Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Norman Reedus, as well as writer and director Jeff Nichols, sat down with THR's Tiffany Taylor to talk all about their new movie 'The Bikeriders.' The film is inspired by the Danny Lyon photo book of the same name that documented the lives of a motorcycle club outside Chicago in the 1960s. Butler and Comer opened up about the intense work they did to get into character, while Reedus, a known motorcycle enthusiast, revealed how he signed on to the movie. Plus, Nichols praised both Butler and Comer. 'The Bikeriders' hits theaters on June 21.
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00:00For me, it was finding all the internal life of him and who he is and what makes him the way that he is
00:07and what he's actually thinking, even though he's not saying much.
00:11Austin Butler's new film, The Bike Riders, is inspired by the Danny Lyon photo book of the same name
00:16that documented the lives of a motorcycle club outside Chicago in the 1960s.
00:21Stars Butler, Jodie Comer, and Norman Reedus, as well as writer and director Jeff Nichols,
00:26sat down with The Hollywood Reporter to talk all about the movie.
00:30What was your prior experience with motorcycles before doing this movie?
00:34Mine was bare minimum. I think I'd been on the back of one once,
00:37and it was an old one that was probably very faulty and shouldn't have been on the road.
00:42I grew up, my dad rode motorcycles, my grandfather rode motorcycles, so I'd been on them.
00:50You know, I'd ridden on the back of my dad's when I was a little kid, and then at about 15,
00:54then he said, I'm going to teach you how to ride a motorcycle, and so I went out there and learned.
00:59But I'd never been on an old bike before, and it's very different.
01:03And so that was the big learning curve for me, was just getting used to all the different personalities of each old bike.
01:11Yeah, that was fun.
01:12You're the man in charge. I'm Sonny.
01:16You're a known motorcycle enthusiast.
01:19So did Jeff come to you or how did you get involved in this movie?
01:22So I was doing Daryl Dixon in Paris. I was filming. I went to Cannes.
01:26I sat at a dinner with Jeff. He goes, you know, I'm directing a film called The Bike Riders.
01:30And I was like, the Danny Lyons photo book? And he goes, wow, you know that?
01:33And I said, yeah, I have a few prints at home. I have a signed Danny book.
01:38Then he sent me the script. He told me who was in it.
01:41And I was like, Jeff, you got a lot of good looking guys in this movie.
01:44Can I try something else and just go in that direction? And he was like, yeah, go for it.
01:49Reedus plays Funny Sonny, a bike rider from California who travels to Illinois,
01:53where Butler's character, Benny, is the newest member of a motorcycle club made up of local outsiders.
01:59Comer portrays Kathy, a strong-willed woman inextricably drawn to Benny.
02:03So what are we doing here? Just shooting the breeze?
02:10I guess.
02:12Both Comer and Butler opened up about taking on their roles.
02:15I heard you listened to the recordings that the interviews for the book are based on to really get her accent down.
02:21Can you talk to me about the process and the challenges of it?
02:24Yeah. Well, I mean, when I initially I met Jeff on a Zoom and I'd read the script
02:28and we were just kind of talking about the material and what I felt.
02:32And then at the very end of the call, like as we were getting off, he was like,
02:36you know, I have like 30 minutes of audio of her. And I was like, why?
02:39Why is this not in my inbox? Like, can you like send me this right now?
02:42So he did. And I was like, oh, OK.
02:44I work very closely with a dialect coach, Victoria, who's incredible.
02:47And it was just about like really kind of, you know,
02:51get into grips with the material and trying to make it feel as authentic as as possible.
02:56Benny has this really underlying rage that we see come out in really dramatic ways sometimes.
03:01Where do you think that comes from?
03:03And did you do any sort of character work on his backstory,
03:06either on the real person or did you fill in those gaps?
03:09Yeah, there was a lot that I had to fill in for him.
03:12I think it's a lot to do with his own relationship with his father.
03:17And there being a lot in his in his family life,
03:21you know, that he's very young when he when he joins the club and and to have that type of rage there.
03:29So I I worked a lot on on that trying to figure out, you know, what his childhood was like.
03:35For Butler, the bike riders follows his performance in Elvis,
03:38which earned him Golden Globe and BAFTA trophies, as well as an Oscar nomination.
03:43THR recently named the actor one of the top 10 young movie stars taking Hollywood by storm,
03:48with one agency source saying, quote, everyone wants him to be the lead of everything right now.
03:52As a director who's had him lead a movie, why do you think that is?
03:55I think it's because he's a movie star and they don't grow on trees.
03:59And the truth is, it's not just because he's good looking,
04:03but it's because he's got a lot going on.
04:06There's a lot of depth to this young man and we are seeing the beginning of a movie star.
04:12The filmmaker also opened up about directing Emmy and BAFTA winner Comer.
04:16Jodi's one of the greatest actors I've ever worked with.
04:19The amount of work that she put into this character is really unbelievable.
04:23But the reason I cast her was because the first time I talked to her,
04:27she had read the script and the way that she talked about Kathy was the way that I felt about Kathy.
04:32She loved her. She admired her.
04:34She was confused and confounded by her at times.
04:39All things that I felt.
04:41And I knew that she would hold that relationship to that character very delicately.
04:45The Bike Riders rides into theaters on June 21st.
04:49For more on the film, head to THR.com.
04:51For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Tiffany Taylor.