How Jason Bateman & Jude Law Brought 'Black Rabbit' Brothers to Life | TIFF 2025 - video Dailymotion

Hollywood Journal

Stars Jason Bateman and Jude Law, alongside showrunners Kate Susman & Zach Baylin, detail the relationship dynamics in the limited series 'Black Rabbit' at THR's TIFF suite at the 1 Hotel in Toronto. Bateman and Law give insight into their acting process and how they interpreted playing brothers with conflicting emotions.

Transcript

00:00Did you guys always know which brother you were going to play?

00:03We didn't.

00:04We kind of figured that out on kind of the first call.

00:07We were both kind of excited about the idea of maybe me playing the character that you

00:12wouldn't usually think of me for.

00:16And fortunately I had kind of a good take on that character.

00:19And so away we went and it was really fun.

00:24I like being the screw up.

00:30My character is designed to come in and bring all of these problems into this world that's

00:36well established and start to blow it up a little bit as the antagonist.

00:40And so it's really about the crime elements that exist outside of that workplace and sort

00:48of how do we keep ourselves from getting killed.

00:51As soon as they pitched it to me I was like I kind of know those places, I know those people

00:58and there's fantastic potential here.

01:01And like them I just I really enjoyed I had a very positive experience in the work process.

01:07And then we needed someone who you know could line up and see it the same way and went to

01:12Jason and he you know he got it too.

01:14After you passed.

01:16It was really collaborative and we you know Kate and I have really liked to work that way

01:21with actors who were like who can be really additive to the script and the characters.

01:25So we knew that that was gonna like work well and collectively I think the four of us you

01:31know really just were really aligned from the start of what the tone and the world and the

01:37voice of relationships were.

01:39So I think I mean we would work with everyone here constantly if we could.

01:44The character gets away with stuff people keep forgiving him.

01:48Not every actor can do that.

01:50As you know a lot of actors would have played Vince and everyone would have just been like

01:53just dump the guy.

01:55And with with Jason playing it you kind of understand why this guy keeps going okay maybe

02:02one more chance.

02:03Zach and Kate wrote so much vulnerability into this guy you know he makes a lot of bad decisions

02:07but there's such an he's trying to do the right thing he just doesn't have the skills

02:11to sort of cope with the stuff that's thrown his way and unfortunately for the character

02:16Jude plays, the character Jake, he's got to kind of put out a lot of the fires and so

02:24I could just be as big a screw up as I wanted to be but they wrote this great sort of semi-apologetic

02:32tone to him at the same time so it was a great little combo.

02:36I think the most surprising thing for me on the shoot was watching him direct and then

02:40give that performance.

02:41Or give that performance and then step behind the camera and drop it.

02:46Yeah because Vince is a guy you would never get any keys to anything on you know.

02:51Did you give Lenny her episodes or did she pick those?

02:55The only episodes that I can direct in anything that I do is the same thing with Ozark the

02:59exception of the first season are the first two because I need to be prepping.

03:04Laura, yeah I mean I finally talked her into directing an episode on Ozark and she was one

03:12of our best episodes ever and I was thinking about her early on this but I thought I didn't

03:18want to freak these guys out by saying hey and I want to bring you know my co-star from Ozark

03:23on and direct the you know episode three and four would they think that that's kind of weird

03:27but we had a great female director all lined up for it and she got some big fancy job you

03:33know that you never begrudge them for jumping off and taking and we were fully in support

03:38of that.

03:39I begrudged you.

03:40And Laura lives like two blocks from our studio in Brooklyn where we were shooting this thing

03:45and I had dinner with her a couple of weeks earlier and so I called her and I said listen

03:50you know this is a this is a lot to ask you because it's it takes a lot of work it could

03:55have been very easy for her to just say no and she thought about it for a couple of days

03:58and I was really proud of her that she said yeah she'll she'll she'll take it on and and

04:03do it and did just an awesome job with with the third and the fourth episode it was it was

04:09great to work with her.

04:10The beautiful thing about New York is wherever you point the camera it just gives you incredible

04:14value for money you know depth of field is insane.

04:18The city really is the main character in in in the film and so we wanted to keep it

04:24live and so as as Jude was saying the depth of field we wanted to make sure that all of

04:29that traffic all that background was was authentic it was real like our our curated little circle

04:35was just there in front of the camera but we encourage everyone just the citizens walking

04:40by to just keep going just don't look in the camera.

04:41I think people walking by I thought you guys were like really on the run for it.

04:44Yeah Justin got us to do it over and over and then after the third one we were nearly there

04:49was nearly a citizen's arrest.

04:51Yeah these guys were hanging out and they were going to take us down because we were being

04:54chased by a Chinese cop.

04:55Yeah the long lenses you could get the camera so far back that people citizens on the street

05:00wouldn't even know that we're filming anything you know they might recognize you know Jude or I

05:05walking by but aside from that thank you so much.

05:08You're welcome.

How Jason Bateman & Jude Law Brought 'Black Rabbit' Brothers to Life | TIFF 2025

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