ComingSoon spoke to Boyd Holbrook about his role as Ty Shaw in the upcoming mystery film, Vengeance. Holbrook discussed the process of portraying a family with other actors and gave a brief update on his thoughts about Indiana Jones 5.
The synopsis describes the film as “a darkly comic thriller about Ben Manalowitz, a journalist and podcaster who travels from New York City to West Texas to investigate the death of a girl he was hooking up with.”
Jonathan Sim: Tell me about the character of Ty Shaw and what your process was like as far as translating this interesting guy from the script to the screen.
Boyd Holbrook: I played Ty Shaw, who is a brother to Abilene, who is trying to desperately find out what’s happened to her and her disappearance. For me, the true challenge was to find a person that was genuinely authentic and who wore his heart on his sleeve and [is] not trying to have any bravado or any other characteristics that were the macho patriarchic father or person in the family. He was just a person that was someone I had never been able to play before, and B.J. [Novak, Director, writer, and actor in Vengeance] Had given me such a rich character to perform.
You were able to work with B.J. Novak on this film as both a director and a co-star. What was the onset process like as far as collaborating with him and helping to bring his vision to life?
B.J. Juggled a lot of spinning plates on this. He wrote this from scratch [and] he produced this film. He also was an actor in it on top of that. He directed … so for me, a lot of the entertainment was just sitting back and watching him pull all this off, and really coming in as prepared as possible to make his life a lot easier. B.J. Gave me a wonderful book at the beginning of the process called “Truth in Comedy.” So we never tried to play the jokes. We just really led with our foot forward in the authenticity of this family and who they are in this eccentric group of characters.
You were talking about your character’s interesting family. What was the behind-the-scenes environment like with you and all the actors who play the Shaw family?
There were so many of us, a lot of people hadn’t … Eli for example, this is one of his first roles. It was a lot of … I guess I could say tenderness … that we all have with each other, trying to create this family dynamic. We all have a limited amount of time to close that gap as quickly as possible. So you find everyone being very supportive and helping them out. It’s not a very standoffish set where you have an elite group of actors trying to do their own thing. We’re coming together as a community here to tell the story.
You are about to reunite with Logan director James Mangold on the fifth Indiana Jones movie. Is there anything that you can tell us about this movie that will get people even more excited to see it?
I can absolutely 100% guarantee that this will be a fast, badass, enjoyable movie. Jim Mangold just can’t make a bad movie.
