Sebastian Stan sits down to guess lines from some of his most memorable TV & movie roles. He discusses what's next for The Winter Soldier, how he prepared to portray Donald Trump in 'The Apprentice' and the legacy of his 'Gossip Girl' character, Carter Baizen.
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00:00Thank you. I said this? Okay, you really maybe got me. I look at all those cards
00:05and I go, was I even in that many projects? I guess I'm pretty old now.
00:19I never hit her. That's not me. I'm actually a pretty meat guy. She hit me
00:24though. Packed a wallop. I said this? Yes, I did say this with like a mustache on.
00:35Yes, Jeff Kaluuya and I, Tanya. I never hit her. That's not me. I'm actually a pretty
00:47meat guy. While I went to Portland, all the locations where they went on a date,
00:51where they grew up, where they lived, anything I could find where they
00:54actually were. I actually sat in the diner at the table, from what I
00:59understand, of where him and Sean, who's played by Paul Walterhauser, devised this
01:04whole plan. Margot was so committed. It was incredible even how much of the
01:09skating that she did. And again, we didn't have a lot of time to shoot, but I felt
01:14that she was incredibly courageous and very committed towards really making
01:20sure that she honored Tanya's experience. And particularly, the amount
01:26of pain that Tanya carried from the sentencing that was given to her to
01:31never ever be part of the sport again. I love how you said that to me. Like, I
01:41can't afford a waterbed? Well, a waterbed would would be like the 80s or the 90s,
01:52wouldn't it? A hot tub time machine? No, I can't afford a waterbed. Wow.
02:04There's only one man that wanted a waterbed. Tommy Lee, of course. That took a
02:12minute. I can't afford a waterbed? Every time I start down one of these paths, I'm
02:18usually convinced that it's a mistake and that it's not gonna turn out. I was
02:24surprised about how much I didn't know and how much people didn't know, because
02:27whenever somebody came up to me and said, oh, you know, I saw the show, I just didn't
02:32know. They didn't have nothing to do with it and all this stuff. He's a very
02:35specific guy. He's got a specific energy. And I don't have a tattoo on my body. I
02:39don't play the drums. I like being challenged. I like being scared. And I
02:44like being told that you can't do it.
02:49Okay. Who the hell is Bucky the Winter Soldier? Captain America, the Winter
02:56Soldier. Who the hell is Bucky? He's always evolving, you know, like the rest
03:02of us, I guess. And that's kind of the fun with him now in this new film, because
03:07he's surrounded by a very degenerate crew of antagonists. They're not entirely
03:12different from him, I guess, in some ways.
03:18How am I ever supposed to do anything important if nobody helps me? Sounds like
03:26a dramatic movie or something. I don't know. Could this have been
03:32political animals? No way! How am I ever supposed to do anything important if
03:40nobody ever helps me? T.J. Hammond was written really specifically. He just
03:44wanted to be heard. He wanted somebody to listen to him and to give him a shot.
03:49I think we can all kind of relate to that in one way or another. I felt a
03:53kinship with that character in a lot of ways, because I felt he was always trying
03:56to do the right thing, and he just didn't have the tools to do it. My job, I think,
04:02is largely to understand the human being that is underneath all the
04:10craziness. And when you do that, at some point you have to kind of put your own
04:16moral compass aside and go in there neutral.
04:21Yes, hello, Judy. This is Donald Trump. Very excited, very excited to talk to you.
04:26The Apprentice is the hardest, most challenging thing I've ever done or been
04:31a part of. I carried him on my phone, probably 300 videos of him, and I would
04:38play it over and over and over and over again until I ended up memorizing a lot
04:43of things that he said. The way we were shooting was kind of like a documentary
04:47style. We could go to a scene and shoot that day, and Ali, the director,
04:52would go, why don't you talk a little bit about Trump Tower? Which wouldn't be in
04:57the script. So I would have to know that it was 68 stories tall, that it had three
05:02sides, a waterfall 60 foot, and an awning, and Marvel from Italy. So it was like I
05:07was memorizing what was happening that year and that month, along with other
05:13things that he had said or, you know, things I'd heard to capture the speech
05:18patterns so that I could improvise in the moment what wasn't in the script. I
05:22wanted to be a part of something that I felt was important and was asking
05:27important questions, difficult questions, and questions maybe that we don't want
05:30to deal with. It's gonna be the finest building in the world. It's gonna be a
05:33spectacular hotel. Absolutely spectacular. I don't know if I got the
05:37voice right. I mean, here's the thing. We are dealing with someone we're seeing
05:4124-7. Everyone's got an opinion about this person. I watched everything I could
05:46find. Anyone that's ever done an impression of him, I've seen it. It
05:50definitely helped that I was playing him when he was much younger, and if you go
05:54back and you look at those times, he sounded different. He spoke much more
05:59clearly. He actually sounded really smart and coherent. I did my best. I don't
06:05know. Some people will think that that was good, or some people will think it's
06:09shit. I don't care. It's like I look at all those cars and I go, was I even in
06:16that many projects? I guess I'm pretty old now. I thought you were smaller. I
06:21mean, it's got to be Captain America. The first Avenger? I thought you were smaller.
06:27It's wild to think about because I never would have thought I'd be playing the
06:31character for basically 15 years. I didn't grow up with comic books, so I got
06:35to kind of like fall in love with them at that time, and I was actually amazed
06:39how much comic books kind of capture a lot of things about the world in a
06:45different way, even sometimes asking certain questions that we're not able to
06:49ask, and I guess I just appreciated that.
06:58If we do this, you got to promise me you're not going anywhere. It's you and
07:02me. You understand? Mm-hmm. Okay. This is the film I did with the great Nicole
07:10Kidman. Destroyer. That's right. A movie that I love and I had such an
07:16incredible experience on, and I just wish more people had seen it.
07:20You got to promise me you're not going anywhere. It's you and me. You understand?
07:26Working with Nicole was incredible. I remember being nervous, but then my
07:30character was nervous. The first scene in the movie when we meet at the bar was
07:34actually my first day. It was the first time I met her, and I remember
07:38how much that impacted the scene because everything just was even more real, but I
07:43was mesmerized. I was kind of nervous, and I was quickly relieved when I saw how
07:49generous of an actor she was.
07:56Whoa.
08:03Yeah, this is from...
08:05This is from 3-5-5.
08:11It's actually like the most international film I've been involved with, I think, so
08:17far, or one of the most internationally kind of international films in the sense
08:21that there's so many different languages being spoken in the movie, and Simon
08:24Kinberg knew of my Romanian background, and he just wanted me to get one line in
08:28there in my native tongue.
08:36Well, I think both Chris Evans and I have this line, so...
08:41I get reminded of this line quite a lot by a lot of fans, actually.
08:46That one, and I'll be with you until the end of the line.
08:48It's actually, maybe not Captain America...
08:53Oh, you're right. Maybe it was Civil War. Captain America, Civil War.
09:00Endgame. We've said it a few times, but yeah, Endgame.
09:03Oh, right. This was Endgame. This was the scene when it's sort of goodbye, which was
09:08also a scene I learned that we were shooting that day.
09:15The way that we were shooting that movie was really interesting because a lot of us
09:19didn't actually get scripts. Some people even got fake scripts.
09:23And I remember on the day I turned up, and that was the same day I learned that Anthony
09:27was going to become Captain America, and then the next scene we shot was this scene.
09:35I know you don't want to hear this, but Mark is dead.
09:40What an interesting line. Who's Mark?
09:44Wow. Okay, you really maybe got me. I don't know.
09:49Oh, yeah. I went to Budapest and I got to work with Ridley Scott.
09:54And this is from The Martian. Wow. Okay, cool.
09:58I know you don't want to hear this, but Mark is dead.
10:01What was amazing about watching him during the process of that film, and I'll put money
10:05on it, nothing's changed, is the amount of excitement and kind of childlike energy that
10:11he had. I remember going to Video Village one time, and he was shooting that in 3D.
10:17He had like six different plasma, like big TVs for monitors.
10:24And it was all six different cameras. And he was sitting there and he had the three
10:27glasses and he goes, roll them all. And he was watching like a madman, like every single
10:33take on the different cameras. And I think piecing it together in the moment, you know,
10:38it's, I mean, it was genius.
10:42Bad news for you, sport. I'm a patriot.
10:45It's a wonder. I mean, I don't know. I've seen this show a lot. Okay. Like, it's a wonder
10:49any of like, you read these and you go, how did I ever make it this far? Like, you know.
10:56Bad news for you, sport. I'm a patriot. Hot tub time machine.
11:00I was a ski instructor. Really one of the most fun I've ever had on a project.
11:06Bad news for you, sport. I'm a patriot.
11:09Comedy is so hard. I have tremendous respect for comedians and actors that can do comedy
11:15because I just think it's harder sometimes. You have to keep it fresh and it just keeps
11:18changing in the moment. It keeps you on your toes. And then you can kind of dance with
11:22that hopefully. I remember between John Cusack and Crispin Glover, like it was definitely
11:28in a way a dream.
11:33You've written this yourself. I know what you're doing. You can't avoid what happened forever.
11:40I feel like that's something I could probably say to you now. I know what you're doing.
11:45I really hope this is what I once said to Blake Lively. Was it Blake Lively?
11:52Yeah, wish it could have been Blair.
11:55I know what you're doing. You can't avoid what happened forever.
12:00Once in a while I'm still in a coffee shop somewhere waiting in line trying to get like
12:04an iced Americano and I'll just hear Carter Basin behind me and I'll just have to slowly
12:12turn around, usually amazed that people still remember that character.
12:17I always felt like I was the sixth man in that show. You know, like in the NBA, the
12:22sixth man is a very key role, but he's never in the starting five. You know, it was amazing
12:28to watch what happened to that show and good friends of mine who I'm still close with
12:32from that show and how popular it got. And sometimes I wish I was part of the starting
12:39five and other times I was like, well, it was really interesting because I was walking
12:43around the city yesterday and I've walked around the city for so many years and I've
12:47seen these buildings over and over again and they're still there. And yet so much has
12:53changed. You know, it's very overwhelming to kind of like sometimes return to the city
12:58for me because I get emotional kind of looking back at how quickly time has gone by. And
13:05sometimes I think about those days, not that I would go back and redo them because I think
13:11they went well, but there was something simpler about those days, you know, and it was nice
13:17to just have a job in the city and work with your friends and people that you care about.
13:21And I think that was a big takeaway for me, I think.
13:35you