Jeremy O. Harris and Pete Ohs on Casting Charlie XCX in ‘Erupcja’

0:00From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:12It's The Treatment, finally, sitting before me, mere inches away. I have sitting nearby the playwright and provocateur, Jeremy O. Harris, actor I should say as well. He is here with Pete Ohs. They're here to talk about this incredible film they've done, Yurubiska, which takes place in Poland. First of all, Jeremy, thanks so much for being here. But the movie reminds me so much about your theater work, where it's about the way sexual appetites affect the way people live their lives. And I wanted to ask you a little bit about that, because you guys also wrote the film together, too, with one of your stars.

0:44Well, two of your stars wrote the film with you. But the way these appetites affect people is really kind of central to your work.

0:52Pete Ohs:Well, I think that, like, it's central to life, right? I mean, we're all here because people have carnal desires, right? And so I think that it becomes a part of the texture of how we talk about the lives we're living. And I think what was so great about meeting Pete at the moment when I met him is that our lives were both starting to be surrounded by the same questions, right? We're both young men of a certain age, right? Like, we're still young, but we're also, like, coming on to that space in middle age where most of the people in our lives are having kids and getting married or getting divorced.

1:27Pete Ohs:And I think that, like, talking to Pete when we started making the doc for the Slave Play doc about just, like, the changes in my life, the changes in his life. And then as he invited me to be in our first collaborative film together, The Tribute of Being Bitten by a Tick, we kept seeing this recurring theme of domesticity starting to rear its head. And it was really cool to have someone to very quickly be able to parlay these questions with or have some sort of tennis match with these questions. Because, yeah, Pete and I have made three movies in three years together because he's probably the most prolific person I know.

2:05It's interesting because those appetites, the way they're expressed, I mean, there's a great scene that Bethany has where she's sort of talking about her boyfriend and saying, but, you know, there's no thunder. But she says it in such a matter-of-fact way. I mean, even the narration of the film is like people are reporting on life rather than living it, which I wanted to be really interesting.

2:26Pete Ohs:I mean, I feel like I'm often wondering, why do anything? why are we what you know we have this this life to live what should we do with it um we don't have to do anything i don't know as the world has evolved into wherever the hell we are now what is the purpose of any of it and that can be a really big existential question like we are big in a big existential crisis of sorts certainly moving even deeper with ai and whatnot of just being like what is the point and and for me it's very much just about human connection and I think that is reflected in Bethany's character where she's like, I feel things from these people.

3:06Pete Ohs:I need to follow that impulse, don't I? Sometimes it causes problems, but it's still worth it, right? There's this thing too, Jeremy, which I associate kind of with daddy, which is about people, nobody being in a hurry to do anything, but you still feel this underlying tension of, why am I not doing something? And I wonder if you felt, because that's very much a part of the ambience of the city of Warsaw. I think that one of the things that we were thinking a lot about was how we could sample from these films that had informed us in some ways. I'm much more referential than Pete is. I think Pete has a relationship where he absorbs the world and moves through it, and I'm constantly, loudly processing it.

3:48Pete Ohs:I'm like, you know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of this. You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of this. And so I'm coming at it academically, and he comes at it like a sculptor or a painter. something. And I think that we together kept talking about like what, what things in foreign language films that we like and that we want to sample inside of this one. And I think a difference between American filmmaking and Polish or in European filmmaking and a lot of world cinema, right? Is that like, there is a rejection of plot. And I think what you're responding to is the fact that like, we are comfortable not letting plot lead the narrative.

4:25Pete Ohs:Like we let characters lead it, right? And sometimes characters in a movie that's like, or a play that's rejecting plot are sitting and thinking and existing and being because that is so often what living a life is like. And I think that when you have, and this is no shade on Save the Cat, but like, when you're understanding... I love Save the Cat. I love talking about Save the Cat. We talk about Save the Cat all the time. Why did you talk about Save the Cat all the time? Because it's like, that was the basis, that's the textbook for a lot of people who don't go to film school and Pete and I both didn't go to film school.

4:56Pete Ohs:You know, so like if you don't have a way in, it was like your podcast, Save the Cat. And a bunch of director commentary. Yes, yes, which are going away. But like, I think that like, I also grew up watching all these movies and aspiring to make like Festin one day or like, you know, all these like kind of things. But I think that that happened when we were in Poland. Like, I was catching up with Polish cinema. Pete had already been watching it because he had been living in Warsaw for a while and going to video stores and becoming friends with all these Polish people and filmmakers. And so as we played catch up, I think a lot of things started to impress upon us.

5:32Pete Ohs:And I think the thing that we also were thinking about was like, we're Americans. So what are we understanding from these movies about this place that have informed our imagination about it that we can subvert? And one of those big things was the fact that I was like, wow. When I finally got to Poland, I was like, wait, it's not in black and white. It's not all concrete. It's green. It's the dream. We're talking about Poland with the makers of the film, Joroszka. It's director and co-writer, Pete O's, and it's co-writer and co-star, Jeremy O 'Harris. One of the things that's interesting about the city that I think texturally you really get into a piece is that it's both a new city and an old city.

6:07And that probably half of it has been rebuilt. In fact, it looks, a lot of downtown Warsaw looks like a back lot. So it's a city that if you're a young person, you're trying to ask yourself if you belong to the new Warsaw or the Warsaw that your parents and their parents were a part of. And there's this feeling that we get from Nell. So I think it's really interesting. We can sort of feel that division in her as compared to Bethany, who's Charlie X. Who basically has this incredible command of not doing anything. We're so used to seeing her be active in videos or in interviews. I want to talk to you about directing her because she's so often not saying much.

6:43but is so wary of everything going on around her.

6:46Pete Ohs:I think Bethany, the character, isn't sure what to do. I think she's in a moment of transition in ways that reflect perhaps Charlie as an artist. The way these movies get made is very collaboratively with the actor-writers who are fully contributing to the story to these characters, and intentionally or unintentionally, personal things infect the story that we're telling. and this is a person who's trying to figure out what to do next, has good things about where she's at, but isn't feeling it completely, feels drawn to other things, but isn't sure if that's right either and is struggling to make the right choice.

7:25Pete Ohs:And I think sometimes when you, when it's not clear what to do, that can essentially be paralyzing and then you just are sitting and waiting, observing, hoping for some to be drawn, waiting for some eruption inside that will send you off in the direction that you hope is the right one. Pete listens better than any director I know, right? And he'll really challenge you around the things he's heard you say. He like, at the start of the process, when he tells you the movie that he's thinking about, that movie is usually based around a location. He's like, I'm thinking about this location and I'm thinking that you're in it.

7:58Pete Ohs:What's something you want to do in a movie? And so I say to him, I want to be the catalyst for change in this movie. And so then we start building out a character that might be the catalyst for change. And for Charlie, she said to him, I think I'm tired of being Charlie XCX. Almost like she presaged how big Brat Summer was about to be before any of us did. Right, because she's saying that in May of 2024, before Brat Summer had began. She already had intuitively felt something. To see her play a character who doesn't go through a world by attitude, who isn't walking into a spot with swagger, we're so used to seeing that from her, and admittedly, at best, a two-dimensional depiction of who she is.

8:37it shows basically how confident she is in front of the camera, how confident she is in talking to other people, because we don't ever see her actually relate to other people as Charlie XCX. But as Bethany, when she's talking to Noah, she wants to know. And when she sees you, she immediately connects with people, and that's an exciting thing to watch, to see that she has curiosity as an actor.

8:59Pete Ohs:In my initial conversations with her, one of the first questions was just, should your character be like Charlie XCX or not? and her immediate impulse was that it should be not like me. And that was intuitively felt right. And thus was exciting for me, for us, to kind of move through this story with this person who with confidence was jumping off this cliff into the unknown of like, what is Charlie without the XCX? And it was amazing to watch it happen, to watch her do it with not being self-conscious about it, really committing to it and really delivering. This is her first feature lead. She, by the third day on set, like, that has been the longest time she'd ever spent on a set.

9:42Pete Ohs:And the fact that she was also remixing her album to release the remix album, on the same week that Obama's putting her on the list of top songs, it was like two weeks after Kamala is Brat. Like, the fact that she was able to still shed who she was and come to set every day as this new woman, Bethany, that we were creating as we were flying the plane was so inspiring. I mean, I don't know that I, as someone who juggles a lot, I don't know that I have ever seen someone juggle so well in front of me. Is there a script, I mean, that you really adhere to? So there's a whole thing. This is the fifth movie I've made with this process.

10:19Pete Ohs:It starts with a location. It starts with conversations with the actors. And then it results in half of an outline of the movie that we start production with. That's all. And then we are doing a Hong Sang-soo type of thing where we are shooting the movie in order. we are writing the dialogue the night before the morning of collectively with whoever's in the scene. They're part of that conversation. And so when we're shooting, we have a shooting script, but the energy of the making of it is very much improvisational in that we are always saying yes and to the story. We'll take a break and talk more about thinking left-handed with the director of Yerushka, Pete Oates, who also co-wrote, and his co-star and co-writer, Jeremy O.

10:56Harris. I'm glad we finally get him here. It's the treatment this morning to come. Stay with us.

11:07We're still talking with the filmmakers behind groups because they're a terrific film by director Pito, whether it's co-writer and co-star Jeremy O. Harris. When you hear less, we talked about the staging of stage play here versus New York and that proximity we have to the stage here and the size of that, how that made it a very different show. I'm not sure how much I liked it because of that, but it was really, I was glad I'd seen both versions of it or has something to compare it with. But this idea of making these things about experience and then sort of eschewing plot, but also make them about appetite.

11:40Because I kept thinking about daddy as I was watching this. So that makes sense, does it?

11:44Pete Ohs:Yeah. No, I think that there's a thing that Pete and I talk about a lot in both of our work. The sense that, like, I think that, like, there's a photographic quality about, or autobiographical quality to all the work, even if it's not about us, right? Where, like, it's a snapshot of where we were at the moment, which is one of the reasons why I have no interest in doing what one of my favorite playwrights in the world does, Tony Kushner or Brandon Jenkins, and going back and rewriting plays that I wrote a decade ago. It's like, that was a play I wrote when I was 25. I don't need to tinker with it and make the scene better for now.

12:18Pete Ohs:And that's because it's a real image of who I was. It would be like Photoshopping a picture of myself then. Pete's movies are about how he's living then. That's also kind of like a weird riff on a Charlie album title. Yeah. Pete was actively living as a person in Warsaw who was like, I hope it's okay that I mention, like a romance in the city, right? And I think that like processing what it means to be like part of a life being decided for you, right? Like, if that romance had been a certain thing, he would have been in Warsaw and living in this very specific way. And there was a lot of things to love about that and a lot of things that, like, were different about that.

12:58Pete Ohs:And I think that, like, it was really cool to see that, like, we were having parallel questions that, like, echoed throughout our work, reflected in this film and in our last film. Pete, I have to ask you about how you guys got Charlie into this, because even before Breath, there's a level of expectation of what she's going to bring. I mean, if you're a star on that level, then people are expecting to see you in something like A Star is Born or Pirates of the Caribbean or something like that. There's a level of expectation that comes with that. There's a level of scale just because of the scale of the kind of music she made.

13:31How do you get Charlie XCX? How do you get her to commit to something like this? Because that's a big thing, and it's exciting to see her in this way that we might not ever see her again. Right. You get her.

13:45Pete Ohs:No, no, you get her. You get her by not trying to get her. So the way Charlie ended up in the movie was just Jeremy and I were hanging out in Lower East Side just the way we do, just hanging out. And she happened to just walk into our bar, the bar we were in. And Jeremy and Charlie are friendly enough that Jeremy can invite her over to our table. He introduced me. He said, this is Pete. We've been making all these movies together. And then Charlie and I got into a conversation about making movies. Does she know movies? She knows movies. She knows movies. And this is May. So we met May of 2024, pre-Brat.

14:16Pete Ohs:But she already had this passion for cinema, this passion to get into acting. And so we're talking about movies. We're going deep. And then as I'm describing how I make movies, she's feeling that that aligns with how she makes music. And at the end of that conversation, she was like, let's go to Poland. Let's make a movie together. I actually thought about this. So much of people sitting on the floor or laying on the concrete in this movie. about it's like they're trying to ground themselves. And I wonder sort of where, there's a lot of that texture that creates this kind of interesting texture of people trying to find themselves somewhere or center themselves.

14:52And I wonder how conscious that was for you, Pete, in the making of it. Because there are a lot of shots of that.

14:56Pete Ohs:I know, I just, we were doing that because it felt right. And I had been living in Warsaw, so I'm responding to what this place is. The history is really present there. You see it within the architecture, you feel it, whether it's seeing the bullet holes on walls or you're seeing that this is when the communist era, the Soviet came in and started building buildings or this is when communism ended and this is when the capitalism era started with a bunch of tall glass skyscrapers. You like can't not see it, can't not experience it. And I was aware of that. I was experiencing that. I was reflecting on that constantly.

15:28Pete Ohs:And so now then to make a movie there, it only makes sense that we would be telling a story with characters who are grappling with their own past, their own sense of memory, their own challenging of what was real, what do I carry with me as I go into the future, as I figure out what's next. What's that like for you, Jeremy? Because as much as your shows, your plays, are about emotional experience rather than story, I mean, you can go back and sort of, say there's kind of a superstructure of kind of a story, but there really is an emotional story being told. But still, there has to be kind of a superstructure to lay all that work into.

16:02What was it like for you as an actor opening yourself up in this way?

16:07Pete Ohs:I think that like I'm really in a moment where because I have to do so much, I had to be so controlling so much in my life. It's really great to be like subservient to someone else's vision. And I think that one of the other things that's similar about Pete and I's work is that like like while neither of us start with plot, we do start with metaphor. Like metaphor is like the pervasive idea that like runs throughout our work. Right. So I think about, you know, a sugar baby, sugar daddy relationship. and I decided to like, what does it mean to extend that metaphor to the very end in the play Daddy?

16:39Pete Ohs:With slave play, I'm like, what would it mean to like extend this metaphor and like look at it from every angle possible? And with Arupsia, he took the idea of like, what happens if every time these two girls come together, there's a volcano explosion or a volcano explodes and was like, what's the, how can that like manifest throughout the story? And I think what, as an actor, I kept saying was like, how can I serve this? while also knowing that I'm a producer of a movie that's happening in Warsaw, a country where neither of the key players, like, speak the language fluently. And I'm like, if you don't need me to be in this scene today, I can just make sure that, like, the Nobu Warsaw doesn't kick us out, right?

17:19Pete Ohs:Because I am also the producer. So I felt like in this moment, I kept saying, like, I don't need to be here, while also saying, well, if you need me, I'll sit down and I'll do the scene the way you want to do it. And I feel so grateful that I did that because people are saying that I've been very funny in this movie, which I think is an acting trait that I've obviously been cultivating with things like Emily in Paris, etc. But was a thing that I was surprisingly always a super serious actor. I was like Aaron in Titus Andronicus. I judged comedy as a performer because I didn't feel confident in it.

17:55Pete Ohs:And I think working with Pete in these last couple movies, I've started to feel very, very confident as a comedic performer. I think even the sense of place and wrestling place is even reflected in the title, isn't it? I mean, talk about the title a little bit. I mean, the original title was always Arupsia, but then as we moved through it, I was like, are we sure we're going to do this? My films are just full of inside jokes. Hopefully I'm inviting audiences in to share in those inside jokes with me. But that's a thing that always just tickles me are little things that only we get and makes us feel more connected and more close.

18:24Pete Ohs:and and so like another potential title was warsaw poland because in the movie they just for some reason they always say warsaw poland um and and but that there's always feels like a joke like hey you americans it's warsaw's in poland yeah i know um and right exactly that is the joke whether you get it or not that's why i'm laughing um but there is this title of a root of eruption which means eruption in polish and just knowing that that is what this is about this is about eruptions big and small. You know, one of the things I also like about Pete in titles is that, like, I think that, like, it's very easy to look at a movie that stars Charlie XCX in a cynical way, right?

19:03Pete Ohs:And say, like, oh, like, this indie person went and grabbed this, like, major pop star because they're trying to have, like, the Sundance runaway hit. And it's like, that would be cool. Like, it's not like no one's saying they don't want that. But I also think that, like, these works are sort of, like, anti-capitalist works, you know? sort of like working in a really beautiful way to like point to like a different way of being holistic and titling a movie a title that's almost unpronounceable works towards that right like we could have called it warsaw poland and it might have actually been easier for people to like jump on board with that looks really good on a poster like it's like it's so simple you know it reminds you of paris texas but like for us it was like like and for pete i think it becomes really important that there has to be a bit of opposition, a bit of tension for people when they come see these things.