Joel Kinnaman Talks ‘Silent Night’ Fears and That Time Nicolas Cage’s Wildcat Ran Away

On paper, the wordless challenge of John Woo’s Silent Night would seem intimidating to most actors, but Joel Kinnaman has always tried to do more with less. The Swedish actor operates with the mindset that the camera can pick up one’s thoughts, and so he tries to trim his lines anytime an opportunity and agreement presents itself. Woo’s first American film in 20 years would prove to be the most extreme version of this exercise, as Kinnaman plays Brian Godlock, a grieving father who stops at nothing to take down the gang that is responsible for killing his young son and taking away his own ability to speak.

Considering the risky premise, Kinnaman felt just enough trepidation to take on the project that has now been received at both ends of the critical spectrum. (The Hollywood Reporter called it “gripping.”)

“If you get it wrong, it can really turn into dog shit. It’d be a failed attempt to do a movie with no dialogue, and that just sounds like a boring travesty,” Kinnaman tells THR now that the film has hit PVOD. “But it’s very cool to get to do a cinematic experiment, something that is artistically courageous. That’s what you dream of doing, and it happened to be with a legendary filmmaker.”

Earlier this year, Kinnaman’s thriller Sympathy for the Devil hit theaters, and he enjoyed a front row seat to the Nicolas Cage show. Cage has a very different process from Kinnaman, so the duo presented an interesting contrast on screen given Cage’s audacious approach and Kinnman’s more understated one. The latter recently presented an award to Cage at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, and he’ll never forget their first day of rehearsal in anticipation of Sympathy for the Devil.

“I knocked on his door, and when he opened it, he had pink hair. And he was like, ‘My wildcat fucking ran away for the third time,’” Kinnaman says in his best Nic Cage voice. “I then got a tour of his house, and he was like, ‘That’s my reptile manager.’ And then we went down to the basement to rehearse for the first time, and … he’d already spent countless hours working on the script to get to a point where he knew it by heart on the first day of rehearsal. So he’s a singular artist, and that’s why I pinched myself when I got to spend a month in a car with him, just soaking up his genius and lunacy.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Kinnaman also discusses the pros and cons of method acting, an approach he quickly abandoned on Silent Night.

So you were just in Saudi Arabia for the Red Sea International Festival. Did you get a chance to say hello to your tattoo artist, Will Smith? [Writer’s Note: Smith tattooed “SKWAD” on Kinnaman’s bicep.]

(Laughs.) I did! We hung out for a couple days. It was one of the highlights of the trip, actually.

And what about your carpool buddy, Nic Cage?

(Laughs.) I got to hang out with my carpool buddy, too! I actually got to present an award to Nic, and we hung out a little bit before and after. So it was all very cool.

Well, a couple years ago, you received a script called Silent Night with John Woo attached, and when you discovered that there’s no dialogue, what was the ratio of excitement versus fear?

I would say the [excitement-fear] ratio was something like 80:20. If you get it wrong, it can really turn into dog shit. It’d be a failed attempt to do a movie with no dialogue, and that just sounds like a boring travesty. But it’s very cool to get to do a cinematic experiment, something that is artistically courageous. That’s what you dream of doing, and it happened to be with a legendary filmmaker. So I’ll say 80:20, but I have to have some amount of fear in everything I do or I’m in trouble. That element of fear helps motivate and push you. 

Of your previous roles, was there one that had enough of non-verbal work to where you felt confident you could pull it off for a whole movie?

Well, I’ve always had this inclination. Coming up as a young actor, people were always clamoring to get more lines, because the people that speak the most are considered to be the most significant, but I was always trying to get rid of my lines. If I could convey the same thing without saying it, it’s going to be more interesting. When an older actor told me that nugget, it just stuck with me, and then I started noticing it when watching films. So, if you can get the same thing across without saying anything, it’s a better way to tell the story. It’s more subtle, and the audience gets to tell themselves the story in a way. You want to make the audience a co-creator, and having them perceive the inner dialogue is always more powerful. 

You initially tried to go method by not talking at all for a couple months, and while it didn’t stick, I was still surprised to hear you attempted it considering you’ve been on sets, one in particular [2016’s Suicide Squad], where method acting didn’t go over very well. 

(Laughs.)

Did you entertain the idea because you were alone for most of the movie and didn’t have to account for a huge ensemble?

Yeah, the benefits of method are exaggerated, but it piques people’s imagination in a way. In reality, I’ve actually done that sort of process, but I just don’t make the people around me call me Mr. President or whatever. But you stay concentrated in the character, and when you do that, you’re always rehearsing. So I would always find long stretches of time at night to go for walks and just interact with people and try an idea that I had: a way of talking, a mannerism or whatever. So it’s a way to try out the character, and if you’re doing that for a whole shoot, then you’re spending more time with the character, which has value. 

But I’m very active on my sets, and I’m very active in contributing ideas and collecting ideas from other team members. I love the collective creative process that filmmaking is, and if you’re singular in your process where you’re just always in character, then you lose out on all of that. You lose out on the input from all the other artists that are on the set. If something isn’t going in the right direction and the tone of a scene starts to tilt in a different way, then you have to be able to communicate that. But if you’re always in your character, then your hands become tied. 

Despite no dialogue, did you still have to do a lot of ADR for grunts and breaths and whatnot?

I did. It was actually one of the most emotional ADR sessions I’ve ever done. There were a lot of scenes with mourning, and Godlock would still make sounds even though he couldn’t make enough sounds to speak. So some of the scenes with intense grief had to be recreated or added to in ADR, and then there were a lot of grunts and breaths that needed to be done. 

Half the movie is Brian grieving and training, and most revenge movies would cut corners to get to the action sooner. So are you glad that you guys earned the action from a character standpoint?

Yeah, I thought that was a major key that would set this film apart. It’s a very intense journey that he ends up going on, so it’s very important that the audience feels like they’re with him on this journey. And cinematically, that’s what John was most interested in as well. It was portraying the dramatic scenes and telling the story without dialogue, and then using flashbacks and montages to show the passage of time. He really designed some beautiful shots to tell the story.

John explained to me how he dialed back his action style to be more realistic and character-driven, and it’s funny because this movie’s action is still insane by most standards. Could you still sense that he was restraining himself a little bit? 

Yeah, a lot of it wasn’t cooked up on the day, and the tone of the action was something that the whole team was very involved in building up. Together with the stunt coordinator, Jeremy Marinas, who’s going to become a very talented action director in his own right, we built the idea of how we wanted the action and the fights to look and feel, especially considering that Brian wasn’t a specialist in any way. He doesn’t have that many skills other than the few home-cooked skills he learned from training in the garage. So the idea was to instead make it really frenetic and messy and intense, and John was also very onboard with that idea. And fortunately, he wanted to shoot the action in a more modern way: longer takes and a little bit wider shots with much less cuts. And that’s an opportunity that the filmmaker can have when the actor does the majority of the stunt work. You can linger on shots much longer. So the tone and action style came from conversations between John and the stunt/fight coordinators.

Of all the difficult things you’ve done on screen, where does the staircase oner rank?

It’s pretty high. Mexico City also has a pretty high elevation. It’s above 7,000 feet, and it was like running stairs in the Colorado Mountains. So I was pretty beat up after those two days. 

I really dug Sympathy for the Devil, and I thought it was an interesting choice for you to make given the overlap with The Secrets We Keep. Were you willing to make that exception just to go toe to toe with Nic Cage?

I’d actually been on the hunt for something to do with Nic. We have the same agent, and I’d been hounding Andrew [Finkelstein] to find something. Most people are fans of Nic, but I also just have this professional fascination with the courage that he has in how he plays his characters. I wrote this speech for the award I presented to him in Saudi Arabia, and I talked about that. We talk a lot about “acting balls,” and Nic’s acting balls are like fucking watermelons. (Laughs.) Saudi Arabian TV actually cut that line. They didn’t want me to say that, but I’ve always been really fascinated with his balls. (Laughs.)

In conversation with Nic, he’s not really interested in naturalism and subtlety, which is what everyone goes for. He goes for big choices and insanity, and it’s just so cool to see someone dare to do something different over and over again. When you watch a reel of all of his work, nobody has a reel like that. Nobody. As I said earlier, I’ve gone the opposite way. I’m always going for the more subtle choice. I try to find some way to make a character meld with me and do just enough to tell the story. Sure, I change body language and cadence for characters, but I’m always looking for subtlety. And Nic is not. 

So when you work like Nic does, you risk missing here and there, but when you hit on something like he often does, you get these genius characters that go down in history. So he did not disappoint in Sympathy for the Devil. Our first day of rehearsal in Vegas, I knocked on his door, and when he opened it, he had pink hair. (Kinnaman begins a solid Cage impression.) He first said, “Hey!” And then he said, “Fuck!” And I was like, “What!?” And he was like, “My wildcat fucking ran away for the third time.” (Laughs.) So it just carried on from there.

I then got a tour of his house, and he was like, “That’s my reptile manager.” (Laughs.) And then we went down to the basement to rehearse for the first time, and he was completely off-book on the entire script. He’d already spent countless hours working on the script to get to a point where he knew it by heart on the first day of rehearsal. So he’s a singular artist, and that’s why I pinched myself when I got to spend a month in a car with him, just soaking up his genius and lunacy.

Did you guys discuss John Woo at all? 

We did! It was fun.

Lastly, when we spoke for James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad, I safely predicted that Rick Flag’s death would haunt John Cena’s character throughout Peacemaker season one, and it absolutely did. That probably doesn’t make you feel any better, but I just appreciate it when a beloved character’s death lingers for a while. Most shows or films move on as quickly as possible.  

Yeah, that’s cool. Being on set with John and James, you could really see that something was brewing between them. John’s improvs on the day were so ridiculous, and he’s just so funny. He really hit on something with that character. From day one, the character of Peacemaker melded with some part of John. It was destined to have a life past that movie.

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Silent Night is now available in movie theaters and PVOD.