Up until now, Theo Rossi’s signature role was the part of ‘Juice’ in FX’s much beloved (if largely ignored by the givers of year-end awards) Sons of Anarchy. That may have changed this year with Rossi’s performance in the acclaimed thriller, Emily the Criminal. As Youcef, a scam artist who reels Aubrey Plaza’s title character into his schemes, Rossi takes what could have been a clichéd role and invests his considerable gifts for sweetness, likability, and charm, subverting our expectations, and in doing so, delivering the performance of his life.
In our conversation, Rossi details how he became a part of the best crime drama of the year (earning him his first Independent Spirit Award nomination in the supporting category), the breakneck pace of making the film, as well as his upbringing, which gave him a unique insight into his character.
Awards Daily: How did you come to be a part of Emily the Criminal?
Theo Rossi: The Emily situation is one of those almost like divine intervention moments in your life. I was doing this weird movie outside of Atlanta and I had just come from another movie in LA, and I just was at this point where I really wanted to get home to my family and I was excited to get back to our ranch in Austin. I just wanted to be with the kids. And then my agent called me up and said, “Hey, we got this film, you gotta read it.” And I was like, I’m working. I’m not gonna read it. I just want to kind of wrap this up and go home. And they’re like, no, no, no, you gotta read it, and they told me who was involved. So I was like, okay, I’ll read it tonight after I make it back from set. I’m pretty good at reading scripts really fast anyway. But this one took just 35 minutes – because it moves.
That was it. We went and set up a Zoom, me and John met, and then, me, John, and Aubrey met and we just kind of knew right away. We were simpatico. We got 20 days to shoot this. The movie I was doing at the time, I had blonde hair, so I had to wrap the movie, dye my hair overnight and get to LA, and then we had two days of rehearsal and then we just started. I think that it served the pace of the film because we just didn’t have time for anything. Aubrey was just coming in from Italy. She was doing Spin Me Round and I was coming from this film and everybody was still following COVID rules. We knew from the first Zoom. We all still talk about it today. It was just like it’s us against the world and we can do this.
Awards Daily: It’s funny you mentioned that Zoom call that you had with Aubrey. She let me know—and this was in the interview that she and I did, so it’s published and it’s out there—but she was late for that first meeting.
Theo Rossi: Oh, no, she missed it entirely. [Laughs.] Me and John are sitting there. I’m outside Atlanta. He’s in LA. She’s in Europe. I just remember it being pitch black where John was. And John was really tired. So I think it was really early in the morning, really late for me. But it was really good because John and I got to talk for like an hour about everything. When she got on the second one. And Aubrey is, you know her now, you’ve talked to her – she’s the most unique individual. She reminds me so much of my favorite actresses, like Bette Davis and Gena Rowlands, she’s just got this dynamic. It’s like she’s doing what she was born to do. She was put on this earth to entertain and act. And she gets on the Zoom and the first thing she says is, “Don’t look at me.” And I was like, “I don’t think you know how this works.” (Laughs). That’s how this started. And I knew from that first line, the first words she said, I’ll do anything she needs for this film.
Awards Daily: She said one of the things that she loved about you on that call is that you gave her grief for missing the other call. Totally loved that about you. And that there was a chemistry vibe already.
Theo Rossi: This is an utterly ridiculous business. One of the only things we have is honesty, right? And there’s so much dishonesty. If you can just be honest, you would be a unicorn in the business. Because there’s so little of it. Because I started so far under the bottom in this game, and I’ve been doing it for so long, my thing was just like, I gotta be me. And if it works, it works. And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. So that was when I knew. I was giving her shit and then she was giving me shit, and it was like, oh, okay. I just spoke to her a little while ago, and we have a very similar kind of outlook on this whole thing. I think that really helped the film. I think the chemistry was between all of us, not just her and I, me, her, John, Jeff (bierman, the DP), everybody. We all just kind of vibed cause there was no…ego is the death of an artist, and there was none. We just wanted to make a great movie.
Awards Daily: When I was talking to Aubrey, we were discussing how when you are on a long-running television show people can start to see you as that person, they start thinking you can’t do other things. Or at least they box you in. And especially in recent years, I think that she has pushed—and probably through her own productions, she’s ended up in places that I don’t think people naturally would’ve seen her in. And one of those was Black Bear. And when you say Gena Rowlands, I remember watching Black Bear and thinking about the last third of it reminded me of Cassavetes and Rowlands in Opening Night. I mean, that whole breakdown of the actor kind of thing. I mean, it’s just fabulous.
Theo Rossi: Yeah. one of the greatest scenes in cinema. It’s amazing.
Awards Daily: Just fabulous. And similarly for you, obviously, and I hate to almost even mention it because I’m sure you get this a lot, but ‘Juice,’ Sons of Anarchy, right? That was your calling card.
Theo Rossi: Yeah, that’s my coming out party. That’s everything.
Awards Daily: And it probably still kind of is. So for you since then, I mean there are things that I think Youcef has somewhat in common with Juice, and I’ll get to that in a moment, but, it is definitely not playing the same guy. And with you getting an Independent Spirit Award nomination as well. Do you feel seen in a different way at all?
Theo Rossi: No. No. It’s funny, Sons is such an amazing thing. I’m so fortunate. I’ve had a lot of fortunate occurrences. Just the way even Sons of Anarchy happened is its own conversation, But I’d been acting for eight years before that and doing like every guest star you can do, every recurring you can do, just every commercial you can do. Just really just trying to find a foothold.
Awards Daily: I got your IMDB up. Yeah. You were hustling.
Theo Rossi: It’s crazy, right? I was just doing everything and what’s funny is, the pilots I had tested for were comedies. I never saw myself in, I guess, that way and then Sons came. Juice is not a villain, right? He’s not a bad guy. It wasn’t a show that was embraced by the inner workings of Hollywood, but we were like the people’s champion. There were 15 million people watching whatever it was worldwide. Everywhere you go in the world, you see the Reaper. It’s like the Superman symbol. You see it everywhere, right?
Awards Daily: Sons of Anarchy was the Yellowstone of that time.
Theo Rossi: Perfect comparison. You couldn’t leave your house, but the industry was like, oh yeah, they’re all just bad guys on the show. And I was like, oh wow. They don’t really know. So when it ended, a lot of the roles that I was getting offered were bad guys. And I was like, okay, well some of my favorite actors have played extraordinary bad guys. But what they do is secretly humanize them. Make you like them. Secretly make you be on their side. Not just in the anti-hero Gandolfini, or Breaking Bad style. They do it in a way where it’s like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, where it’s like, he plays a bad guy, but you’re like, I kind of wanna see him win. So I was like, okay, if that’s what they’re gonna do, if that’s what I’m being offered, I’m going to figure out a way to humanize these characters throughout, and then when I get my shots, you know, most recently with True Story as Gene, with Kevin Hart and Wesley Snipes, it was like I’m gonna play something completely different.
Or Dear Zoe, with me and Sadie Sink where I’m playing a dad and someone polar opposite. You find your ways in and then what’s really interesting is that people are like, oh wow, I didn’t see this coming. But it was always there. And I have, like Aubrey, and this is probably the thing we most have in common, is not just do we reject the box, we actively try to destroy it in every way. And the only way you can do that is to stand on your square. Stand on your own two, and go, no, I’m not gonna fall into what you think. And then even if you give me something that is a bad guy or is this, I’m going to do it in a way that you didn’t expect it. So when Youcef came and when we read it, my mom’s Lebanese and Syrian- the first thing I told her when I was finally playing Middle Eastern, she was like, “Let me guess, he’s a bad guy.” And I was like, no, really? I was like not really. [Laughs}.
Awards Daily: Not exactly.
Theo Rossi: Because he’s not. And I love that. I think that that’s the trick, right? Because then you might say, if someone goes, well, Emily, is she the bad guy? Maybe Youcef unearthed her badness? We all have the “shadow work,” as Carl Jung said. Did this unearth her darkness? And did it unearth his kindness? So they’ve helped each other. I just feel like for me like you said, Sons is the greatest thing that ever happened to me because it’s how I met my wife. I have my kids. I’m doing this movie here in Mississippi and I got Kim Coates to come and do a few days on it. The Sons cast are some of the greatest actors I’ve ever been around, the greatest artists, the greatest people. They’ve changed my life, not just in a perception phase. It was like going to college. Watching Katey Sagal, watching Ron Perlman, watching Jimmy Smits and CCH Pounder work. I was on a fast track of a masterclass of how to navigate this business. It really prepared me, and I still fall back on a lot of the lessons that I learned on that. All you’re looking for in this business is a little more freedom to get to what you hope to do. And that’s something and with me being a Cassavetes fan like we were talking about, and being a fan of these really intricate dynamics of human behavior, it was the closest that I’ve gotten to it. So far.
Awards Daily: One thing John said to me that I really loved is that, Youcef is a criminal who’s trying to go straight and Emily is a straight who’s trying to go criminal. And you two meet right at your turning points. That dynamic creates, you guys had a lot of chemistry obviously, but that dynamic creates a certain amount of action, and forward movement for both of the characters and the whole film is forward movement.
Theo Rossi: John’s genius with that. It was the pace. And even when you do settle, there’s something underneath it that is extraordinary that even though they’re settled, it’s moving well.
Awards Daily: And for Aubrey’s character, for Emily, there’s a lot of underlying subtext about the gig economy, student loan debt, and the value of work. For your character, it’s the immigrant experience. I’m sure your character would’ve preferred to be able to just go into a bank and get a loan for the apartment complex that he wants to buy and not be making money off of credit card fraud, but the world doesn’t allow for that space for either of these characters.
Theo Rossi: There’s two things you touched on there. Here’s the thing about the gig economy and also about student loan debt: It’s like this movie could have come out five years ago, it could come out five years from now, and it would still be very relevant to the student loan situation. I didn’t pay off my student loans until I got Sons of Anarchy, so I was a working actor for eight years and I still had student loans. That’s part of a giant experience. I think the other thing was with the immigrant experience, one of the things that really fascinated me was my grandparents came over on both sides. What happens that a lot of people don’t discuss is that if they build up a business of, whatever they’ve become successful in or whatever they’ve tried to do, usually without any choice, the son and daughter have to follow in it. So if it’s a restaurant, they have to work at the restaurant. If they’re in the criminal life, they have to be in the criminal life. It’s almost like, it’s just part of it.
What I found with Youcef was, he comes over and he brings his mom, and he has to make money. And Khalil, his cousin, does this fraud thing. Well, Khalil is his family and he’s like, I guess this is what I do. Not what I want to do, but what I must do. Life is really interesting because if you have certain itches you want to scratch and you meet someone that amplifies that, it can bring it out of you. I think when he first sees Emily, he sees something that he hasn’t seen, that he’s not used to, and that maybe there’s more to her that can help him in the situation he’s in. And then she sees him and says, well, maybe there’s something in him that can help me in the situation I’m in. It’s almost like getting in with the wrong crowd or getting in with the right crowd, depending on whose perspective it is. I thought that this is a really great dynamic and a great example of the influence we have on others and the people we surround ourselves with. To the detriment of Youcef and to, I guess you might say, the benefit of Emily.
Awards Daily: I wanted to circle back to something, talking about the chemistry with you and Aubrey, that, usually in a movie like this where a woman is being drawn into a criminal world, she’s the sweet one who finds herself in a difficult situation, and the man involved is the guy who seems sweet at first, but then ends up having a dark side. This is not that at all. In fact, as I told Aubrey, I said he’s the sweet one. I mean the ice pack scene. After the car theft almost goes bad and you’re standing outside and you’re telling her that she should put ice on that and she says, you wanna put ice on my face? And you just kinda shrug, “yeah.” I love that.
Theo Rossi: And then the roommates, when he meets the roommates, it’s one of my favorite things when he doesn’t realize that she has roommates. She didn’t mention roommates and he’s there and it’s so incredibly awkward. I have a ton of animals on the ranch we live in. It’s like when two animals meet, and the way they kind of test each other out – all these things are happening within a five minute scene. John just knew. He just knew what he wanted. He knew what to do and where to put us. And Aubrey and I would have run through walls to get it done. It’s so rare. We just had such a…whatever is needed, we’re gonna do, and more importantly, we’re gonna take chances…and that’s where the chemistry was so unbelievable because the great Bill Duke says acting is not pretending it’s becoming. At that moment it was like we felt like we were those people for that stretch of 20 days, in every way. In the way we ate together, the way we were together. We didn’t have the time to think about it too much. The scene with his mom just shows who he is. It’s like the scene where those people come to rob her. You see someone who can do stuff if she needs to do it. And then she’s the one who takes charge for the entire ending. She’s the one who leads the way. So again, people reveal who the ultimate person they are really is.
Awards Daily: The funniest scene in the film is the “feng shui” scene when she’s in your office and you just under your breath say “I hate this place.” And that is almost like a throwaway line, but it’s not. It’s very, very important because what you’re saying there, I’m not looking just to get ahead, although I’m certainly looking to do that. I’m looking to get out of this.
Theo Rossi: Yeah, he shows himself in that moment. It’s really interesting because this business is so strict. I utterly despise when actors talk about acting, but then at the same point, I’m listening to Nick Nolte’s book right now. I have all this text of Brando’s books, Songs My Mother Taught Me…I didn’t have that stuff coming up…But at the same time, acting is such a unique thing to the person that no matter what someone says, it almost sounds ridiculous because it’s them speaking in their experience and in the process and in the character and whatever. But at that moment with that line, he’s looking around and he just realizes it’s almost like he said the quiet part out loud. He shouldn’t have said that to her and she picks up on it. Then, half a second later, Khalil walks in. And that tension…you go, oh wow. Who is, who is he? They’re starting to define each other. That’s all John, man. What a career he’s gonna have. He’s just wonderful at this.
Awards Daily: Aubrey alluded to you having a particular understanding of Youcef and the way he came up. She said, but I don’t want to talk about that, that’s Theo’s to discuss. Do you wanna jump into that?
Theo Rossi: Yeah, no listen, I was raised around a very specific criminal element in the eighties, and in a time where it was way more feasible to believe you can rise through the ranks of criminality than in anything else. I wasn’t gonna be a professional basketball player. I surely wasn’t gonna play soccer or be in the major leagues. But man, I damn sure can go work for some crime family and make some money and own a Cadillac and do some things and maybe rise up that way. I did not think anything was wrong with that because the truth is I had been raised around it so long that I just thought that’s the way it was. I had never been out of New York. I did not understand or have any perspective of the rest of the world. There was no internet, there was no seeing what other people are doing. I only knew my little area, and my little area was littered with criminals. And even the ones who claimed themselves to be legit, the Wall Street guys, were also criminals. [Laughs]. So I was just overwhelmed, and more importantly, the driving factor in all of it was money. Everything was money, money, money. I’ve always said as my mom who raised me as a single mom, it was make money, but they never tell you what to do with it. So if you’re telling people to just make money, you go “Okay, well if that’s the goal, I can go sell this, or I can go do this, or I can pull that scam” because you’ve only told me the only goal to happiness is making money. But you’re not telling me why. So again, until I had a little more awareness through other people of, hey you don’t need to be doing that. My road has been very fortunate in bumpers. There’s always been bumpers. Even when I was in places that I shouldn’t have been or I was doing things that I shouldn’t have been doing, a bumper would appear. Whether that came in the form of a person or it came when my uncle stepped in my life when I was 14. I met him when my nana passed. We met at her funeral and that was one of the few times I was out of New York and went to Florida and I saw a different kind of place. And then he moved to New York when I was in my late teens. That really was kind of sobering to me because he had gone and lived this incredible life in California when his father died, my grandfather.
But the point is, he gave me a different perspective. Because he had been gone for 20 years playing in rockabilly bands and doing all this where I only knew to sell drugs, credit card fraud, and fight. That’s all I knew. And then all of a sudden I was getting these stories and I was like, wow. Now that didn’t fully help me out of whatever. I had to learn a lot on my own, and I had known credit card fraud was very widely a thing that I was very aware of in all ways. So were so many other things like that as a young teenager. I think that what I related more to was how yeah, he just does it. Youcef’s not questioning, I guess you would say, the bad intentions of it. I don’t think that he even understood the implications of it. It was just like, well, Khalil told me to do it. I don’t want to do it, but it is what it is. I always say this and I’ve been saying this my whole life, no criminal wants to do crime. They do it because there’s either no other option or they don’t know any better. If you just have someone that says hey, listen, you’re amazing. The fact that you’re able to do this and get away with it and you’re at a younger age, like now how about we take that and put it here instead of here. But we don’t. That’s not the way our society works. So I was very fortunate that the bumpers and the road took me out of that place. If I didn’t succeed in acting, I don’t really have many other discernible skills. I guess it was a life of crime for me if it wasn’t for acting. Instead you say, how do I use this to service my life? Now how do I use it to inform what I’m doing? And I think that I’m particularly one of the fortunate ones because I don’t think a lot of people get that opportunity. I know they don’t.
Awards Daily: Something that you said there reminds me of a quote of Chuck D’s from the Reagan years, when Nancy Reagan had the “just say no” campaign. And Chuck said, it’s not enough to just say no. You have to give people something to say yes to.
Theo Rossi: That’s the best line, and Chuck is a master. He changed my life. Don’t Believe the Hype was what got me into skateboarding and it’s the first song I’d ever heard when I saw a kid skateboarding. Yeah, I was eight or nine when Bum Rush the Show came out and then It Takes a Nation of Millions and what Chuck was saying there is so true. It’s like you can’t just say don’t to something. Okay. Don’t do it. What should I do instead? And for me, I was kind of happy when the whole anti-hero thing kind of got up. I think that I’ve met so many people throughout my journey that on the outside, on the veneer, would be maybe considered bad people or whatever. But they’re some of the greatest people I’ve ever met. They’re just trying to figure it out. And then I’ve met some people that..,what is it Alan Watts used to say: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I’ve met some people that think they’re always doing the right thing. Yet, they’re horrendously cynical. They look at everyone with their nose turned up. I’ve soared with the eagles and I’ve slithered with the snakes.
I’ve realized that for me, I’d rather just play real people. So I need to stay near real people. That to me is the most enjoyable. It’s probably why I’ve always maybe felt like a bit of an outsider in this business. I think it’s served me in the people I get to play. We started this conversation briefly talking about Sons. I’m at a restaurant last night and people come up to me here in Mississippi and it’s like, oh, Juice or Shades or Ghost, or whatever character I played and I love that. It’s when they start calling me Theo, that I get concerned. If people start to know who I am, I’m not doing my job correctly. I have no interest in that other thing – the name game. People call it branding. They can keep it. I’m a court jester. I’m here to become other people and to entertain. As long as I can keep my anonymity and do that, you believe what’s on screen. But if you know what I ate for breakfast, you lose the magic.
Awards Daily: Al Pacino did an interview for Playboy in the early eighties, but he said one of the reasons why he didn’t like doing a lot of interviews at the time is because he didn’t want people to know him too well outside of his characters. Then you start bringing what you think of him to the screen and he’s not as invisible and he can’t slide into the person because of what you’re bringing to it, not because of what he’s bringing to it.
Theo Rossi: You’re bringing a preconceived notion. Coming up in the eighties and being so far removed from anything in Hollywood, it would be like if I turned on Johnny Carson and I would see someone, whoever it may be: a Burt Reynolds, Don Rickles, or whatever. And I’d see an actor and I’d be like, I didn’t even know they spoke like that. Oh my God. They were from New York. Or, oh, I didn’t know they had a bunch of kids. It’s like you’re learning about them there and the magic almost gets greater because you’re getting like a crumb of who they are. Then next time you see them, they’re on this incredible film or this thing that you couldn’t believe, a Spielberg movie. And you’re like, oh, but you forget. Because it was just a morsel. For me, and it’s probably why I continue to watch old movies, is just that we know too much. And when we know too much, the magic is gone. The believability is gone. It’s something Aubrey and I talk about. We all talk about it. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword because they want you to have that big persona. They want you to have “value” as they say.
Awards Daily: Putting your name on the poster means something kind of thing.
Theo Rossi: They need that, but what they don’t realize is the ones whose name on the poster means something—it took a long time to build that. Tom Cruise—I just read that article. It was a wonderful one about when Paul Newman on The Color of Money cast him, and Paul told him, you are the one now. That was a bit of a passing of the torch. But before that Tom had been building this entire resume.
Awards Daily: People should see All the Right Moves, man, it’s a really good movie, right.
Theo Rossi: And Risky Business. You’re going through The Outsiders.
Awards Daily: He wasn’t Tom Cruise yet.
Theo Rossi: No. So then it builds in and then you start to have more trust. I’ve always said if they ever make a book called The Last Movie Star, it would be Leonardo DiCaprio’s face. He truly has earned so much cache, he stays out of the limelight. It’s not for the fact that people want information, he just doesn’t do it. So you believe it’s an event when he’s in a film, I’m gonna go see it no matter what.
Awards Daily: Because I haven’t heard from Leo in a while.
Theo Rossi: I can’t wait to see it. And he’s always with top tier directors. You know you’re gonna get this incredible project. So listen, I believe the pendulum has swung so far the other way that it’s coming back to the grittier, more impactful, more everyday stories. Because I think people are longing for that. I think it’s why Emily is ringing true with people who are watching it. Safdie Brothers films. People that are telling more granular stories of the human condition. I believe the reason is that if we don’t have the big stars, if we’re not gonna go because so-and-so’s in this giant film that we’re gonna see that’s gonna be a spectacle, well then let’s go the other way. Let’s celebrate what Cassavetes was trying to do for a long time. Let’s get into love and stories. So it’s an interesting thing, but I think that Hollywood has shown through all of its eras, it’s very whimsical. It kind of changes, and we always go back to story. You can’t deny a great film, whether you saw it or not, whether it be City of God and people didn’t see it, it’s a great movie. Whoever sees it, no matter if you like it, if you just enjoyed the cinema experience, and even if it’s not your type of movie, it’s hard to deny that it’s a fantastic film.
Awards Daily: We talked a little bit about John. One thing that I brought up to both John and Aubrey, is that when I was watching Emily the Criminal, I got this sort of indie/Michael Mann vibe watching the tracking shots over the shoulder and all of that. Then John was like well, yeah, but there’s also Jacque Audiard and John Pierre Melville. He was totally going into French cinema. But the whole LA crime story milieu was probably digging into my brain a little bit as well because Mann’s known for that. To do this in 20 days and to get the shots he got, I know the DP Jeff Bierman was fabulous on the film as well. What was it like watching it back for the first time for you?
Theo Rossi: Speaking of Mann, I just watched Thief, I think two nights ago. I’m just such a, I’m a Mann Stan, as they call it. I’m doing this other film in Louisiana and I was just watching Collateral in the room. I was like, I really enjoy this film. I forgot Javier Bardem is in for a minute. So I think that obviously Mann’s got LA on lockdown. Refn kind of did it with Drive too. When we were making Emily, and I can’t stress it enough, we just wanted to make it great. So because of that, Jeff, John, me, Aubrey, like, everybody’s sitting around. Tyler, Drew, the producers, like everybody’s sitting there like, okay, what do we need? Whatever you need. What’s something cool? Like them sneaking on the bus: nobody has permits. They’re sneaking on the bus and filming on the bus guerrilla-style without anyone knowing, to get those shots.
John had a very specific vision, and what John taught me is something that I will never lose in my career, and it’s helped me in every single film since. John taught me simplicity. As an actor, as someone who tries to embody these characters that are not on screen a ton but kind of do these bigger things. Any of the films that I’ve done, any of the characters in the TV shows, they’re there to support the lead and they’re usually a little more gregarious or bigger. What John taught me was simplicity. And it’s something De Niro’s been saying for a million years, and it’s something that a lot of people have been saying. It’s just the simplicity in just being. And again, we keep going back to Cassavetes, but it’s what Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk and all them were doing, just being.
Awards Daily: Just slip into the person’s shoes.
Theo Rossi: Just put the camera on and they’re just gonna be. And I think that he taught me that, and it’s something I’ll never forget. So when we were there, it all felt like it was a bit serendipitous. The first time I watched it was on a computer because Sundance was virtual and we projected it to the TV and I was doing a Q&A before and after, so I didn’t really watch, watch it. A couple of weeks later, we went to the Dallas Film Festival together, John and I. We watched it in the theater before Aubrey had watched it in the theater. I just called her and I was like, I think we have something here. I just looked at John. It was him and I sitting there and I was like, man, buddy. What? How did the score, the pace, the 90 minutes…? 90 minutes is just like a left hook. By the time you figure out what’s going on, the fight’s over and you’re like, what? So in a world where everybody’s making three and a half hour long movies, a 90 minute movie is like a commercial. It’s kind of like the one I’m doing now.
This is a 15 day shoot. And then, at the same time I’m doing a film an hour away that’s a 65 day shoot. So, it’s like two totally different worlds. The only thing you can do is be all in because the only alternative is to be all out. If you’re not all in, the wheels are off. We were all in. The pace was incredible. The shots were so tactical. One thing John does so beautifully is he knows what he doesn’t have. If you only have a small budget, don’t try to make John Wick. Do dirty fights, keep the cameras closer. If you only have a certain budget and a certain amount of days, you have to know your limitations. And John knew those and then he knew his strengths. His strengths are in character. His strengths are in scenes of people just conversing with that Terry Malick tight shot on your face. The fact that he knew that much on a first film, it has to be serendipity. I’ll never be the Jack Warner of this town, but if I did, instead of just putting a rating on a film, I would put the amount of days and money that was spent on a film. I think it would make people look at things differently. Not only am I surprised when a 15-20 day/$2,500,000 or million dollar film is amazing, I’m actually more surprised when a $200,000,000 film that was shot for a year sucks.
Awards Daily: Because it shouldn’t, it has no excuses.
Theo Rossi: You had every resource, right? You had the best writers. You can get major rewrites. You’ve had everything at your disposal and it sucks. How is it possible?
Awards Daily: People are finding the movie, and not just because the Independent Spirit Awards recognized and other short lists that you guys have been on, people are finding the movie because it’s really good. And I think that there are more people out there like me who are saying, you really should see this.
Theo Rossi: It’s a giant, amazing, incredible surprise and at the same time, there’s something with this film since the beginning, since when we got into Sundance, way before that, from our first Zoom to filming it to getting into Sundance and then being ready to leave for Sundance because we had our apartment, and then it gets pulled and we go virtual. And then we’re the highest rated film at Sundance critically. And then we don’t have the money to promote it like others that came out of Sundance. But the critics really loved it. I believe that there’s no such thing as luck. There’s just timing and inspiration. I think that Aubrey has set a certain cache for herself in this business where people trust her. She’s honest. She is terrific. She produced this film with all her heart. She’s also a student of the cinema. She really wants you to be entertained. She wants you to have an experience and I think that what I’m learning more and more, is there’s no denying a good film. And you know it, you just can’t deny it. It might not be your favorite film, Collateral might not be your favorite Mann film. But you can’t deny that it’s great. Thief might be not the one like HEAT, but you can’t deny it’s great. You just know a good film when you see it, and I’m fortunate to be in one.
That’s what this is. It’s a good film. Regardless. You might not like the ending. You might think the third act did this. But it’s a good film. As we get overrun with films, as there’s so many on so many different levels when one comes out of it, the word spreads tremendously, and I think that’s what happened. My buddy just texted me an hour ago—he’s a co-director on this movie we’re supposed to direct and he’s in LA doing posts on this film we did together. He lives in New Orleans and he is like, hey man, everybody out here is talking about Emily. I’m like, whoa, that’s cool. Not to go on my Hollywood soapbox, it’s like people in Hollywood want people to tell them what’s good. It’s like they want you to say, did you see that? It’s fantastic. And then either they see it or they tell people, oh no, I didn’t see it, but I heard it’s fantastic. [Laughs]. Then the word starts to spread. I think we have that on our project and I think that’s a really cool thing to be part of. I think that the journey truly is still just beginning. I think there’s more to come. The pendulum seems to be swinging where people want to get into more life stuff as Cassavetes used to say.
Awards Daily: The thing that Emily has, and obviously it’s being well received in its current time, of course, but there are things when you watch some of those movies that resonate more greatly later. If this were just a great crime movie, wonderful. But the subtext there, Youcef’s story, his background, Emily’s situation, that’s the next level shit that years from now, people will point back and go that movie was dialed into the moment.
Theo Rossi: And that’s my only interest in this game, this crazy game that I decide to wake up and play every day. My only hope is that I’m in things that are evergreen, that are legacy, that stay forever. So eight years ago, Sons of Anarchy ended. It started in 2008 and the people still hold onto it and speak of it. Feels amazing, right? I want to build that body of stuff. Like I can turn on Talented Mr. Ripley, I can turn on Boogie Nights and turn on Magnolia and watch Phil Hoffman in anything. Even though it was 20 years ago, 25 years ago. So you want to be in things that stand the test of time, and I think hopefully Emily is one of those films that, again, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, someone pulls it up. Let’s hope Emily even does one 16th of what those films did.