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Not just any bodybuilder.
How do you do it?
Do you wanna show me?
Amid the torpor of their burgeoning love, the corpses start to stack up.
This is your biggest movie role to date, right?Yeah.
And I dont have a degree in acting.
Im not fresh out of Juilliard, and this is so different than anything else Ive done.
I think it took a lot of trust for them to bring me on.
What was the auditioning process like?It was a lot.
It was a crazy amount.
Someone sent me the casting call, just a random fan sent me the casting call.
I made a PowerPoint.
My agent sent it to get an audition.
At the end of the day, I was like, Do I have it or not?
Rose goes, Yes, kindly.
I was like,Thank God!
Tell me about that chemistry read.
You get to walk in and basically look at your competition.
They had me sitting in the room next to them, where I got to hear them audition too.
I could just sit there and second-guess my performance, my life.
I wanted to walk around.
When I was walking around, I saw Kristen sitting there.
Shes really cool, so shes like, Oh, did your cat pee in your car?
Thats how I broke the ice.
Then, when we went in for our chemistry read, it was playful and fun and just laid-back.
It wasnt with the intensity that the rest of the movie has.
It felt like an open playing ground and supportive environment.
It must have worked.
But I was curious about the way you related to your character Jackie.
Shes quick to throw a punch; you have a background in martial arts.
Shes a bodybuilder; you have trained as a bodybuilder.
Im such a buttoned-up person.
I tend to be on the tenser side and overthink things.
Im not going to be the one to throw the first punch.
And Jackie is just so boisterous and out there.
Deep down, we all just want to be loved or held or to be a little braver.
I booked the job two weeks before we started.
So I was more focused on trying to get in shape.
The first day of shooting, we were thrown right into the deep end.
I think all our intimate scenes were in that first week.
But this was my first time in a professional setting with an intimacy coordinator.
Did having an intimacy coordinator help mitigate some of the potential awkwardness for you?It did.
But, I mean, its already in the script.
You already know youre going to do it.
Its not real life, right?
What the intimacy coordinator did was, right away, we break down the scene and we talk one-on-one.
They would meet with Kristen, they would relay that.
Theyd meet with the director.
We would all talk about the scene beforehand with the intimacy coordinator and just talk through the steps.
Then when youre filming, its the first time youre actually touching each other.
The spontaneity aspect of it is there.
The intimacy of it is there because its the first time its happening.
Youre still in this vulnerable state.
And so theres this really interesting way that it translates.
I was just so anxious that I wanted to verify Kristen felt safe and comfortable.
And she was in the same mind-set.
You never want to be involved in any of that!
Fortunately, this was a group of professionals.
Everybody just wanted to make this really cool movie and not take advantage of anybody.
You began martial arts at a very young age.
You also worked in law enforcement for seven years.
Thats hardly the traditional Hollywood route.
It wasnt just to be like,Oh defend yourself.
It was a family activity.
My dad is an athlete and has been his whole life; its how we bonded.
My mom is very heavily school-focused and is more of a nerd.
She signed us up for any art stuff we could do.
But in a place like Indiana, it was very difficult to see where we fit in.
I have to find something that I can make money and support myself on.
Like a nine-to-five.I stumbled weirdly into law enforcement.
My university had a program where youre basically a security guard and they send you to police academy.
I did that because they pitched it as free room and board.
You get to go to all the games for free, all the plays for free.
I got to meet the Dalai Lama.
I got to escort the Princess of Thailand around.
I got all these wild life experiences as a child, basically.
I was like,I just need a break.
I wound up working for a city police department.
I already had all the credentials.
It was weird how this movie came about because they were so linked.
I wanted to get in really good shape and feel really strong.
I found a gym, got a trainer, and they suggested bodybuilding.
I felt a power in that.
At the same time, I wanted to start acting.
It broke down barriers.
It allowed me to actually get vulnerable in front of groups of people.
Its weird that those two things are interlinked finding myself and then this movie came along.
And Im here now.
You were on something called the Crisis Prevention Team.
Im imagining you in SWAT gear smashing through windows.Its almost the opposite.
Its almost like youre a social worker.
You are specially trained to respond to someone whos having a mental-health issue like schizophrenia.
There were a few suicide-in-progress kinds of things where youre talking people almost back.
We were trained to work with people with autism and dementia.
So it was just coming in with not a heavy hand in situations like that.
Doubling back to bodybuilding for a minute, I understand you entered some amateur competitions around that same time.
InLove Lies Bleeding, Jackie is often effectively experiencing roid rage.
Did you ever see anything like that in your personal life that you could draw upon?Not that.
The people that I knew that were doing steroids, theyre really private about it.
Which, Im like, Why?
Just tell people what youre doing.
It was more about health issues than rage.
I did see some irresponsible relationship things that mightve come out of extra testosterone or something.
You start to see your friends get hospitalized for kidney disease or liver failure.
And youre like,Youre too young for that.
You have become one of the most high-profile non-gender-conforming performers in popular culture these days.
I dont think of myself that way.
But there are stories I want to tell and there are stories I dont.
There are stories that are dated and that I think are maybe cringe and boring and tired.
There are stories that I think people deserve to see.
And I think that people deserve to see themselves onscreen.
I am very passionate about that because I didnt for a long time.
Its also a fun job.
I want to tell stupid stories too that dont matter and that are just silly and fun.
I hope that people have grace with that too.
I dontonlywant to play queer characters.
I dontonlywant to play in films with a big message.
This movie wouldnt be this big without Kristen attached to it, period.
