3 OSCAR-WINNERS TACKLE ONE CHALLENGING SCRIPT
Denzel, Rami, Jared in nuanced tale of cops & bad guy
Even though Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto are big stars, they never stop worrying about the little things.
The three teamed up in a new psychological thriller that poses serious acting challenges — even for a trio of titans who have all won Oscars.
In “The Little Things,” they portray complex characters with cryptic back stories or mysterious motivations in the film about detectives working to track down a serial killer in Los Angeles during the early 1990s.
Director John Lee Hancock aimed to flip the crime genre on its head, and introduced flawed characters such as Washington’s Joe Deacon, a deputy sheriff who’s haunted by a case from his past.
“I could only imagine what it would be [like] to be John Lee and having to deal with the three of us asking a million different questions,” Washington, 66, said of the star-powered cast Saturday.
“You just start asking questions, and questions lead to questions, and hopefully lead to answers, and you just get specific. What does he eat? Why does he eat it? What time does he eat it? Why is he so heavy? Why is he this? Why is he that?” said Washington, who won best supporting actor for “Glory” and best actor for “Training Day.”
The film, out Jan. 29 in theaters and on HBO Max, sees Washington’s cop from Kern County, Calif., team up with Malek’s hotshot young L.A. detective as women keep disappearing or turning up dead.
Leto, meanwhile, stars as the suspect, a creepy man named Albert Sparma who is obsessed with crime news and finds humor in the detectives’ pursuit of him.
“When I think about Albert Sparma, I think of him as kind of a charmer,” said Leto, 49, who won the best supporting actor Oscar for “Dallas Buyers Club.”
“I guess I wasn’t on the receiving end of whatever might seem scary or terrifying, but I never really felt that. I thought he was kind of a lovable guy.”
Hancock wrote the script for “The Little Things” in 1992.
A longtime fan of crime dramas, Hancock said that he wanted his movie to “subvert” expectations of the genre, which often involved the final scenes becoming all “about the good guy chasing the bad guy.”
Like his co-stars, Malek played a complicated character, Jim Baxter, who ignores the recommendations of others and enlists Washington’s tormented Deacon to help him with the case.
“Personally, if I see wisdom and great instincts and experience in front of me, I’ll lean on that,” Malek, 39, said.
“I think that was inherent in the script for someone who was struggling in a case where [there is] so much building up, so much responsibility, to have the ability to lean on someone who had clearly been there before and seen something quite dark, there was almost a need to bring that person into your life and seek council from them,” continued Malek, who won a best actor Oscar for his performance as Freddie Mercury in “Bohemian Rhapsody.”
“I think Baxter knew in a sense it could get him down a harmful road, but there was something advantageous to working with this man that could help him solve this very difficult puzzle.”