Austin Butler is saying his new film 'Caught Stealing' is the most vulnerable role he's taken on. Director Darren Aronofsky and the cast of the film including Butler, Zoë Kravitz, Regina King and Matt Smith caught up with The Hollywood Reporter to chat about the high stakes film, all the crazy stunts, the hair, a Bad Bunny collab and so much more.
00:00I can be that way, you know, I totally make mistakes and I've been very imperfect in my life and, you know, but you just keep trying to do your best.
00:11Austin Butler is saying his new film, Caught Stealing, is the most vulnerable role he's taken on.
00:16The new Darren Aronofsky film follows former baseball player Hank Thompson, who unexpectedly finds himself entangled in a dangerous struggle for survival amidst the criminal underbelly of 1990s New York City.
00:29Butler, Aronofsky, and the cast of the film Zoe Kravitz, Regina King, and Matt Smith caught up with The Hollywood Reporter to chat all about the high-stakes film, all the crazy stunts, the hair, a Bad Bunny collab, and so much more.
00:42The stunt work in this is crazy. It's really you hanging off the building, it's really you with those high-speed car chases.
00:51It's all kind of like dancing, you know, where you kind of get used to moving your body in certain ways, so I would think Dune helped.
00:57And we had such a great team for this, and I was training in different things, like doing baseball stuff, so learning how to slide and all that, and that helped a lot and helped me with the—but then it's like the combination we were talking earlier about, you know, acting through, like it beating up a lot.
01:13So then it's like, how do you run but with pain, and that sort of thing, so there was a lot of that.
01:19Mostly he's done kind of characters, even though Elvis was a real human. He was kind of a superhero, and, you know, Dune 2, without the eyebrows and the hair.
01:30And what was exciting for me in this project was, like, there was no character to hide behind that Hank Thompson would have to have a lot of Austin.
01:41Darren said that this role kind of felt like it was the most you out of other things that he had seen. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
01:50I think about what I was doing for Dune and the character for that, or Elvis for a long time. You know, this was kind of stripping everything back, and in a way, it made me more—
02:00Like more vulnerable.
02:01It was more vulnerable or something? Yeah. And I think—I mean, we've been talking about how you have to explore—like Hank makes so many mistakes in this movie.
02:10And he's so imperfect, but he keeps trying to do his best. And he can be kind of a mess. You know, he can be chaotic. And I can be that way. You know, I totally make mistakes. I've been very imperfect in my life. And, you know, but you just keep trying to do your best.
02:32For King, prepping for the role involved a lot of research into the NYPD in the 90s, and for Smith, it involved a lot of hair gel.
02:40How did we come up with the look, and is that really your hair?
02:44It is. Yeah, it is my hair.
02:46Okay. Yeah. We had this wonderful hair designer called John, who was insistent, really, on it being that color. I wanted it to be pink or blonde at one point, because I thought—
02:55Actually, because part of it goes, I don't want to walk around with green and yellow hair, man. Do you know what I mean? For, like, three months. Three months.
03:01My hair was green and yellow for three months, dude. And, like, I used to go and get it braided every day. And, like, I popped in to see the girl yesterday used to braid my hair, like, because I was back for a day.
03:12But, um, yeah, it—but it actually, in the end, it was quite liberating. And I loved walking around the city with that—with that haircut. It did something—it gave me a sort of interesting energy.
03:23I heard that you worked with a former NYPD detective, was it? What was it like working with her and kind of gaining insight to prepare for this role?
03:31Elise Roman is very, very different than Jackie Brown. That's the detective that I got to work with.
03:41But what is similar is that she was in a space that was predominantly men, and how do you carry yourself in that space?
03:49And that kind of helped me understand how she can have this command presence that you can feel it even if she's not speaking.
04:02How much baseball knowledge did you guys both have before this, or baseball skills?
04:07I didn't have that much. You know a lot about baseball.
04:10I know nothing about baseball. I didn't before. I still don't know.
04:15No, no, no. I don't think I even understood the, like, the cop stealing thing for, like, a while.
04:19Oh, that it was even a baseball reference? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
04:22For Kravitz, this also marks her first role since her directorial debut in 2024's Blink Twice.
04:29I think it kind of got me out of my head when it comes to acting.
04:32I think sometimes with acting it can be so, like, focused on yourself and wanting to do a good job.
04:37And it's very vulnerable and you're just kind of like, it's all about you.
04:41And I feel like I got this, like, macro view of what filmmaking entails and what it, you know.
04:47And so I just, I feel very small and in a way that feels very comforting because I'm not really thinking about myself so much.
04:54Elsewhere, the cast also opened up about bonding with another co-star everyone's been looking forward to seeing on screen, Bad Bunny.
05:01Someone else people are really excited to see in this movie, Bad Bunny. I know people were freaking out when they saw you at his concert.
05:08I mean, he's so, he's so personable in it. Yeah, we had, we had a lot of fun. We laughed a lot. We had, we had a great time.
05:14Well, I mean, I think at that point everybody was, like...
05:18Getting down?
05:19It was, it was highly sexual, everything that was happening.
05:22And so I think there was a bit of me that was like, everybody is filming this right now? Like, you gotta kinda...
05:26This is very sexual to me.
05:27Yeah. Is that sexual?
05:28This is very sexual.
05:29Yeah, yeah. Sexual, yeah.
05:30Do you have a favorite Bad Bunny song?
05:32I like that, I've been, I talked about Nueva Yolo the other day.
05:36That's good for you. Yeah.
05:37I like that one. And then there's that song, E-O-O.
05:40I did a Zoom with him and he was very serious and very eager and he came totally prepared, willing to do anything.
05:49He dyed his hair red and he dyed his beard and mustache and he changed his whole look and he did research.
05:55He even helped us name the character.
05:57And, and look, New York is like Puerto Rican culture in New York, especially in the Lower East Side of New York is like so intertwined.
06:07I wanted a Puerto Rican actor. And that was a big thing for Bunny. He was like, I'll do it as long as I'm playing Puerto Rican because he played Mexican in his last film and he was like has never played Puerto Rican before.
06:19And it's such a big part of New York culture, Puerto Rico culture. So it's, it was great to kind of have that spirit as part of the movie.
06:28I need to know that you're a guy that can take care of the shit.
06:31Asshole!
06:33I didn't handle it.
06:34Caught Stealing hits theaters on August 29th. For more on this interview, head to THR.com.
06:40And for the latest entertainment news and updates, keep watching The Hollywood Reporter News.
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