Free Guy – Ryan Reynolds: “I grew up learning to laugh at my faults” (interview)
Free Guy returns this evening to M6. And it is his main actor who talks about it best.
In Free Guy From Shawn Levy, cardboard from the summer of 2021 to the cinema, Ryan Reynolds embodies a secondary character in a video game between GTA and Fortnite, who one day realizes his condition of puppet. Meeting with an actor alone in his head.
According to the first images that have been shown to me, Free Guy seems very “Ryan Reynolds compatible”, if you see what I mean.
I see very well. (Laughter.)
What brings me to this question: what is a film by Ryan Reynolds?
Wow, then there, I would be unable to define it. Okay, I’m going to try anyway: I’m a lot in irony and self-mockery, maybe that’s my, uh … “style”? And it surely influences movies in which I play. Hmm, not very convincing as an answer, right?
Let’s say it otherwise then: does a film become a “Reynoldsian” object to the second where you agree to play in it?
Ah! Maybe, yeah. However, it is not something conscious. Like any artist, I am able to take a certain number of creative directions according to the project and what I feel comfortable. But that I choose to branch off or stay perfectly aligned with my initial idea, I will always end up finding myself more or less in the same place. Whatever I do, I am a big kid and I can never really get away from it. (Laughter.))
When did you decided to make fun of yourself and invent this very ironic persona, which you also use outside your films? After the flop Green Lantern ?
Yeah, roughly at that time. Following Green Lantern (from Martin Campbell), I think I understood that I had more fun and that I felt more satisfied when I laughed at myself. Like a majority of Canadians, I grew up learning to be able to laugh at my flaws and my faults, have fun with my ego and my arrogance. After a number of years spent in Hollywood, I decided to return to these roots, because I needed to hang on to a form of authenticity.
Was it a way to protect yourself from the system, to take a step back?
Also. But it affects something else at the same time. My interior monologues go to the case and most of the time, it is to ridicule myself. I’m going to bed in the evening and I think back to my day: ” My God, but why did I say that? Why did I behave like this? »I have stuff for a good time! So why not use it as an ingredient in order to build a character when I play in a film, or a persona when it amuses me? It is a very enriching internal process.
So this “double” of Ryan Reynolds is more than a joke, is also a space for creation?
You know – and this is particularly true in the world of marketing -, few people are able to shed light on their own pitfalls. Careers have ups and downs, but rare are the actors who recognize that some of their films were bad. Even if it was not necessarily their fault and there are a thousand reasons why a film can be planted: everything is always great to listen to them! I think I go further than self -mockery in fact, in the sense that I don’t care about my own contribution to a failure. In Dead PoolI criticized Green Lantern through a valve. And it did me a lot of good. I took a negative energy in my female energy, something that should have shot me down, and I spilled it by making it a kind of judo taking. It allowed me to get something positive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2xzhy31n00
Free Guy: A perfect mix between Truman Show and Ready Player One (Critique)
In Free Guythe character of Taika Waititi says this thing that made me laugh: ” Franchises and suites, that’s what people like. »»
(He smiles.) We can say that in the film, Taika represents just about all the studios with whom Shawn Levy and I were able to exchange during our respective careers. It is obviously a spike and we have fun with the fact that Free Guy is not an adaptation. This is called “a new film”. (Laughter.))
Is it always so hard to sign a film with an original idea?
Let’s say it was not simplified when it comes to a feature film that needs a certain budget to exist. In any case, I do not believe that Free Guy has been Greenlighté Because the studio was desperately looking for a new idea. It was because it is an imagined film to please the spectator, a pure concentrated of joy. The kind of thing we are sorely missing at the moment in our entertainment arsenal … The people in the studio have noticed it and they knew that Shawn and I wanted to work together for years. They felt that our collaboration was going to be fruitful. And then, I never gave up with them.
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In Free Guyyou play a guy who is not aware of being a video game character, and whose life is scheduled to the minute. How is an empty shell embodied?
Let us calm down, it is not as if I played an impressionist French painter from the 19th century! I believe that my job is to get into the character’s skin and feel what he has to tell me. But at the time, once arrived on the set. Over time, I realized that if I prepare too much, if I make too many decisions in advance without discussing it with a creative partner like Shawn, it is not necessarily the film.
So there is a part of improvisation?
Yes, you have to listen to the film. And then, the more I evolve as an actor, the more I don’t care if I am right or wrong. I am more interested in the health of the film and its ecosystem. How to make the best possible movie with the cards you have in hand? This is the only question that matters. And the best films in my career are those where I managed to bounce back on situations. It sometimes means taking a step back, sometimes imposing yourself. But not to arrive with a preconceived idea of the character or the film, particularly on a project High Concept as Free Guy. Afterwards, that forces you to make decisive choices very quickly. And you just have to hope not to have planted.
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