Asa Butterfield & Jaeden Martell on Showing ‘All Sides’ of Incels in Our Hero, Balthazar | Interview
ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Our Hero, Balthazar stars Jaeden Martell and Asa Butterfield about playing incels in the new dark comedy movie. The duo discussed their roles, finding empathy, and having to cry on command. Our Hero, Balthazar is out in theaters on March 27 in New York and April 3 in Los Angeles.
“A headlong race through a world where success can be measured in likes and tragedy has become content, Our Hero, Balthazar follows two neglected teens thrown together by a chance online encounter. Privileged yet lonely New Yorker Balthy (Jaeden Martell) Malone dreams of becoming a hero, while struggling Texan Solomon Jackson (Asa Butterfield) seeks recognition by posting violent threats. When Balthy, in an act of misguided heroism, travels to Texas in an attempt to befriend Solomon and avert a possible tragedy, he is drawn into a dangerous and thrilling new world. Despite their differences, both find refuge from their crushing loneliness in each other’s company, but for all Balthy’s good intentions, his decisions are driving them close the precipice of disaster,” says the official synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Jaeden, there’s the classic Seinfeld bit where Jerry is making out during Schindler’s List. Your character tries to kiss a girl while watching a school shooting recording, I think. I think you got ’em beat there. How was it embodying just that level of general awkwardness in your performance?
Jaeden Martell: That’s funny. That’s cool. It is very Seinfeld sometimes, this movie. It’s a classic setup. For my guys, it’s kind of fun because I’ve played a lot of awkward people probably as an actor, and I almost never thought of Balthazar as one. He’s never like in his own skin; he’s always sort of like watching how the environment’s moving around him so that he can adjust accordingly. He’s not a very self-conscious person.
He’s just freakishly like… sort of has no sense of self. So he is always trying to discover it. I think that’s exactly it. Him placing his hand is just to kind of gauge what’s right and what’s wrong. And it’s so off mark, obviously, which is funny and makes the comedy of it, but it’s because he’s just sort of like he’s just sort of missing everything.
Asa, your character is talking about shooting up a school. He’s been put in this really bad situation, and there’s just no support system for him. How was it finding the humanity and empathy for the character? Because I love that he wasn’t just a one-dimensional figure, and it doesn’t really demonize your character. He feels fully fleshed out.
Asa Butterfield: Yeah. I mean, he’s a victim of the circumstance he’s been put in with, exactly as you said. There’s no support. He has no real family other than his grandma. His dad has left a terrible mark on him. Despite all that, he’s the only person he really looks up to. And craves his validation to the point that he doesn’t really know who he is.
He’s tried on all of these different personas, these online personas over the years to try and find a community or try and find something to latch on to. And he’s totally misguided and misunderstood, and he’s angry, and he is lonely, and he’s ended up as this, well, you know, what we see in the film, which, you know, could easily go the other way ’cause there are people like that.
But it was really important for this film, I think, to really show all sides of these characters that they aren’t one-dimensional and there’s a reason that they ended up the way they are.
Jaeden, there’s a lot of crying in this movie and it’s a focal point of your character. How good was your crying on command when you got this role and, how do you master that technique? Because you are just crying all throughout this. It’s great.
Jaeden Martell: It’s always been a touchy subject as an actor. I’ve always prided myself as someone who could cry in command. I never used a tear stick or anything like that. I’m pretty sure. Maybe it got there sometimes, but I didn’t even know; I don’t think it did.
Asa Butterfield: No, I can vouch for him.
Martell: Yeah, because it’s kind of the perfect crying as an actor. It’s kind of freaky to use the technique ’cause there’s a weird thing going on. You could, like, if you can learn how to like whatever, throw snot rocket or poop or pee or something, it’s the same thing. It’s like you’ve got control of the glands if you think about it.
But as an actor, you don’t want to use that tool that much because you wanna be crying. If you’re crying, you should be there in the moment to have a reason to cry. This was kind of let the tool loose a little bit, which was kind of fun. But there was never any, like… I didn’t have to reach any emotional, there was no pressure really. It was just like, “Use your tool that you got and use it a bunch until it’s exhausted basically.” It did get exhausted a couple times. It was like, “This is a lot of crying.” But Oscar would step in. Everyone would like try their best crying on too.
Thanks to Jaeden Martell and Asa Butterfield for taking the time to talk about My Hero, Balthazar.
Source: Comingsoon.net