CraveOnline: I have seen and love “Friday Night Lights.” That show had a really passionate fan base that kinda kept it alive while it was changing from NBC to Dish Network. I’m wondering if, experiencing that groundswell of fan support, if you have any feelings about a shift now to crowd-sourcing via Kickstarter and such?
Taylor Kitsch: People have a passion for projects and they gotta do something to get it heard or made. I’m grateful for those fans, they literally kept us on the air. The whole cast will echo the same sentiment. We were lucky to be a part of something special and it was more special because fans were fighting for us. I guess now there’s just a different way to fight for those projects.
Back to a film you mentioned before, The Normal Heart. Were you familiar with the play [Larry Kramer’s Tony Award winning play about the AIDS crisis in New York’s gay community from 1981-1984]?
I was not. Joe Mantello played Ned, the lead of the play (in the 2011 Broadway revival), he’s not the lead of this film but he does have an incredible part. He’s phenomenal. It’s almost an injustice to the acting community that he’s not acting much. He directs a lot of plays on Broadway.
I learned so much from Joe. That was a really special experience.
You mention Ned, in your upcoming film he’s played by Mark Ruffalo and your character kinda butts heads with him…
I have a lot of intense stuff with “Ruff”. It was an incredible challenge. It’s so raw and unapologetic. It’s another true story and it will be enlightening for a lot of people.
It’s great that HBO is stepping up to make that film, Angels in America and Behind the Candelabra, but is this “too gay for theaters” view from studios becoming problematic because the audience becomes limited?
I think that HBO just does it right. They gave total creative control to [director] Ryan Murphy. With HBO there’s no limit for actors either. It’s very empowering. Personally, I think it should be seen by everyone and so yeah it’d be great to be in fucking theaters so more and more people can see it. But HBO is great.
I saw Lone Survivor at AFI. I liked Wahlberg’s response to the Q&A question “how did you prepare?” He basically just said, “it doesn’t fucking matter” because you guys spent so much time with people who did the real thing that it’d feel silly to talk about an actor’s preparation…
Yeah, [laughs] I heard about that. This is a rare movie experience from an acting standpoint. From day one we were with the SEALS. Ultimately, this story is so much bigger than any of us. It was a lot of listening and respect. It was pretty physical, but that just leant more respect.
We came together with the same mindset that to reach the full potential as a film, and as a service to the SEALS, we’d have to bond quickly because when we were shooting we were just gonna be segregated on a mountain.
The idea of brotherhood in filmmaking is usually a little myopic. Any actor will tell you when you’re on set, you go in, you get out and you might not be friends for life with everyone. It just doesn’t work that way. But [pause] – but this one was something special and there were unique circumstances and I’m very close with Mark, Ben (Foster), Emile (Hirsch) and Marcus Luttrell. And we keep viewing it in emotional circumstances together.
Back to that. So you just screened this for the Washington Redskins. So … would you say, “start Alfred Morris at running back”?
[laughs] Yeah, by familiarity I’d say yes. Those guys were great. It was awesome meeting RGIII. Do you have Tony Romo?
No. But he’s done pretty good this year.
I mostly live in Texas and I’ve become buddies with Tony. He even saw Lone before me! He texted me saying, “we’re about to see Lone!” I texted him back, “mate, I haven’t even seen it yet!” I know it affected him and it was great to expose this film to the rest of the Cowboys.
In Denver I watched it with “Foxy” (Broncos’ head coach, John Fox), Peyton Manning, Wes Welker and Eric Decker. Decker, now he’s a real cool guy.
I wish I had him.
They all responded so honestly in Denver. Traveling with this film has been really special because we’ve been showing it to so many different types of people.
I just have (Denver’s) Julius Thomas and he might still be hurt. Were you injured while filming Lone Survivor?
I survived.
Touché.
Addendum: I did win my fantasy football matchup, but that was mostly from the play of Josh Gordon and a stingy Seattle Seahawks defense. Alfred Morris fumbled twice.
Brian Formo is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel. You can follow him on Twitter at @BrianEmilFormo.
