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