Joe Alwyn’s Next Move Is the Darkest Role of His Career So Far
Joe Alwyn has been the center of much media attention in the last few years. That may be news if you’ve been living in a hermetically sealed bunker (and must be nice, if so). But outside that particular and unsolicited spotlight, the dandyish 33-year-old British actor has carved his name out in films from idiosyncratic auteurs. There was Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir Part II” as a grieving and queer-flirting film editor; Claire Denis’ sensuous 2022 Cannes Grand Prix winner “Stars at Noon” as a Brit adrift in Nicaragua having lots of sex with Margaret Qualley’s character; and most recently “Kinds of Kindness,” whose director Yorgos Lanthimos he previously starred for as a lusty baron in “The Favourite.”
Alwyn is back this year at Cannes in three roles in “Kinds of Kindness,” co-written with Lanthimos by his friend and “Alps” and “The Lobster” collaborator Efthimis Flippou. Which means we are very much in the mode of old-school Lanthimos, riling audiences with perverse sexuality, mutilation, and other body horrors. The film’s three tales of mind control are less cuddly than Lanthimos’ mega successes “Poor Things” and “The Favourite.” Not that those were necessarily cuddly at all, but they certainly embraced the audience with perhaps warmer hugs due to their period trappings and, in the case of “Poor Things,” empowering feminist narratives. In “The Favourite,” Alwyn played a mostly-slimeball who marries Stone’s social climber in 1700s Great Britain.
More from IndieWire
“Kinds of Kindness” takes a revolving troupe of actors — including Alwyn, Emma Stone, Jesse Plemons, and Willem Dafoe — who play riffs on the same characters across a triptych of stories that would almost feel ripped out of “The Twilight Zone” if they weren’t so intent on false-bottom endings that debase those characters. Alwyn has small roles in the first two episodes, “The Death of R.M.F.” and “R.M.F. Is Flying,” where he plays a rowdy drunk convertible passenger pulled over by Plemons’ mentally unraveling cop. In “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” Alwyn plays the creepier Joseph, the ex-husband of Emma Stone’s character, who’s been brainwashed by a sex-cult led by Willem Dafoe. Alwyn’s character ends up resorting to extreme measures to woo her back — a spiked drink and eventual date rape — and they blow up in his face.
Alwyn, who spoke with IndieWire in person at the Cannes Film Festival during a packed junket at the Carlton Hotel, is game for anything, it seems. Especially when it comes to working with the likes of filmmakers like Claire Denis and Lanthimos.
“There are times you get stuck or have felt that you get things right or you get things wrong,” Alwyn said. “Particularly with Yorgos, he’s a director who feels like you’re going to go and play. Thinking about acting, and why I liked it in the first place, was just because you got to muck around and play and sometimes that feeling disappears or is hard to hold onto, and nerves or anxiety or the whole industry dampens that sometimes. But [with] Yorgos, you just feel like you’re getting into a sandpit. It’s just fun. And Claire [Denis] has … that feeling of freedom and that you’re going on an adventure and off-grid.”
Lanthimos shot “Kinds of Kindness” in New Orleans in the fall of 2022 while “Poor Things” was in VFX post-production, and there wasn’t much else the filmmaker could do but wait, so why not experiment on a smaller movie? “It felt like it was going back to older Yorgos, the world of ‘Dogtooth’ and ‘Alps’ and even ‘Sacred Deer,’” Alwyn said. “I thought it was just really playful, the idea of having a group of actors change roles each time. So even if it’s just for a scene in the first scene, in the second, and then a bigger one in the third, I like the idea of this troupe of people putting on different masks. [Yorgos] seems to collect people, and I like that it’s like a little family.”
Alwyn is good friends with Emma Stone, Lanthimos’ steady collaborator who introduced the pair and helped him land “The Favourite.” And so for Alwyn, the darker places Lanthimos asks actors to go to — in “Kinds of Kindness,” Alwyn and Stone play exes who share a child, and a lot of bitterness — are easier with a confidante by his side.
“I wasn’t surprised that you’re going to come across characters who either do horrible things or I’m put in horrible positions or slightly larger-than-life or whatever it might be,” Alwyn said of reading the script, which he didn’t have to audition for after Lanthimos knew him from “The Favourite.”
“I felt reading it, that part and that moment, and same in shooting it, I was just happy to be doing that kind of a scene with Emily [Emma Stone’s real name] because I love her as a friend, and I think she’s amazing at what she does, of course, and everyone’s seen that. But to be with people that you trust and have worked with before, of course, in this situation, you just want to be in a safe space for those things, and I very much felt that.”
Alwyn’s screen time may be slight in “Kinds of Kindness,” but his final appearance is, by any measure, his darkest role yet, as Joseph tries to win back his cult-addled ex through insidious means. The actor added, “There can be strange, awkward, or unpleasant things to navigate, but in terms of atmosphere on set, everything’s pretty light. Generally, [Yorgos] tries to bring humor — not in this scene of course — but he tries to bring humor to even the darkest corners that he’s exploring.”
In a separate interview with Lanthimos and Filippou, Greek screenwriter Filippou said that casting Alwyn in that particular role wasn’t about shocking audiences or trying to subvert expectations. As much as you will be surprised at how sinister Alwyn goes here. “It’s not obvious in our work but we try to imitate reality, in a way. We try to explore and describe real people and real feelings, and I think that life itself makes people uncomfortable. It’s not like we try to write weird films or put Joe Alwyn to [play] a rapist. There are rapists out there, and there are people who are raped,” Filippou said.
Alwyn’s filmography, from his post-drama school breakout in Ang Lee’s “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk” in 2016 to Lena Dunham’s 2022 “Catherine Called Birdy” and Hulu’s Sally Rooney Hulu series “Conversations with Friends,” suggests an actor not interested in IP or franchises and instead more character-driven, subversive offerings. And that’s not totally by design.
“I think I’ve just tried to chase down people so far that I just really admire as directors and a handful of those have happened to be [behind] not always independent films, but not big studio Marvel or anything,” he said. “I think anything could be brilliant. It’s just about the group of people that make it … There’s not a ton of rhyme or reason in terms of what I’m going after. I’m just trying to find my interesting people to work with. And even in a supporting capacity, like ‘Kinds of Kindness,’ you get so much from working with someone like Yorgos. It’s fun to spend time with him and be a part of someone who’s so wildly creative and so singular in what he does in the films he makes. They’re so not cookie-cutter shape. That excites me.”
Fellow UK actor Paul Mescal recently said he bristles at the idea of fame, saying he’d get “profoundly depressed” if people started stopping him in the streets (as they already do, but sure). Alwyn, who has been pressed up against the glass by unexpected fame and paparazzi coverage, said he tries not to think too much about the consequences of the limelight. “I don’t think it’s something you can massively control, what happens on the outside,” he said. “All I’ve tried to do is focus on what I focus on: my life, friends, family, whatever. I can understand for [Paul Mescal] why that must be an overwhelming feeling.”
“Kinds of Kindness” premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Searchlight Pictures opens the film in the U.S. on June 21.
Best of IndieWire
The Best Father and Son Films: 'The Tree of Life,' 'The Lion King,' 'Nowhere Special,' and More
The 51 Best Sexy Movies of the 21st Century, from 'Spring Breakers' to 'X'
The 14 Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in June, from 'Fair Play' to 'Emily the Criminal'
Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
