Bri­an Glee­son talks Tiger Raid, Logan Lucky and the new Dar­ren Aronofsky

We recent­ly caught up with actor Bri­an Glee­son on the set of Logan Lucky, the (no-doubt) glo­ri­ous return to fea­ture film­mak­ing by Steven Soder­bergh, where the main top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion was a new indie dra­ma called Tiger Raid, a two-man jour­ney into the heard of dark­ness (Iraq) to take care of a kid­nap­ping. We also couldn’t help but ask him about the school plays he was in, and his part in an as-yet unti­tled upcom­ing Dar­ren Aronof­sky project.

LWLies: What was it that ini­tial­ly got you into acting?

Glee­son: I’m lucky. In sec­ondary school I had a cou­ple of real­ly good teach­ers, and there’d be a lot of school plays and stuff as well. Just that buzz of being on stage you know? It was those first plays that gave me the bug. But obvi­ous­ly it was in the fam­i­ly so I was kind of around it too. They didn’t say be one thing or the oth­er, to do what­ev­er I felt.

What was your first role in a school play?

There were a cou­ple I did ear­ly on that I can’t remem­ber. But there was Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry at the start of pri­ma­ry school. I played Char­lie, I sang the songs and every­thing. It was great, we put it on with the whole school. It was a real buzz, even at that age. Espe­cial­ly at that age. It was kind of clear even at that age that it was some­thing I want­ed to do.

What it is you look for in a script?

Scripts can be dif­fi­cult to read because they’re a blue­print for a film. They’re not a nov­el. So any­time you read a script straight through and think ​‘that’s some­thing worth­while’, it’s a good feel­ing. With Tiger Raid, it starts with two Irish guys in a Jeep on a mer­ce­nary job talk­ing about the Good Fri­day Agree­ment, so it’s already kind of incon­gru­ous and weird. So it seemed like a real­ly dif­fer­ent idea.

Tiger Raid has got to be the small­est cast you’ve worked with. How did it com­pare to your expe­ri­ences with larg­er casts?

There are pros and cons to each film. It was a three week shoot so it was very short, but I loved every sec­ond of it. It was myself, Dami­an and Sofia, and we just had pages and pages of dia­logue we had to get through every day. A lot of it was in the truck so we were just dri­ving around and soak­ing it all in. So it was real­ly enjoy­able, it was three weeks but I always feel like I’m there a lot longer you know. I think that’s a good thing though, it’s very reward­ing work. The Jor­dan­ian crew were real­ly great and we had a lot of laughs. It was a very hard work­ing day, there were a lot of errors but we kind of went for it being as it was a three week shoot there was a lot to get in.

Was it all script­ed, or was there any improv at all?

I think what you see on screen is what’s in the script. We did do a lot of improv in and around scenes. You know like before we’d let the cam­era roll, and then we’d go into the scene and then we’d keep going. It involves liv­ing in the char­ac­ters a lit­tle. But yeah, as far as I remem­ber all of the script is there. We did do improv before and after just to help us get into the zone.

Your char­ac­ter Joe is very mul­ti-lay­ered. Is he very dif­fer­ent from oth­er char­ac­ters you’ve played?

My job [as an actor] is try and make them dif­fer­ent, but I don’t think I’ve ever played any­one that crazy. His whole con­nec­tion to real­i­ty is kind of ten­u­ous at best, so it’s real edge-of-the-seat stuff. He doesn’t know what he’s going to like next, so it was def­i­nite­ly very different.

How are you find­ing shoot­ing Lucky Logan with Steven Soderbergh?

It’s great, very chilled out. We’re shoot­ing in Atlanta, Geor­gia and everyone’s very hap­py. But yeah, it’s a very chilled out kind of set at the moment. It’s just been a joy real­ly, it’s been great.

What was the audi­tion for that like?

I don’t live in the States so every­thing has to be sent in. It just hap­pened like that real­ly. I don’t film any of them (my audi­tion tapes) for the sake of it. You have your cam­era and you have your video tape, and if you don’t know if you’re going to for­get things or not you note things down and you’ve just got to do the best you can. You can nev­er know if you’re going to get it or not. Just get a good cam­era and do the best you can. If they like you they like you.

You’ve recent­ly worked with Dar­ren Aronof­sky – how much can you tell us about that?

Oh I can’t tell you any­thing! No, I can’t even tell my agent. My agent laughed because we got sent pho­tos and they had to sign off on it. It was the first time we’d seen any­thing about the film. They were try­ing to find out, they were quite clear­ly look­ing at the pic­tures try­ing to fig­ure out what the hell we were doing. But you know, he real­ly is a unique film-mak­er, and I think retain­ing that ele­ment of sur­prise is going to be worth it. I mean, god, when it’ll be out, I have no idea. I didn’t do a huge amount on it. We shot in Mon­tréal, and Domh­nall my broth­er is in it as well. I just went there for a lit­tle bit and did my work on it, so I don’t even know what they’re going to do with the rest of it. So I’ll be as sur­prised as anybody.

Tiger Raid is out now o DVD. Read our review here.