Josh Brolin has revealed he came close to walking away from the set of Ridley Scott’s new film early in production and it was only a timely word from the director himself that convinced him to stay.
The actor, 58, said so Empire magazine that he “got really scared” shortly after filming began The dog starsScott’s post-apocalyptic drama, which hits theaters on August 28.
The source of his anxiety was Scott’s famously instinctive, low-rehearsed approach on set.
“Ridley was talking a lot of stories and not really rehearsing,” Brolin recalled, “and it upset me and I got really scared. I went back, called my agent and said, ‘I want out. Something’s really wrong and I’ve got to get the f— out of here.’
His agent, a close friend, suggested he take a day to rest and reconsider. Brolin saw through the tactic immediately.
“I was like, ‘No, man, I know what the f— you’re doing’.”
What actually turned things around was Scott himself.
The 88-year-old director invited Brolin into his trailer and played a scene they had just shot with co-star Jacob Elordi.
The footage spoke volumes.
“[Ridley] says ‘Come here’ and he brought me into his trailer and played the scene we had just finished. It was a really good, very dynamic scene between me and Jacob, and he’s like, ‘Okay?’ I say, ‘Okay,’ and then I started eating it.”
Brolin had worked with Scott before, in the 2007s American gangsterbut the director’s snappy multi-camera style still captured him.
It took a day or two to adjust, he said, before something clicked.
“I got super into it because it was stratospherically creative and stratospherically dangerous.”
He had actively sought out exactly that kind of challenge, he noted, then promptly resisted it when it arrived.
In the end, he said, “it turned out to be one of the more creative, satisfying projects that I’ve ever been involved with.”
IN The dog starsadapted by Mark L. Smith from Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, Brolin stars as ex-Marine Bangley alongside Elordi, who stars as a civilian pilot navigating a brutal post-apocalyptic world until a mysterious radio transmission sends him searching for something to believe in.
The cast also includes Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce, Benedict Wong and Allison Janney.
