Dylan O’Brien isn’t afraid of playing somebody you’ll probably hate. In fact, he jumped at the opportunity.
The actor stars in director Sam Raimi‘s latest thriller, Send Help, which crash lands into theaters everywhere Friday.
O’Brien plays Bradley Preston, the newly appointed nepo baby boss to Rachel McAdams‘ Linda Little. The pair find themselves the sole survivors of a plane crash, where they must look past their differences in order to survive.
O’Brien’s Bradley is flawed, to say the least. The actor told ABC Audio he wasn’t afraid of playing someone audiences may hate.
“I love watching flawed characters in films. I feel like that’s so much of kind of the history of cinema,” O’Brien said. “I think that such a reason that we find it so appealing of an exploration is that it’s human, you know? So not only was I not afraid of it, but for me, I saw it as being such an amazing opportunity.”
The actor said playing a villainous character like Bradley was a great way to flex his comedy chops.
“I found him hilarious. I was like, ‘This guy is such an a******,"” O’Brien said. “I would love to hate this guy if I were seeing this movie.”
O’Brien even said certain people behind the scenes had reservations that Bradley might be too unlikeable. But he pushed against that to go even harder.
“There was slight fear that I would be very not likable to an extent that would ruin the movie, but I felt that that was my exact role to play to the piece. It would make a part of the engine turn.”
Even still, O’Brien said he saw something more dynamic in Bradley.
“There’s so many layers to him. I loved the challenge of starting off so, so smarmy and seeing that layer, but then like also really delving into the human parts of this person,” O’Brien said.
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