Director Jeff Nichols chats with THR on the red carpet of 'The Bikeriders' premiere and highlights while skilled bikers were a bonus to have in the film, they needed actors who could vividly bring these people to life. Plus, he reveals who the best biker was in the cast.
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00:00Were you looking for actors who knew how to ride, or was that a part of the casting process at all?
00:06I honestly just considered that a bonus, you know.
00:10The film is really about people, and so you need actors that could bring to life the eccentricities of a lot of these characters.
00:18And so that's the first priority.
00:20The fact that they rode bikes just made my life a lot easier, which a lot of them did, thankfully.
00:24Who was the best on the bike of this cast?
00:27Norman Reedus. I mean, you can say that without question.
00:30But a lot of them are really great. Tom's a great rider, Boyd Holbrook's a great rider.
00:34And the other guys, we got up to speed pretty quick.
00:38And the accents are a big part of this.
00:41How did you kind of work with this main trio to figure out the voices and the accents?
00:45Each actor had a different approach, because each actor had different materials to work with.
00:49Jodi had about at least 30 minutes of dialogue of the real woman.
00:54And so she went really deep into bringing this woman's voice back to life.
00:58Not just an accent, but her voice.
01:00However, Austin's character, there were no audio examples of.
01:05So Austin really, I gave him examples of other people talking, and he kind of had to absorb the world around him
01:11and kind of come up with a voice that kind of fit his own body and his own character.
01:16Tom, on the other hand, has a direct inspiration in the film from Marlon Brando.
01:19He's actually watching The Wild One when he got the idea for the club, which is something that was out of Danny Lyon's book.
01:24It's based on a real incident.
01:26So he really took the idea that, OK, this is a guy who's pretending to be a club leader.
01:30He's really acting the part, because the truth is, he's a truck driver, he's got a wife and kids and a house.
01:35Like, he's not actually a biker gang leader.
01:39And so it made sense that he would be kind of impersonating James Cagney, he'd be impersonating Marlon Brando.
01:45So his voice kind of became a, I don't know, an affectation of all those things.
01:50Thank you.
01:52And you had a long journey for this film.
01:54It kind of switched studios a few months ago.
01:56Did you have faith that this was always going to come out, or were you worried at any point?
02:00I guess faith's an interesting word.
02:02All you can do as a filmmaker is try to put your heart and soul into a film and make something of quality.
02:08And I think we did.
02:09I'm really proud of this film.
02:12I'm proud of all the work in all the different departments that just worked their hearts out making this film.
02:19So you've got to think, if you've put all this effort into it, that there's inherent value in it.
02:24And that the world's going to find it eventually.