then I feel like I'm acting and I feel like it's not very good and I get a bit self-conscious, you know? Yeah. But do you feel like you got either in the audition or like when you got on set that Robbie was kind of like there, that the acting went away really quickly? No, I felt like that when I read the script. Yeah. That's wild. I mean, there was a lot of like external work to do. Like we had to find his look and his hair and the accent. And there was a lot of other work to do later. But I'm just talking about the soul. Like, do you, can you read this?

1:23:04Does it bring you to life to read it? And can you like understand why they're doing everything they're doing in a way that you're like, I would do the same thing. You know, sort of that kind of, if you put yourself in their shoes, can you see clearly? and with Robbie, I could, you know. Yeah. I feel like so much of Brad's work and, you know, in television and film as well, the sense of place is such a huge part of what he's doing. He's going to go forward and task. And that's sort of not your job. Like, you need to understand Robbie as a person no matter where he would be. But I wonder how that becomes part of your job, too.

1:23:38Like, understanding where defines so much about people and who we are in real life. Like, I don't know if you get there and you figure it out or if you talk to him about it, but that, how much does that sense of place become part of your work? Oh, no, that's huge. I mean, I think that's part of what made me feel like I understood Robbie immediately. Just knowing that he's in Delco, he's just outside of Philly, which is an hour from where I grew up. that there is a real like vibe and difference in energy to a kind of East Coast, Northeast Coast guy than there is to like, now I live in California and I have a lot of friends who grew up out here and like, there's just like a different fundamental energy.

1:24:26And I'm speaking in generalizations. I'm sure there's the extremes from either side that break the rule. But in general, there is a kind of energy. And one of the energies to me that's like so predominant on the East Coast that if you're from the East Coast and you're with someone who isn't, you get yourself in trouble is like often when you really love someone, when you're friends with someone, the bonding is, it can be pretty rough. You're aggressive, you're making fun of them, you're kind of constantly just ribbing and going at each other. Now for me, if that's not happening, I feel like maybe they don't like me.

1:25:05Maybe we're not really like they're being too formal with you by being too nice. Yeah. Like if we can't take shots at each other, maybe we're not that close, you know? Yeah. And other people who didn't grow up in that way, you do that and they're, oh, it's like, oh no, I don't mean offense. Like I'm doing it because I feel close to you. So that's it. But that's a huge thing, right? Like that's a huge way of that people relate that you can understand intrinsically that could be hard to relate to if you just don't if you don't have that in your body. It's like everything is a joke until it can't be.

1:25:48Yeah. Everything is a way of playing until it can't be. You know, I like the way you say that, like being in your body, because it's something you hear actors say a lot. Like you have to feel something, you have to inhabit it. And as an actor, you need to be able to be anything, right? You know, you want to be able to be anything. But I wonder if that's part of what you're saying, too, about knowing Robbie, is that there is something about that, like, physically, that is a connection that, like, you just kind of can't fake in some ways. yeah i mean you you know like i said before you really have i mean i'm sure every actor says the same thing in their own way but you need to you really want to get to a point where you feel it fully embodied before you start filming you know otherwise you feel a little bit like you're um guessing yeah well i was talking about when i was talking to brad earlier and about you know building you and Mark Ruffalo as these kind of forces are going to kind of going to come collide.

1:26:46There's that, you know, the episode where you're just in the car together for such a long time. And it's your job to be Robbie. It's not your job to control anybody else. But I'm curious about how you stay aware of building this character who is the other side of a coin of another character in some ways. And you're not on screen together that much, but you're reflecting on each other so much. And you can read it in the scripts. But how much do you work with that? And, you know, either before or after or whenever you have that, you know, the scenes where you actually meet. Yeah, no, it's funny because there's two parts of your brain always, especially for me.

1:27:17I love to read and I always have. I love books. I love characters. I love themes. I love what's underneath a book that makes it special, even if it's not the thing that's said. You know, all those things. So you're hyper aware of that. and it's I think a lot of actors probably are and and it can help you make decisions that are in the right like language in the right like so you're not out in left field with what you're doing like these things can help you identify the world the world that the writer's creating um but no but you can't play any of those things right you can't do anything with it but um so then so then you're just, you're just, you know, you're just confining yourself to, to, to what do you want and how you're going to get it.

1:28:07But I certainly had an awareness of, of how sort of beautiful and strange it was that you have Tom, this priest who's suffered so much loss, left the priesthood, you know, and, and is struggling deeply with his faith and all in the text, right? Like we see the scenes where he's struggling with this particular thing and we know why. And then you have Robbie who says later that he doesn't believe in God, he has no faith, whatever, but he lives with faith. Like he embodies living with a positive belief in the future. You know what I mean? Like he acts at, he acts like someone who believes things will go well.

1:28:54And it's really beautiful. And so like the writer, the appreciator of beautiful writing was sitting back and like taking that in and being like, wow, that's so gorgeous and so wonderful to have these two come together in this moment, have this conversation. Also, part of me was like, you're really going to do this right now? Like you're going to have these guys sit in a car and talk for half the episode? Yep. You know, because everything is at a nine all around them in terms of action, what's happening with the plot, who's going where, like the stakes, detention, everything is through the roof.

1:29:36Yeah. I thought it was so awesome that Brad just stops everything and he puts these guys in this car and he lets them talk. What it's a relatively calm conversation. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I thought I just I mean, I thought that was so beautiful. It was so unexpected. Did you guys talk about heat together at all as kind of the ultimate example of the two forces coming together? Finally? Never. We never talked about it. I never even thought about that until we started doing press for the show. Yeah. Oh, sorry. People like me are the ones who are like, but guess what? You ever heard of heat? It's really cool now that now that you say it.

1:30:18I love heat and I got it as soon as I first heard it. But no, I never crossed my mind before then. Well, it's just such a great example, too, of like it's a bold move, like you were saying, of having things slow down. But sometimes that actually is exactly what you want. Like for things to be moving so fast as an audience member, you're like, wait, I like get me these get these two people in a room. And when that can be kind of the special effects of something like that's kind of how you know you've you've done it right. that the characters can be as compelling as everything else. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's also fascinating, too.

1:30:48I don't know if Brad talks about this, but he only writes from character. Like, his version of Task was just that he loved the character of Tom, and he loved the character of Robbie, and he just sits there and daydreams them until he, like, feels that they're real, and then he was like, Like, okay, how do I create a scenario where these two people come into each other's lives? Yeah. And I say that because, like, as an actor, that's such a joy. And there are times where you're doing especially a longer form of storytelling, whether it be a miniseries or a TV show or whatever, even a movie. It could happen in the movie, too, where you get to a point where the writer wants something to happen in the plot.

1:31:44And they're willing to kind of sacrifice the character a bit just to get this thing to happen for the story. And, you know, that never feels good or right. And with someone like Brad, which is, I think, the way it should be, everything that happens comes out of these characters he's created. like everything, every move they make is the next move you would make. And then that's where he gets his plot. You know, I know it sounds basic, but he's such an adherent to that principle that I think that not just for myself, but I know that all the actors that worked on the show never felt like they were doing anything but exactly like what their character should be or would be doing.

1:32:30Well, also you imagine as an actor, you read a lot of scripts where that doesn't happen, Like you have firsthand knowledge of what it looks like when a writer isn't being treated their characters in that way, right? We all know both sides of the coin. And it's a hard thing to do. I mean, I imagine there's times Brad's banging his head against the wall thinking, you know, but he does it, you know, even if it's a longer way, he does it. Yeah. Have you ever thought about writing or pursued it? Like the way that you're talking about structure, it seems like there's a screenwriter in there somewhere.

1:33:03I have. I finally have something that I've written that I have some people excited about that I think we can do something with it. It took a while. As much as I appreciate it and respect it, it's quite hard to actually do well. You know, when I finished task, I knew I didn't want to work for a while. I wanted to stay home. And I talked to a bunch of my friends who are writers, and I just got like a stack of like 10 books, basically just asking everyone, people I admire and respect, like, if you had to recommend a book. And for a few months afterwards, just kind of sat in my office at night and tried to give myself a little education on exactly that.

1:33:52Because I've been trying to do it for years, but it's elusive. And then I think this time the education kind of stuck. What, any book that you would recommend in particular for anyone who wants to do the same thing? Well, I mean, the one that I don't want to recommend is the one that actually did end up being very important. It took me a long time to understand. I mean, I had to force myself back into this book over and over again, but it's Save the Cat. Sure. Yeah, I didn't want that to be the answer. Uh-huh. but it turns out it's popular for a reason. There is another book that I thought was really beautiful that this one, the save the cat one ultimately to me was the one that like reveals why the structure works the way it does and how it can be important.

1:34:44Even if you have, I had to eventually kind of think of it in different terms than he was using, but there's there's a beautiful book that started as like a memo. I think at Disney, which was a memo about Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces. Sure, yeah. Oh, it's called The Writer's Journey. Okay. And it's written by this, I think, who was an executive there or something. But anyway, it's a really big, beautiful book. And it goes into like archetypes and symbols and like the deeper stuff that's underneath so many of the stories that we love, which is where I just naturally am more interested and kind of fascinated to see where that comes from.

1:35:27So he really uses, he literally just takes Joseph Campbell's work and says he's doing so and sort of translates it into like, this is what this means for you if you want to write a story. That to me is really beautiful because that feels more alive. Yeah. We love a book recommendation around here. This is very helpful. I will. I've got books. We'll take it. Well, I'm excited to see what comes to the screenplay. That's very intriguing news. You know, cross all the fingers that things go in the direction that it feels like they are. Thank you.

1:36:06That does it for today's podcast. We'll be back next week. In the meantime, this podcast is edited by Brett Fox and produced by Brett Fox and me. Our theme music is by Dave Gonzalez. Thanks again to my Murder's Row lineup of co-hosts today, Joe Reed, Chris File, and Chris Rosen. You can subscribe to the Prestige Junkie newsletter at theankler.com. You can watch this podcast on YouTube if you're not already. You can also find it on Apple, Spotify, or all the other places that you get your podcasts. We will see you next week.