The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Star is ready to play
Tye Sheridan excited to be doing Steven Spielberg movie
When the script for “Ready Player One” reached Tye Sheridan, the young actor says, he hardly dared to hope he’d land the role in this science-fiction adventure set in a future where people spend huge amounts of their day living inside a virtual reality world to escape their dystopian reality.
Sheridan had become in recent years so much enamored with virtual reality that he and his best friend had started a small tech company in that field, but the director for which he was reading, and with whom he’d work if he got the part, was Steven Spielberg, a Hollywood icon whose legendary career is more than twice as long as the 21-year-old from Texas has been alive.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so cool that Steven Spielberg is doing a movie about a VR world in 2045,’ “Sheridan says recently. “And then I thought, ‘Oh, there’s no way I’ll get it, but I can’t wait to see that movie in theaters.’ “
Of course, he did get the part of Wade Watts (the protagonist who as Parzival — his in-game avatar — goes on a quest to save the virtual world and also make the real world a little better) and in turn got to work alongside Spielberg, one of the greatest directors in Hollywood history.
“It was so intimidating that I felt a lot of responsibility,” Sheridan says of those first days on the set at Leavesden studios in England. “Not in the sense that I felt so much that I got locked up, because if you do that then you’re not allowing yourself to do your job.
“In the most humble way, I want to say this: It’s important for actors to take on a huge challenge,” he says. “If you’re not challenging yourself you’re not growing. But also when people believe in you and believe that you can accomplish what they’re asking you to do, it instills enough confidence that you don’t let those other things get in the way.”
Spielberg did both, challenging Sheridan (whose past credits include director Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” his breakout role in the indie film “Mud,” and the big-budget action movie “X-Men: Apocalypse”) while also building his confidence in a role that due to its unique technical nature wasn’t your typical acting experience.
At least half of “Ready Player One” takes place inside the OASIS, the virtual world where his character and millions of others go to enjoy a life that’s a bit more colorful and fun than the reality of the world in the year 2045. Which meant that at least half of the work Sheridan and the rest of the cast did was performed in motion-capture suits that were then transformed into their virtual personas through computer wizardry.
“On the first day, Steven told me, ‘I want you to approach this story and this character as two separate people,’ “Sheridan says of the distinction required between his real character, Wade Watts, and his inworld avatar, Parzival.
“Wade comes from this place called the Stacks, mobile homes stacked up on top of each other, going stories and stories high,” he says. “And it’s kind of a slum, and it makes sense for him to escape into a virtual world where he can be anyone he wants.
“He feels comfortable in that skin, even more so than he does in his real-world self,” Sheridan says. “Steven said Parzival carries a certain swagger and selfconfidence, whereas Wade does not.”
Any nerves he had about working with Spielberg quickly dissipated as the four months of shooting unfolded, the first eight weeks all done in motion-capture suits, the rest in their own skin.
“Lena Waithe” (who plays Aech) “said a really cool thing when people ask her about working with Steven,” he says. “She said, ‘Steven is a giant who doesn’t make you feel small.’ That’s such an incredible way to describe Steven and the way he works.
“At the end of the day I felt like we were just two equals, two artists collaborating, just selflessly trying to put forth as much energy and effort and our best ideas to make this the best it could be.”