Jesse Plemons is surprisingly energetic when I meet him on Sunday at the Telluride Film Festival. He’s just arrived for the weekend from Venice, Italy, where his film Bugonia had its world premiere. But the globehopping travel doesn’t seem to have affected him as much as I would have expected—though he admits it’s very surreal. “It’s a funny experience to take a boat to the airport in Venice and then take a [mountain] gondola later in the day,” he says.
Plemons stars in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia as Teddy Gatz, a man who is convinced that aliens live among us. Teddy, who is also carrying immense grief, kidnaps a powerful CEO (Emma Stone), thinking that she is an alien who is attempting to destroy the planet.
While the film is full of Lanthimos’ unique sensibilities and bold storytelling, it is also making a statement about the pressing environmental and social issues of today, including how capitalism and the global authoritarian corporate culture are ruining the planet in a way that’s likely irreversible.
Plemons, who previously worked with Lanthimos in Kinds of Kindness, delivers a towering performance as Teddy, who is intense, intelligent, and highly unpredictable. The third act of the film is one of the wildest things you’ll see on screen this year, and Plemons admits it was demanding to pull off. He also reveals his new-found hobby, what he learned about conspiracy theorists, and talks about his current spiritual journey.
Vanity Fair: When did you first start talking to Yorgos about making another movie together?
Jesse Plemons: Right after Kinds of Kindness, I picked up photography, to my surprise. Yorgos is also a great photographer, which is annoying. [Laughs] I’ve got kids and I started taking some film photos of them. And so then he was very generous and gave me a few tutorials over Zoom. And then maybe four or five months after we finished Kinds of Kindness, he told me about the script and sent it to me. I was floored by it, loved it. So we were doing press for [Kinds of Kindness] as we were rehearsing and it was kind of chaotic.
What was it about the script?
This current moment we are in is so strange and scary. I feel like I’m always looking for something to help me to sort through that that does it in a way that doesn’t feel preachy, that gets it right. And this just really seemed to. It came at this present moment in a sort of backdoor way that was surprising at every turn and leaves you with plenty to think about and chew on. And Teddy, I’ve been very fortunate to play some pretty complex characters, but he’s up there.
What did you do for research to understand this conspiracy theorist?
It’s not too difficult to, if you’re looking out for it, the internet has it all. And Andrew Callaghan has this YouTube channel, and he just places himself in really intense, interesting places and just has one of those personalities that is disarming enough for people. He’s even been to alien conferences and flat earth conventions. And then I had a friend that recommended this book by Naomi Klein called Doppelganger and it was just a perfect place for me to start.
How did you find empathy for this character?
That was tough. The first time I read the script I really laughed a lot out loud. It is funny. And then months passed and then I read the script again and had a very different experience with it—I think maybe just knowing it was more real and I was going to play this part. I knew what a challenge it was going to be to bring him to life, but it was just obvious to me the core of him and his core mission was so pure. There are plenty of people like that, very good intentions and can do some really awful things—like when you look at religion. I think this feeling that I can relate to—that I feel like a lot of people can relate to—of being so disoriented at the state of the world and wanting so badly to know where you can be of best use, where can I put my energy to affect some sort of change, even if it’s in a small way. And I think he really wants that, wants to be a hero.
How did you handle the violence of this character?
I don’t know if this was a justification or rationalization for me to not get to that place where I’m judging him, but I looked at it like the violence that you see in children and sometimes I felt like I knew where it was coming from.
How would you describe Yorgos’s directing style?
arly on in this, it’s such a big character and I really quickly developed a real love for him, which is necessary but also can sometimes get in the way. And I remember I think I was a little in my head in the beginning and there were times where he was like, “You are not in control—the universe is.”
And that was soothing?
Yes. And true in anything creative where thoughts, especially too many thoughts, can be a killer of the truth, weirdly. There’s a feeling that he creates on the set where you don’t feel like you have just an infinite amount of space, but you feel like you have a lot of room to go out and kind of gather and bring it back and see what he thinks. You feel the freedom to fail.
Do you have any newfound empathy for conspiracy theorists?
Most definitely. It’s a lonely place, and I think you go into it thinking it’s a community, which I guess in some ways it is. But it feels very lonely.
Is there anything else that you felt was especially challenging with this character?
The third act is a lot. It’s not actual hard work in the sense of manual labor or anything like that, but it was just the hardest thing I’ve ever done, really to try and maintain that level of a crescendo all through the third act and to try and be truthful in that.
You’ve been talking about the weight of the time we’re living in now. How do you take care of your own mental health?
I’ve got my hobbies, photography and music. I feel like I’m on my own—this may sound strange—spiritual quest that doesn’t have anything to do with religion, that just has to do with different philosophies. I’m really excited by that and excited about enjoying my life and taking it easier on myself and being as present as I can be. Easier said than done.
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