Shifting gears a little, even though Terrance is a supporting character, he has to be the sort of voice of authority here and both the characters and the audience look to him to tell us what’s going to happen next, in a way. Tell me about working with Aaron and shaping that role with him.
Yeah, look, I mean, he was the hardest character to … I didn’t take that character for granted. He needed to have a lot of complexity and not fall into those kind of stereotypical antagonists. So … what a great challenge. How do you find a believable truth behind a character that’s doing these kind of things? And how can the provocations not feel cruel, but feel somehow he’s trying to … he really believes that he’s improving humanity. And all these, what feel like cruel provocations to Junior, are actually him trying to loosen the rigidity of what he’s become. Why have you become this person? Do you really think you know your wife?
So on a first viewing, you think this is kind of a cruel thing, but actually when you reflect back, in a way he was trying to help Hen, he was trying to see what he could do with it. So I guess because of the depth of the script and the depth of the truths of the world, that just gave the actors, gave all the material, it just gave them all those springboards to get into that really rich place of performance.
The other thing I was really curious about was almost feeling this father-son quality with Junior and tapping into something very human there, which I thought brought a lot of dimension to Terrance. And in a way, there’s an aspect that he plays God as well. So there’s something very metaphysical and cerebral as well. So yeah, hopefully that comes across, but it’s all in there.
Through this sci-fi premise, the story engages with these really big ideas about how people change over time and how relationships evolve and how people fall in and out of love. I’m curious if there was one theme or one idea that you really connected to, that most helped you convince yourself that you needed to make this your next movie. Was there one main idea?
It’s very simple to me, and I just feel like I’ve said this a few times now, but I just feel like society is asleep at the wheel and we’ve forgotten who we are. We’ve forgotten our inner nature. We’ve forgotten who we are. And I guess Hen represents probably the next generation screaming at us to change, to pay attention, and to not forget that we are precious. This time in our life, don’t take it for granted. And not just ourselves, but the people around us. We are nature ourselves, and every action, word, is sacred, and it has an effect on nature itself. There’s no surprise we’re in a mess right now. It’s because of us. I really align with Hen and what she’s fighting for. And a lot of people, they just want to be numbed out and not think, which is fine. I mean, that’s very pleasurable. But at some point, do you want to go deeper?