Justin Theroux discusses what it’s like working with director Tim Burton on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and the legacy of cult-series The Leftovers with The Independent’s Jacob Stolworthy.
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00:00For Beetlejuice to Beetlejuice, which I've been waiting for this sequel for, it feels like my
00:02entire life. And here we are, and you're in it. So for you, I mean, I can't imagine what it must
00:07be like as an actor who knows these characters and this world, and you're suddenly in front of
00:13Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice. That's right.
00:15How weird must that be when you're in that?
00:17It's incredibly odd. I mean, you know, it's that wonderful thing, you have all the cast that,
00:23you know, was in the original, or most of them, and then you kind of don't want to disturb
00:29anything that they're doing, and you want to make sure that you're additive. But Michael
00:35is just an incredible actor. And so to be able to just sort of jump in with him and start sort of,
00:41you know, playing with him is really fun.
00:43So this is because, you know, you're a, well, you're trying to do it all,
00:47but you're a comedy guy as well. You've written comedy films.
00:49Yeah.
00:50Was there any kind of encouragement of you to maybe improvise around?
00:52Absolutely. Yeah. No, Tim was like, sort of like, he wants everyone to, you know,
00:56pass the ball as much as possible and do as much as they can and be as additive as possible. I
01:01think that's one of the things that makes this particular film really good is that he, you know,
01:07he wants everybody to bring their creativity to bear on this film. And it was, we really had fun
01:13doing that.
01:13Was there, when you were watching it back, were there moments that were like, kind of,
01:17is there any more material for us to enjoy basically down the line?
01:20I saw it for the first time just a couple nights ago in IMAX. And I know there were
01:26things that I noticed in it. Every, it's, you know, the cameras are moving so fast, but,
01:31you know, there's a lot of freeze frame that you can do and just sort of be like,
01:34holy shit, look at that. What's written on that newspaper or what's in the background or a fly
01:39that goes up someone's nose. And, you know, just sort of little teeny things that, you know,
01:44I would encourage people to see it in this, in that format.
01:47And how are you watching it?
01:48Yeah.
01:48I had, I got Adam Kesher vibes in your character a little bit.
01:51Oh, really?
01:52Yeah. Oh, yeah. Kind of behind the camera, big shot kind of thing.
01:56Yeah.
01:56I thought this was like Adam Kesher in a Tim Burton world.
02:01Yeah. David Lynch world in a Tim Burton world, which would be quite a mashup.
02:05Yeah.
02:05Um, you know, it's not dissimilar, I guess, in certain respects,
02:08but, um, it's maybe a Tim Burton version of Adam Kesher.
02:12Yeah. 100%.
02:13Niko Jones!
02:15What the f**k?
02:18Thank you all for coming to this special occasion, but right now with like a little privacy.
02:29I just wanted to ask you, with too much stuff to go, the Leftovers turned 10 this year.
02:32Yeah, it did.
02:32It would be remiss of me not to just ask you about the legacy of that show
02:37and what it means to you and how you kind of view it 10 years on.
02:40As to the instantaneous disappearance of 2% of the world's population,
02:47your conclusion as to what happened, some 140 million souls, is I don't know.
02:54That show means an enormous amount to me. I love that television show.
02:58Um, I don't know. It's, it's, you know, periodically, you know, it feels like it's
03:03living in waves. Like it's sort of, you know, the show came out and then there was sort of
03:07another sort of like wave of it. People find it. It's like sort of a great piece of
03:11vinyl that you, that, that you find in a record shop and you go,
03:15oh wow, this is great. Put it back on and it's fantastic again.
03:18Um, yeah, I don't know what, what the legacy of that show will be. I think the people that
03:23love it really love it. And, you know, obviously it wasn't zeitgeisty and didn't have dragons and
03:28things like that, but it, it means a lot to people, I think just because of some of the
03:32themes that resonate in it. And so that's very gratifying.
03:36I feel like I'm a bit of a disciple for pretty much anything Damien Lindelof does.
03:40I know he's a bit of a clairvoyant. I mean, when you think that show came out,
03:44that was one wave that it rode was like, I think when everyone was in lockdown during COVID it was,
03:49it felt very sort of prescient. Um, but yeah, it's Damien. Damien has,
03:54he's tapped into something, you know, that Watchmen lost, you know, and like he,
04:00he definitely has his finger on the, some sort of cosmic pulse.
04:03It's wild, isn't it? It must be great to be, I mean, you part of the left,
04:06there's Beetlejuice, which is honestly, Beetlejuice 1 is in my top three films of all time.
04:10Oh wow.
04:10What are you going to do next? That's what kind of taps into it.
04:12I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out.
04:14It squelches its way into my favourite, you know, top three list.
04:17My whole life has been tripping upstairs, so I'm just waiting for the next stair to trip on,
04:21I guess, you know.
04:22Well, I'm sure it's going to be a successful trip.
04:24Yeah, yeah. I hope so.