Getting real with addiction
Actors bond in Beautiful Boy
TORONTO — Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet both knew the addiction drama Beautiful Boy hinged on the father-son relationship.
The movie is based on the twin memoirs of David Sheff and his son, Nic, about each’s perspective on Nic’s decade-long, nearly fatal plunge into meth addiction. Toggling between nightmare and memory, Beautiful Boy fluctuates between addiction and recovery, between the love and anguish of a father and son.
So when the two first met at Chalamet’s final audition to read as Nic, it was a pregnant moment.
“I think it was an openarmed hug,” recalled Chalamet of his eventual co-star’s greeting. “I was very appreciative of that because I was really quite nervous going in there.”
The meeting is vivid to Carell, too. For him and everyone else in the room, it was clear Chalamet (whose breakthrough Oscar-nominated role in Call Me By Your Name hadn’t yet come out) was the right choice.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better audition,” said Carell.
A year after Chalamet impressed audiences in Call Me By Your Name, Beautiful Boy teams him with another veteran actor who has likewise
been something of a mentor to the 22-year-old Chalamet. The two found they had a natural affinity for each other despite being generations apart.
Chalamet grew up a fan of The Office and in an interview last month was most eager to hear the 56-year-old Carell’s Daily Show stories.
“It was natural,” said Chalamet. “I felt like we had a physical dialogue that was akin to what a father and son’s physical dialogue would be.”
“I feel absolutely the opposite,” Carell deadpanned, cracking up his co-star.
“He’s somebody you want to be around. He’s somebody you want to talk to. He’s such a committed actor and takes it seriously but at the same time is entirely open.”
Addiction has rarely been seen onscreen as it is in Felix Van Groeningen’s Beautiful Boy, which opens in theatres Friday. Whereas Hollywood has often concentrated on the tailspin of addiction or swift recovery, Beautiful Boy stays true to the cycles of relapse.
As Nic’s addiction threatens to destroy him, David is racked by desperation, guilt and hopelessness.
When acquiring the rights to David’s Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction and Nic’s Tweak, producer Jeremy Kleiner of Brad Pitt’s Plan B convinced the Sheffs that they would honour the realism of their story.
“To put this in someone else’s hands was really scary,” said David Sheff, an author and journalist.
“What convinced us was what Jeremy said: Addiction has always been portrayed with the same few clichés over and over again. He said that he was committed to showing addiction the way it is: no easy answers. Everything about it is complicated.”
An estimated 21.6 million Americans are addicted to drugs and another 16 million to alcohol. With the rise of opioids, deaths from drug
overdoses have doubled in the last decade.
It’s an America that the Sheffs have got a close look at since their books came out — a response they hope will only be magnified by the movie.
Being on book tours together and now with the movie has given both father and son time to talk through everything. Both say they’ve never felt closer.
David Sheff says many people feel that the damage done to a relationship is irreparable.
“We were there once. And we’ve shown that with hard
work and time, relationship can be renewed. So when we’re together in these places, I look over there and just feel so lucky that Nic is here.”
For the role, Chalamet dropped 18 pounds.
“In addition to getting all the specificities of using right, it was first and foremost about the family and the relationships within that,” said Chalamet.
“It’s not about mannerisms but rather the emotional truth they were living. And trying to get the moments where I’m using or high onscreen as
accurate as possible without being so cavalier as to think that’s what the true experience of an addict would be.”
And as much as Carell and Chalamet focused on David and Nic, and their books, they drew as heavily from their own experiences with their fathers and, in Carell’s case, with his kids.
For Carell, the film resonates most deeply as a story about a family that is flawed but full of love. “You can label this a story about addiction, but it’s really a story about the love between these people.”