'Babylon' Cast Interview
The stars of “Babylon” including Margot Robbie (Nellie LaRoy), Brad Pitt (Jack Conrad), Diego Calva (Manny Torres), Jovan Adepo (“Sidney Palmer”) and Li Jun Li (“Lady Fay Zhu”) chat about their new Damien Chazelle movie in this interview with CinemaBlend’s Eric Eisenberg. They laugh about some of the movie’s downright gross moments, reflect on their lives as actors compared to the reality on display in the film and much more.
Transcript
00:00 No one's brought out the word gross yet.
00:01 - Yeah.
00:02 - But you're also gross.
00:03 - But gross?
00:04 - You are correct.
00:04 - Gross is correct.
00:05 - Action!
00:06 (upbeat music)
00:09 - I think what we have here in Hollywood is high art.
00:14 It's...
00:15 - Party time, sparkle time!
00:17 (upbeat music)
00:20 - This movie obviously does go to some extreme
00:24 and very gross places.
00:25 And actually I wanted to ask the two of you
00:27 specifically about two scenes,
00:29 namely the elephant and also the fancy dinnerware Nelly.
00:32 - No one's brought out the word gross yet.
00:34 - Yeah.
00:35 - But you're also gross.
00:36 - But gross?
00:37 - You are correct.
00:37 - Gross is correct.
00:38 - Tell us, you know, tell us about the elephant.
00:39 - Diego, you were in there.
00:40 - The elephant, sorry.
00:41 - Well, the elephant and I...
00:42 - Can you help us in that?
00:43 - I would love to have like here Linus, the DP,
00:46 because I remember the shot when everything
00:48 is coming into you, when it was coming into him.
00:51 - He was wearing a porn shirt?
00:52 - Luckily I was a little like, you know, aside.
00:54 But I think it's one of the greatest opening scenes ever.
00:58 No, so let's start a movie with an elephant doing that.
01:01 (laughing)
01:02 It's a self-made, yeah.
01:04 - Yeah, that was insane.
01:06 And the projectile vomiting was...
01:08 - Oh, impression.
01:09 - Was...
01:10 (whooshing)
01:10 - So impressive.
01:11 - It just, you know, it was, you just had to go for it.
01:13 - Did you practice for that?
01:14 (laughing)
01:14 - Yeah, yeah.
01:15 Yeah, it was disgusting and hilarious.
01:20 Like a lot of things in this movie.
01:21 - Yeah, I mean, by all reports, it was rock and roll time.
01:25 You know, it was unregulated, it was new.
01:27 They were figuring out who they were,
01:29 what the community is, and it was the wild, wild west.
01:33 - It's the most magical place in the world.
01:35 (upbeat music)
01:37 - Does it enhance the experience
01:39 making a movie about making movies?
01:41 Like, do you feel an extra level of passion
01:43 just having that part of the experience?
01:45 - I don't know if I thought of it that way.
01:47 - Yeah, 'cause it kind of made it funny just to be like,
01:49 yeah, we're making a movie about movies.
01:50 And then you would see like, the mics or whatever.
01:52 And then you see the actual mics above it.
01:54 I'm like, yo, this is super crazy.
01:58 - It's a little tricky.
01:58 - There's cameras on cameras.
02:00 I remember there was a couple of times
02:01 where you'd be performing and be like,
02:02 looking at the camera.
02:03 - Yeah, that's which camera is it?
02:04 Nope.
02:04 - No, that's the camera that's in this.
02:05 Oh, I knew that.
02:06 - It's a little like "Inception."
02:08 (laughing)
02:09 - A dream, a dream.
02:10 - What you don't know is that this is still the movie.
02:12 - I knew it.
02:13 - Still going.
02:14 - I knew it.
02:15 - We're gonna say we come in for my closeup now.
02:17 - One thing that struck me watching this movie
02:19 is that there was a lot of glamor shown
02:21 in the life of being an actor,
02:22 but there's also quite a lot of tragedy and nightmare.
02:26 - Yes.
02:27 - Action!
02:27 - I'm scared!
02:28 - Being actors, to what degree do you internalize that
02:31 and just think about it in relationship
02:32 with your own career?
02:33 (laughing)
02:34 - Wow.
02:35 - Yeah.
02:36 - Wow, that's a really, really good question.
02:38 - Well, I mean, we were just talking about it.
02:40 I mean, we humans, we're just, we're messy.
02:44 We're wonderful and we're awful and it gets complicated.
02:48 And we're, you know, we're all over the place.
02:51 So I think, you know, it's just the same
02:53 in any kind of environment you land.
02:54 I haven't quite run into the dysfunction of some,
02:59 to the extent of some of this.
03:00 - To the level, yeah.
03:01 - Except maybe in the younger years,
03:02 when people starting out were a little more reckless.
03:03 - Yeah.
03:04 - I think maybe.
03:05 - Yeah, I think, I mean, definitely the,
03:08 you start researching some of the people
03:09 that Damien pointed us towards
03:11 and you start racking up how many people died
03:13 really young at this time
03:15 and how young everyone was just in general.
03:17 People running the studios at 35
03:19 and start, people were going from being dirt poor
03:22 to being the biggest movie stars in the country,
03:26 like so quickly.
03:28 And they were 20, if that,
03:30 and then they were dead by that time.
03:32 They were 25, 30, 20, you know, like it was just,
03:34 it was kind of insane.
03:36 And it felt like at this time,
03:39 everyone was just like, live fast, die young sort of vibes.
03:42 - Lift that up!
03:43 - Oh, you big dick, Mr. Man!
03:45 - Who wants to see me fight a fucking snake?
03:48 (dramatic music)
03:50 - I don't think it's quite like that now
03:52 for a number of reasons, the industry's evolved,
03:55 but yeah, it was a crazy time.
03:58 I don't think it feels quite the same.
04:00 - I haven't thought about it that way.
04:03 I think I was so focused
04:05 on just portraying my character correctly
04:07 that I didn't really think about, you know,
04:09 what's gonna happen before,
04:12 what happened before, now and the future.
04:15 You could say I was in the moment.
04:17 - Seeing the things that they had to deal with back then
04:20 and noting it as it still kind of exists now,
04:22 especially like with like the sound,
04:24 like the issue with sound
04:25 and like the issue with like trying to get the lighting right
04:27 and you know, like the red light
04:29 and coming into this studio. - Oh my gosh, yeah.
04:30 - 'Cause that's, I've gotten yelled at before
04:32 by walking into, what do you call it?
04:34 - Always. - The stages
04:35 and ignoring the red light.
04:36 This was early in my already early career, but still.
04:39 - Yeah, 'cause you're not stealthy.
04:41 - Yeah, I'm not stealthy.
04:42 I'm not stealthy.
04:43 He's coming in here and making all this noise.
04:45 (laughing)
04:47 - Tell me, you miss the silence?
04:51 - No.
04:52 - Sound is how we redefine the form.
04:58 Sound!
04:58 - I like the idea that they were all pioneers, you know,
05:02 like pirates, like finding what to do
05:05 and taking risks all the time
05:07 because there wasn't like a book to go to,
05:09 like movie making 101.
05:11 No, there was a, so they were like literally the first ones,
05:14 like building something.
05:16 And I like that for "About Babylon" also.
05:18 And we built something, no?
05:20 (laughing)
05:21 - You can feel it.
05:22 It's something bigger than life.
05:24 - You are playing fictional people in fictional stories,
05:27 but I know that Damien Chazelle did just so much research.
05:30 I'm curious just how you both engaged with real history
05:33 and if there were any just real people
05:35 whose stories you found connections with.
05:37 - Yeah, my character was based on Anna May Wong,
05:39 so there was a lot of research on hers, on her.
05:42 I read her biography.
05:44 I watched a lot of her films.
05:45 And then of course the opening number,
05:49 the tuxedo number was inspired
05:51 by Marlene Dietrich in Morocco.
05:54 Yeah, a bunch of research done.
05:57 Damien and I met together
05:58 for a very intensive three-day masterclass
06:01 where he and I just chatted
06:04 about how we want Lady Faye to go,
06:07 anywhere from how she walked or how she carried herself
06:11 to what octave she spoke at,
06:14 how much breath is in all the words.
06:16 - Sure did.
06:17 - I like how you said that.
06:18 Damien really, it was interesting
06:20 getting those earlier conversations with him
06:22 once we all came on board
06:23 because it was just kind of like an open forum.
06:26 I mean, we've read the scenes obviously
06:27 and went through each of the scenes,
06:28 but then he's kind of like, "What do you think about this?"
06:30 And in my opinion, I feel like Sidney will sound like,
06:32 you know, he has like a melodic to his speech.
06:35 What do you think?
06:35 And then we would compare to like actual artists
06:38 like Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong,
06:39 which I kind of wanted to drift away from
06:41 'cause that's like the easy choice.
06:43 But Curtis Mosby was someone
06:44 that Damien brought to my attention.
06:46 And then obviously being knowledgeable
06:48 of like the earlier, like Duke Ellington,
06:50 all the people of that era
06:51 that I wasn't really familiar with
06:53 outside of just listening to the music like once or twice.
06:56 It was really cool to get to explore that with him
06:58 and the way he presents all the information that he has,
07:01 but he'll like give you everything
07:02 and then he'll like let you pick and choose
07:04 like what's gonna be most beneficial to you
07:06 as you're translating the character from script to screen.
07:09 - It's gonna be what it's gonna be.
07:11 - Just as far as like the structure of these,
07:13 of this narrative goes in these characters,
07:15 I mean, you're dealing with a lot of time jumps
07:16 and spaces in between these stories.
07:18 I'm curious just to what degree each of you
07:20 kind of basically dug into this parts of the stories
07:24 that we're not hearing just to fill out your characters.
07:27 - Well, yeah, sure.
07:28 I mean, it's always the case.
07:30 We, I mean, again, what Margot was saying,
07:33 we have a, we had a lot of silent stars
07:37 to go back to, to study and to help us fill in
07:39 kind of that story.
07:41 I know what you're saying,
07:43 because there's so many characters,
07:45 you know, what Damien focuses on
07:48 as far as their arc is interesting.
07:52 You don't see the same.
07:53 So yeah, we, I think it was just,
07:56 I think it's just inherent to what we do.
07:59 - Yeah.
08:00 - Can you guys explain this better?
08:01 - I mean, I-- - Surely.
08:02 Surely you can.
08:04 - I kind of do it with every character,
08:05 like come up with all the stuff
08:07 that you're not gonna see on screen,
08:09 but it helps me deliver what you do see on the screen.
08:11 So Nellie was definitely no different.
08:13 Like in my mind, I'd plotted out her childhood,
08:16 her teen years.
08:17 - Thank you.
08:18 - Thank you.
08:19 - Honey, you don't become a star.
08:20 You either are one or you ain't.
08:22 I am.
08:23 - One thing that both of you share in common
08:24 is these really just key scenes for both of your characters
08:28 with Diego Calva, where you are both pressured
08:31 to change who you are to fit a certain standard
08:34 of the industry.
08:35 And it obviously is such an impactful moment
08:37 for both of your characters.
08:38 I'm curious just how you approached it just personally
08:40 with Damien Chazelle and with Diego Calva.
08:43 - The thing I think is interesting about you bringing it up
08:47 is because we're sharing,
08:48 both of us are sharing that scene with Diego
08:49 and he's also a person of color.
08:51 - Mm-hmm.
08:52 - Kind of forcing somebody who is of his,
08:54 you know, of a general group and kind of, you know,
08:57 charging us to change.
08:58 - And that makes it all the more heartbreaking.
08:59 - Right.
09:00 - Because he's someone who has moved up in this world
09:03 and now he's in a place where he has to, you know,
09:06 to keep himself up there, he has to-
09:08 - Knock somebody else down.
09:09 - Yeah.
09:10 - Or challenge somebody else.
09:11 And as far as approaching how to play it,
09:13 I mean, I really enjoyed doing my scene with Diego
09:16 just because he has like an organic excitement
09:20 just about acting.
09:22 And I think if you work with,
09:24 I've been really lucky so far to work with some artists
09:26 that are really great and always committed,
09:27 but you know, you could be in a situation
09:29 where you're working with an actor who's like,
09:31 just tired of, like, I've been doing this for 80 years,
09:33 I'm tired.
09:34 Diego has this freshness to him that I found
09:37 in all of my castmates for this.
09:38 So it was going into work every day
09:40 and having a couple of scenes with everybody,
09:42 it was really exciting and just really made you
09:44 appreciate filmmaking.
09:45 And Damien only, you know, adds to it.
09:47 - I mean, that kind of energy and commitment
09:49 is really infectious.
09:50 - Yeah.
09:51 - So to be around this group of people who are here
09:55 doing their passion project and really loving it
09:57 was just very fulfilling and crucial
10:01 to making something as big as this.
10:03 - We've got to innovate.
10:04 We've got to inspire.
10:06 What happens up on that screen means something.
10:10 (dramatic music)
10:13 [BLANK_AUDIO]