Glen Powell and Richard Linklater may be long-time collaborators and friends — and now, with the imminent release of their “Hit Man,” credited co-writers — but these two can still surprise each other.
Case in point: for the fact-based and very fun “Hit Man,” Powell stars as Gary Johnson, a seemingly regular dude who ends up moonlighting for the New Orleans Police Department as a fake assassin, tasked with snagging people who are attempting to employ a hitman to off certain people in their lives. The film, based on a Texas Monthly story, follows Gary as he tries on all sorts of personas — redneck hitman, Russian hitman, the list goes on and on — while also romancing a potential client (Adria Arjona) under the guise of smooth-talking hitman Ron. But all those other personas? Powell-original creations!
During an event held on Wednesday evening in New York City, Powell was on hand for a post-screening chat, moderated by “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and upcoming “Superman” star Rachel Brosnahan (the pair said they’re new, but fast friends), to talk about the process of crafting the film.
“In this movie, all the characters that I play, Rick didn’t get to see those until I performed them on set. That’s a lot of trust! I knew he was nervous about it, we just didn’t have time,” Powell said. “He was like, ‘We should look at those characters’ beforehand, but [also], ‘We gotta handle this re-write first, we gotta do this, we gotta handle casting, we gotta get this location, you gotta go meet the mayor, whatever it is, to get the locations.’ All of a sudden, we got to game day, and Rick’s like, ‘You got it?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I think I got it, we’ll see!’ You just throw shit against the wall and you see what sticks.”
Powell got so into some of these characters, complete with wardrobe, hair and makeup, and accents to complete the looks, that he even fooled Linklater.
“My favorite part was, I was on set one day, when I was playing Tanner, the redneck guy with the missing back teeth, such a fun character,” Powell recalled. “I was talking to Rick, and Rick literally interrupted the conversation, and he goes, ‘Where’s Glen?’ and I go, ‘I’m Glen! I’m Glen, man, let’s do this.’ I would come out in character. I’m not like a Method guy, but on those days — I promise, I don’t take myself that seriously — I would come out, out of the van, and I would be full-on until we ended the scene in that character.”
“And he bought it!,” Brosnahan said with a laugh. “And he bought it! I got to fool the man himself,” Powell said.
Powell relished the chance to play pretend on top of pretend through all of his different personas. And as wacky as many of them seem, a lot of them were based on the truth of Johnson’s own experience.
“The fun part about this movie, and again, this is sort of the antidote to the normal hitman movie, is that because hitmen don’t exist, because it’s a fantasy, you get to really play pretend,” Powell said. “You get to really have fun. And a lot of these characters came from the real de-briefs and the real research that I got from Texas Monthly and Gary Johnson. They sent all these records over, so I got to listen to the real-life Gary Johnson play a couple of these things, and some of these things are directly from Gary.”
You can get a glimpse at some of Powell’s many alter-egos in the film’s first trailer, which just arrived today. IndieWire’s David Ehrlich wrote in his review of the film that while “Hit Man” misses the mark on some laughs, Powell and Linklater’s script “opts for broad charm” and highlights Powell’s performance playing a variety of these fake personas.
“The other parts of it are just getting to, again, play pretend,” Powell added. “You look at who you’re sitting down with and you go, ‘What would they want to see?’ And how do you embody that? And then you also have to differentiate them and show seams in the performance, because it’s still Gary playing these guys, they’re not perfect performances.”
“Hit Man” premieres May 24 in select theaters and will start streaming on Netflix June 7.
