Why Glen Powell Has Some A24 Execs Nervous

Following the rave reviews and reactions to 2022’s Emily the Criminal, filmmaker John Patton Ford felt like he needed to strike while the iron was hot.

The South Carolina native made the rounds to discuss the possibilities of what he could do for his sophomore effort. Such a water-bottle-collecting moment was truly a long time coming for the writer-director. He’d been toiling away since the late 2000s in order to get one of his scripts produced. Several projects had fallen apart on or near the one-yard line, but together with his lead actor Aubrey Plaza and what would become her career-best performance, he finally crossed the plane with Emily in 2022. 

The crime thriller may not have blown the roof off the summer box office, but its strong word of mouth and four Independent Spirit Awards nominations, including Ford’s win for “best first screenplay,” flooded his inbox with opportunities.

“It was an overwhelming moment that I didn’t quite know how to deal with, to be honest. I felt a lot of insecurity at that time. I felt like I had to get another movie going pronto or else the attention would go away,” Ford tells The Hollywood Reporter. 

Within a few months, Ford dusted off an old script called Rothchild that The Black List had recognized all the way back in 2014. Loosely inspired by 1949’s Kind Hearts and Coronets, the tragicomedy chronicles a bastard son named Becket who starts killing off all the estranged family members who stand in the way of the inheritance that he and his late mother were wrongly denied. Like Emily, it’s a film about the desperate measures people take for money.

“After school, I struggled for a long, long time. Now I’m a white guy with an education; I can only fail so hard. But I wasn’t getting to do what I wanted to do for a long, long time,” Ford says. “It seeped into my pores and took over my personality. I thought it was just never going to end. So I was willing to do whatever it took to get my career going, and hey, big surprise, I make movies about similar people.”

In 2019, the film nearly got made when it hit the Cannes Market as a Shia LaBeouf-Mel Gibson package for another director. At the time, LaBeouf was riding high on the Sundance sale of his semi-autobiographical drama, Honey Boy, and Gibson was still enjoying some post-Hacksaw Ridge goodwill. However, between Gibson’s checkered history and the title’s similarity to a real-life banking dynasty, controversy seemingly derailed the picture.

In 2023, the project reemerged with a new title and a new family surname (among other things). Glen Powell and Ed Harris eventually became the new grandson-grandfather pairing of Becket and Whitelaw Redfellow. Ford has repeatedly likened Powell to a cross between Captain America and a golden retriever, but he reveals that there was early concern among executives when Powell showed up to set looking like Steve Rogers, pre-Super Soldier Serum. The actor, as he noted in a THR cover story, lost at least 15 pounds by ingesting a steady stream of bone broth. He even changed his hair color after another coiffure concept was ruled out.

“When he came on set, he didn’t quite look like Glen Powell — or not how people expected — and some of the executives were actually really concerned at first,” Ford shares. “He also had a crazy wig [initially], and we were like, ‘That’s a step too far.’”

For a film that ultimately condemns billionaire families who take all they can and give next to nothing back, Ford repurposed a directive he once received during a sales job to define the Redfellow patriarch’s (Harris) unwavering philosophy. 

“They said [the sales pitch] like it was a lesson that we needed to learn: ‘Your only enemy is your own conscience. If you can turn that off, you can actually succeed,’” Ford recalls. “It is, on one hand, a brilliant thing to say. On the other hand, it’s completely sociopathic. I didn’t want to have a movie that says, ‘Rich people are bad, period,’ and that’s it. I wanted something a little more complex.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Ford also discusses some of the film’s lingering questions, as well as whether he and Plaza have another team-up in store.

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Emily the Criminal received rave reviews, and it became a word-of-mouth movie among industry people and the audience. Did you go on a water bottle tour as you figured out what to do next? Or did you go straight for this old Black List script of yours?

I did the tour. I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do next. It was an overwhelming moment that I didn’t quite know how to deal with, to be honest. I felt a lot of insecurity at that time. I felt like I had to get another movie going pronto or else the attention would go away. It’s funny how that works, and it took me a minute. It was maybe two or three months before this project came to light [again], but when it did, I was on that train for as long as it took.

Both Emily and How to Make a Killing explore the extreme lengths that people will go to for money. Is there a deep-rooted reason why you’re drawn to this theme?

This is a lot like the Zoom therapy session I had two days ago. The quick answer is: after school, I struggled for a long, long time. Now I’m a white guy with an education; I can only fail so hard. So I don’t mean to paint a picture like I had it rough, but I wasn’t getting to do what I wanted to do for a long, long time. I was living off of an incredibly low amount of money a year in L.A., and I don’t even know how I did that for so long. It seeped into my pores and took over my personality. I thought it was just never going to end. I was cooking in that marinade for so long that I’ll probably be burning off the fumes of those feelings for a while. So I was willing to do whatever it took to get my career going, and hey, big surprise, I make movies about similar people.

When a debut feature is received well, the filmmaker is sometimes miscategorized as an overnight success, and that probably happened with you and Emily.

Yeah, it was probably about 12 years of trying to get something made. I’d had four projects come together and fall apart. One of them was pretty late into the game, and it was brutal.

Marty Supreme had the slogan of “dream big.” I just watched a movie called GOAT that also had the “dream big” mantra. Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman’s recent movie, Song Sung Blue, even has the tagline of “dream huge.” 

Does it really? (Laughs.)

It does. But Ruth (Jessica Henwick) makes the opposite point that it’s okay to dream small even though we’re not taught to think that way. Do you think it’s a mistake that so many of us are conditioned to believe that “the right kind of life” involves fame and/or fortune?

I don’t know if it’s a mistake, but I do know that we have a societal conundrum in the sense that we’re born into this system where you have to grow, expand and earn more. We have a system that is reliant upon growth, or it quite literally won’t work. We measure our success in growth. How much more money are we making? How many jobs have we added? How is the GDP going up? That boils down to the individual, and yet the definition of contentment is literally the sensation of not wanting anything more than you currently have. So how do you reconcile these two things? And maybe that’s just the experience of being a human regardless of what system you’re inside of. I don’t know. But I find it fascinating and compelling. 

I also find it interesting how hard I work and how many things I’m doing. Does it net out to contentment or security as much as I think it does? Probably not. I’m fascinated by Gen Z and their emerging attitude that they’re just not going to work as hard as previous generations. They’re kind of my favorite generation ever. I’m cheering them on, man. I’m also terrified of them, but I hope it works out.

The whole movie, Becket is trying to figure out what his mother meant when she made him promise to pursue “the right kind of life.” He assumes it’s material wealth, but do you think his mother would ultimately agree with Ruth? 

I would probably never speak to that in an interview. I feel like I don’t want to show all the marbles. Is that an expression? I think I just made that up.

Show all your cards? 

Cards! Thank you. Who’s got marbles anymore? But I hesitate to get too in the weeds about that. We definitely wanted his mom to provide this canonic text in the beginning, and then for the rest of the story, he’s trying to interpret what she exactly meant by that. For me, it just reflects an overall cultural norm, especially in the U.S. We’re taught from early on about ambition — reach for the stars and dream big, as you said. But what does that mean? What do we do with that? Where does it lead and why? It’s a little mysterious. So these are the questions I was interested in. What did his mom literally mean? I don’t really know. I don’t know any more than the central character does.

I don’t think this movie works without Jessica Henwick pulling off the heart and moral compass as well as she does. Knowing you had so many despicable characters, did you always view Ruth as the movie’s linchpin?

Yeah, I think so. I saw Ruth as someone who provided an alternative. She’s someone who has a different value system and a different way of living that would provide the central character with a dilemma. Do I want to go in her direction, or do I want to go in another direction? Jess is an incredible actor. She can do anything. But she also has a flavor of that kind of thing in real life. She strikes me as someone who’s really well-adjusted, and she has her passions outside of acting. She’s so great that people keep asking her to be in stuff over and over again, but she’s one of the only actors I know who’s constantly trying not to work. Actors are always doing whatever they can to get booked — except for Jess Henwick. She’s like, “I just want to go backpacking. I just want to go on a solo.” She’s big into outdoor stuff. She’s a super experienced backpacker, and she’s always trying to take these trips. Then she gets cast in something, and she’s like, “Ah! I had all my gear.” She’s the best.

She and I talked about her future recently, and I definitely walked away worried.

We can’t let her go. She’s too good.

Glen Powell went on the world-famous bone broth diet to lose weight for this movie. What was his reasoning? That Becket was hungry literally and figuratively? 

That was something he brought to the table. He wanted to look a certain way, and he didn’t want the character to be reminiscent of previous characters he played. I think it’s worth noting that, on arrival, stock Glen, the basic version of Glen, looks like a superhero. The dude is jacked, and his base weight is “jacked dude.” So he didn’t think that made sense for the character. For this person to be an underdog and for him to not be getting what he wants, he felt that it doesn’t make sense for him to look like Captain America. So he went on a crazy diet and lost a lot of weight. He even changed his hair color. When he came on set, he didn’t quite look like Glen Powell — or not how people expected — and some of the executives were actually really concerned at first. He also had a crazy wig [initially], and we were like, “That’s a step too far.”

Becket’s childhood friend, Julia (Margaret Qualley), keeps close tabs on him throughout the movie, and she’s onto him and his killings before anyone else. Thus, was their initial reunion at the Brooks Brothers-type store really an accident? Could she have been that many moves ahead? Did she already sense that her fiancé Lyle was heading in the wrong direction and start lining up a plan B?

To me, it wasn’t calculated. It’s just happenstance, and then it kicks things off. But the thing about Margaret is that she’s so overwhelming on camera. She has such confidence that she takes over everything when she shows up, and it’s impossible to look at anything else. And for that reason, audiences are free to project any number of things onto her character. That character is so nuts that you can easily imagine that she had it all figured out and planned. She just has so much confidence that you can build your own narrative off of it. But from my mind, she was just showing up.

To put it mildly, Redfellow-type people have been in the news a lot lately, and so I couldn’t help but watch the film through that lens. Thus, Ed Harris’ monologue about ignoring one’s conscience was what I imagine a lot of these wealthy elites learn to do. Were you actually trying to rationalize how many of these people live with themselves?

Yeah, sure. In that moment with Ed Harris, I didn’t want a movie that says, “Rich people are bad, period,” and that’s it. I wanted something a little more complex. Who is this guy actually? What is his mantra? What is his way of living, and can you criticize it exactly if it works for him? What he says is something that someone said to me once at a sales pitch for this company I was working for, and they said it in an unironic way. They said it like it was a lesson that we needed to learn: “Your only enemy is your own conscience, telling you some kind of story about what’s right and what’s wrong. If you can turn that off, you can actually succeed.” 

It is, on one hand, a brilliant thing to say. On the other hand, it’s completely sociopathic. Which one is it? History is littered with no shortage of geniuses and incredibly successful people who probably followed that mantra completely, from Napoleon to Henry Ford to you name it. But what were the casualties of that mindset? Yes, they led to great breakthroughs and successes and things that may have helped humanity as a whole, but what did it cost? So I wanted to infuse it with that.

In a perfect world, what would you do next? 

I would love to make something more similar to my first movie. I would love to get back to a character-driven thriller, something much more grounded and based in reality. This movie was a huge adventure out into the left field. It’s something I never thought I’d do, and it just felt so different. No regrets, I learned a lot, but I also learned that it is not the comfiest zone for me. Things that are elevated and aren’t quite reality, they’re hard. So now that I have a better idea of what my wheelhouse is, I’d like to get back to that wheelhouse. If Sidney Lumet was born in the ‘80s, what movie would he make right now? That’s what I’m looking for right now.

Do you think you and Aubrey Plaza will have another story to tell someday?

Yeah, I love Aubrey. Whatever she wants. I would love to. We’re both a little bit older now. We’d have to figure out what that thing is. We were both raised by lawyers. Both of our parents are attorneys and litigators, and there’s something there. I would love to see her playing an attorney who’s locked into really heated debates with someone. If you’ve been around Aubrey, you know how smart she is and how good she is at arguing. So I’d love to see that. I don’t have a story, but I’d love to see whatever that is.

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How to Make a Killing is now playing in movie theaters.