Interview: Ben Mendelsohn on His Fashion-Conscious Baddie in Slow West

Fans of great genre films–those who’ve already watched Mad Max: Fury Road, because you should see it if you haven’t already, ‘cause it’s awesome!–will definitely want to keep an eye out for John Maclean’s Slow West.

It’s one of the better representations of the Western genre in recent memory, largely due to the work by Michael Fassbender and Kodi Smit-McPhee as an outlaw and the young charge he agrees to escort across the Colorado wilderness. But just as memorable is a bounty hunter named Payne, played by Ben Mendelsohn.

While not all of Mendelsohn’s movies or roles have gotten the deserved attention here in the States, there are few actors who have created an impact in every role, even if it’s only among a somewhat elite group of movie lovers who have discovered his work in movies like Animal Kingdom and The Place Beyond the Pines.

These days, Mendelsohn is also part of the ensemble cast of Netflix’s “Bloodline,” which puts him in scenes with amazing actors like Sam Shepard and Sissy Spacek and hopefully it will help raise his awareness among Americans that he so rightfully deserves.

ComingSoon.net spoke for the third time with Mendelsohn a few weeks back and he once again proved that he’s a generally cool guy who isn’t nearly as scary in person as the characters he creates on screen. While we mainly focused on Slow West, we did talk briefly about “Bloodline” (which I hadn’t seen at the time of this interview) and his upcoming MIssissippi Grind, which was one of our favorite movies at Sundance due to Mendelsohn’s surprising turn as … (shudder) could it be? … a really nice and likeable guy.

ComingSoon.net: We’ve talked a bunch of times before and I feel you always manage to find these really good scripts and characters. Is it just luck?

Ben Mendelsohn: Look, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s any great genius on my part. I think more what happens is people are interested in you for one thing or another and you become aware of this stuff and get asked sometimes, and that’s it, you know? And yeah, I think you read things and you feel like, “Okay, this has a chance. This has a good chance.” You get a pedigree. You’re aware of the people that you’re working with and that sort of stuff. But I mean, I’d love to claim that it’s a great cipher on my part, but no. I don’t think so. I think it’s just been a really good time.

CS: It’s good because I think people saw “Animal Kingdom” and then that got you some of the other gigs.

Mendelsohn: Oh yeah, absolutely.

CS: It escalates.

Mendelsohn: Yeah, and I think that I was lucky enough to get something that became something of a one two-punch in there. Then, by the time of say “Starred Up” came around and connected, it ended up being something of a combo that was like, boom, boom, boom, boom. That’s sort of started to do the trick, if you’d like.

CS: This is an American Western, although Australia has its own tradition of Westerns.

Mendelsohn: It did. In fact, we made the first one. We made the very first feature film.

CS: Oh wow, I didn’t know that.

Mendelsohn: Yeah, which is the “Kelly Gang.” That is the first – and I guess they’d be gangsters or a cops and robbers film, if you’d like, but it also takes place in the bush, which is our version of the Western, so we do have our own tradition of it, but it’s not as rich as yours.

CS: Have you ever actually had a chance to do an Australian Western before? Is this your first one?

Mendelsohn: Not an Australian Western. I’ve shot an American Western in Australia, though. I did “Quigley Down Under,” which is quite deliberately placed in Australia, which is a Tom Selleck, Alan Rickman, Laura San Giacomo film from ’88, I want to say.

CS: This was in the first phase of your career, very early in your career?

Mendelsohn: Pretty early, yeah. I mean, it feels like I’d been going for a lot longer comparatively than I had, because it was the early days, but I’d been going for I guess three or four or five years by that stage already.

CS: What were your impressions of Payne when you first read the script that was presented to you? Was it very much on the page what was required of you?

Mendelsohn: There was a lot. It was like he wasn’t there and you were aware of something, and then, bam, he’s there. So, he felt like he came on like something of a hurricane, in a way, in terms of the degree to which he was just in the midst of this scenario. But, he felt to me like a spidery sort of – someone that’s just making like everything’s fine, but he’s just been – he’s got complete control of the situation as far as he can. He’s got this guy over here that he does seriously have to contend with, and he can’t take things too silly, but he’s basically, he’s in there. But, it was really John’s references, which gave me the proper true north of it, which is he said, “Go watch ‘McCabe and Mrs. Miller.’” I went and watched that. I went, “F*ck, that guy’s good. I’m not going to be as good as that. I won’t be able to do what that guy did.” The situation is different than the “McCabe and Mrs. Miller.” But, I think I tried to bring a bit of that sense of relaxed threat, if you like, to it. So, that was a big one. Then, you got that coat. When you got a coat like that, she’s going to do a lot of work for you. So, yeah, it was basically just a case of getting in there and making that stuff sing, you know? But you really find most of it, in my opinion, when you get with the other people that you’re with. That’s when it really takes its form properly. You’ve got ideas and you’ve got impulses and this and that, but when the rubber hits the road, that’s where it sings.

CS: You perfectly transitioned into my next question because I wanted to ask you about the wardrobe on this and how closely you worked with the costume designer?

Mendelsohn: I wish I came up with that. I wish I f•cking came up with that coat. She showed me photos of the period, and I came from the other side of the world, and I went there and I landed there, and then I was shooting. So, in terms of a physical, logistical prospect, I wasn’t there for a long time. They had the coat. To have a coat like that, I mean, you wouldn’t send something of that beauty home, you know? So, yeah, a lot of the time, I don’t know, it’s part of a way you work into something or feel something is you present these people that have given great thought and stuff to their profession, and they’re doing their job, and that’s the same ethos I have with calling you back. It’s the same ethos I take to my work with that. I generally feel like people that are doing the wardrobe know more about wardrobe than I do, and they have an overview. So, when they come with the coat, I’m, “Yes, let’s.” I have that coat now.

CS: Nice. That was my next question, so there you go.

Mendelsohn: That coat is mine. I asked for it very early upon seeing it. I was amazed by the work that they put in. Having seen the photos, like looking at it and going, “Wow.” But then, seeing one, two, three, four, five, six, seven photos of different guys in trapper gears like that from back in that period, I went, “Sold. Let’s do it.”

CS: Have you worn it to a premiere yet?

Mendelsohn: I wore it to the premiere of this film in Sundance. Yes, I did.

CS: I saw it just after Sundance and I saw it again recently and I did not remember that your character Payne didn’t show up for nearly 40 minutes. There’s a lot going on before you show up.

Mendelsohn: Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I mean, in a lot of ways, Payne is the harbinger of where we’re going to go because once Payne f*cking arrives, it’s really bringing home to the audience the actuality of the bounty, and that knowing how this film ends, it looks like one thing will probably happen, but it’s not how it ends up going. There’s a decided otherness to the way this film ends up than I think what it’s looking like it’s telegraphing, which lets you lean into stuff a little heavier than you might otherwise.

CS: I think we have expectations from other Westerns, and that’s why it’s surprising when it gets away from that.

Mendelsohn: Yeah, and that’s part of John’s genius with this, too, I think. Also, the fact that he comes at this not only as a first-time director, but also, he’s not American. He comes at it with a very distinct, another eye and another sensibility, which I think infuses it with something really f•cking good. The guy he got to shoot did a beautiful, beautiful job. I mean, there’s colors and the vistas. It’s gorgeous. I really like the way he shot.

CS: We spoke a little bit about “Mississippi Grind,” when we were talking last year. I got to see it at Sundance, and it’s an absolutely amazing film. I loved the fact you were playing someone very different from who you’re usually playing, the kind of mild mannered nice guy. Which was nice. I loved the fact that they cast you as that.

Mendelsohn: Yeah, I loved Gerry so much, and that film is really important to me. That film means a real lot to me and I’m really, really proud of that film.

CS: Unfortunately, a lot of other people won’t be able to see it because it doesn’t open for a while.

Mendelsohn: No, but it’ll come out. When it does, it’ll do what it does, but yes, I’m really, really, really proud of that film.

CS: Another movie that came out recently was “Lost River,” which you did with Ryan Gosling whom you worked with before on “Place Beyond the Pines.” That one, you have a musical number, you do some dancing. He really let you just show another side of yourself. I’m assuming since you two had worked together before that made him think of you for the role.

Mendelsohn: Yeah, well, we’d done “Place Beyond the Pines” together, and we’d clicked really well, I think. In a work sense, we clicked really well. After having started really badly, I think, with our first day of shooting, when we were shooting together and I thought I was really, really bad that day. Then, we flipped things over. We found something great. But on “Lost River,” he wanted to bring something, I think, that people didn’t know and hadn’t expected and weren’t familiar with. So the singing was part of that, and the dancing, we just did that on the day. That was not planned. That was not thought about. Nothing about that. We didn’t really know where we were going to go, once we got to that point in the film. Having set up all the stuff with the shells and what went on down there and what could this guy want to do to her that could be, I don’t know. It was just the dance just seemed to be something worth trying. I’m very glad we did. I’m very happy with that.

CS: It gives the movie sort of a David Lynch feel.

Mendelsohn: Yes. Look, I mean, you can see a lot of what Ryan loves in that film and what the sort of stuff that’s grabbed him and interests him, I think, as a person and as a filmmaker. I mean, boy, it’s hard for me to think of a film that meant more to me in the last several decades than “Mulholland Drive,” although I guess you would say that if you were talking about the Lynchian quality, you’re going back to an earlier period. You’re going back to the classic.

CS: “Blue Velvet”?

Mendelsohn: No, I’m going before “Blue Velvet.” When I think of that, I think more of the Laura Palmer dance in the room, the reverse dancing. I like to call up ghosts of things past for myself, when I’m working a lot. I was thinking of that guy, because that is actually one of the most horrifyingly scary scenes I’ve ever seen. There was an element of that that I was trying to lean into a bit, but it’s a much more up-tempo number that I’m dancing to, but nonetheless.

CS: Of course I haven’t seen “Bloodline” yet, but I’ve heard it’s amazing. I’m going to watch it one of these days.

Mendelsohn: “Bloodline’s” ended up really, really good, really, really. It’s done really well.

CS: I do want to ask you about possibly doing a “Star Wars” movie, which was an interesting recent rumor. I know you can’t say much about it, but how much do they tell you when you take a role like that?

Mendelsohn: All I can say is that I’ve heard these rumors myself, and I would be thrilled where something like that were to come to pass. But and I can say with all truthfulness that there is nothing definitive to those rumors. So who knows?

CS: How much would you have to know about the character or the script? Would you have to know a lot before you decide on doing that? Or is it one of those things where it comes your way and you do it because it’s “Star Wars”?

Mendelsohn: Well, I’m a huge fan of it, but I mean, I don’t know. It would be the answer to that. I am not sure.

CS: I guess we’ll know in a year, whether you’re it or not.

Mendelsohn: Well, yeah. I would think if it was going to be a “yes,” we’d know about it a little sooner than that.

CS: Listen, this was great. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to watch “Bloodline” before the next time I see you, because I’m going to obviously see it.

Mendelsohn: Oh, I hope you enjoy it. Look, I’m very proud of that one. There’s been a lot of good horses that I’ve ridden in the last couple of years.

CS: “Mississippi Grind” is really special, like you say.

Mendelsohn: No, I’m immensely proud of it.

Slow West is now playing in select cities and will expand to more cities soon. You can read our previous interviews with John Maclean and Kodi Smit-McPhee and watch another with Michael Fassbender.