Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Oscar Isaac

Episode Date: May 21, 2023

This week, Willie gets together with Oscar Isaac to talk about his prolific career that has ranged from "Inside LLewyn Davis", to "Star Wars", and his acclaimed new play on Broadway, "The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window”, nominated for a Tony Award. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. Got a good one for you this week with Mr. Oscar Isaac. The man has range. I think that's what we call it in the business. He can do just about anything as evidenced by his career. He broke out, you might remember, in 2013 in the Cohen Brothers movie Inside Lewin Davis. He was phenomenal in that, got nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, and then went on this crazy run, did a movie called A Most Violent Year with his friend and former Juilliard classmate, Jessica Chastain, won awards for that one. And then in 2015, here comes Star Wars, The Force Awakens and just totally changes his life, puts him on the map around the world.

He's done three of those. I mean, I won't even get into the whole IMDB page of his movies, which is Dune and X Machina and he's in Spider-Man animated movie that's coming out. guy has done it all. He actually started though on stage and he's back there now making his Broadway debut. He's done a whole bunch of plays but never on Broadway. He's starring in one called The Sign in Sydney Brewsteen's Window. He co-stars with Rachel Brosnahan of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel fame. It's really an extraordinary play and you'll hear as we discuss it. I'll let him explain what it's about exactly, but it's set in Greenwich Village in 1964, kind of on the cusp of everything that's happening. It's about to happen in the country and

terms of civil rights. And it is written by a playwright named Lorraine Hansberry who wrote a raisin in the sun, the iconic play. This was her next play. She actually died in the middle of the run of pancreatic cancer. She was only 34 years old, just a phenom in terms of being a playwright and being somebody on the front of this civil rights movement and everything else. And she died. So this play kind of was forgotten by history and hasn't been played much since then. This is only the third time it's ever been staged and they brought it back. So I'll let him explain. We'll talk through his amazing career. Talk about Star Wars. Talk about Spider-Man, all of the stuff he has going on. I think you really enjoy spending a little time right now with Oscar Isaac on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.

It's good to see, man. Thanks for doing this. He's so happy to. Yeah, what a cool spot. Yeah, right around the corner from where you're putting on this extraordinary play eight times a week. Yeah. We were just talking about how for all you've done, in the theater, this is actually your first Broadway show, which I guess I was surprised for some reason. It hasn't worked out, I guess, over the years. Has the experience lived up to your sort of dream of what Broadway would be like? Well, I think it happened in such a serendipitous way in a way that was not planned. You know, we did a very limited run at Bam in Brooklyn and with no sense that it would continue. And so when this kind of space opened up for us to move to the James Earl

Jones Theater and to, you know, take the play uptown, you know, it was just kind of shocking and we just kind of went with the flow of it. And the whole thing has just had this, kind of surprising, serendipitous surrender to it where just kind of giving myself over to the process and to what it's like. And so it's been surprising. It's been surprising how vocal the audiences are, how every night that, you know, it's a long, complicated, provocative play, and just connecting with people, and you feel like in such a deep way with a play that has so much to say, and it's just been incredibly rewarding,

and also an athletic feat. Yes, it is. Well, it is, as you say, it's almost three hours, 245. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. People will be, you can go down running the bathroom and have some Twizzlers or whatever. But it is, you know. It's an old-school play, you know, They used to make these plays that were these big, long epic play.

Right. So for people who don't know, the sign in Sidney Brewsteen's window is a Lorraine Hansberry play. She's the playwright behind a Raisin in the Sun. This one not as well known. No. Criminally overlooked. Yeah. Did you know anything about this play before it came to you?

I was complicit in that crime. By the way, me too. We're together on that. I knew nothing about it. I'd never heard of it. It was a friend of mine that mentioned it to me and mentioned that I should speak to Annie Kaufman, our incredible director, and we got together, and she told me about the play, and we did a reading, and it just hit me so incredibly hard because it dealt with a lot of

the things. This was a few years ago, you know, this idea of what to do when you feel like you've kind of put yourself out there politically, you know, emotionally. You've done what you feel was the right thing to do, and the results haven't been what you wanted and the feeling of withdrawing, wanting to withdraw into yourself, up to the mountains, up to, into abstractions, the great withdrawal from man. And, you know, and this was Lorraine Hansberry's call to action. You know, it was a real protest play. And if you think about, you know, this woman, this black queer woman, 33, 32, when she was writing this, in an incredibly hostile environment

towards people of color, particularly artists and particularly like black writers, you know. And to have such fearlessness in the way that she approached these characters and what she wanted to say about the people that she knew and the people that she loved that needed to be radicalized in order to change.

And this was right at the precipice of the civil rights movement and the psychedelic movement. And, you know, there's a line in the play where Sidney says, the world's about to crack right down the middle. We have to change or fall into the crack. And this is that moment that she's writing about.

Yeah, because it's set in 63. Yeah, 63, 64. Right. So we're just on the cusp of the Civil Rights Act and everything that's coming after that in the middle of the civil rights movement. And actually her writing of the play was kind of a radical act, as you say, because it wasn't going to be universally received. So if someone's thinking about going to see this and you just,

touched on it. What would you say this is about? Because I saw echoes of what we're living through today, even though this was set a half century ago. Yeah, well, it's like any, you know, incredibly insightful prophetic writing like Shakespeare. You know, I think that's the magic of these plays is that you hear a voice from the past that echoes so intensely in the moment. And I think in this play, there's so many moments of that. Just the prophetic nature of what we'd be going through with identity, you know, identity politics. That's a huge element of the play. All these people and who, the stories they tell about themselves and about each other and how they kind of, what, how they panic when those stories kind of dissolve in front of them.

You know, there's a, uh, um, Miriam Silverman, uh, who's been nominated for a Tony for her part as, um, Mavis, uh, one of the sisters is incredible and it's a kind of a magic trick of the whole play. This woman that you judge pretty harshly early on and you just see her transform in a moment and then go right back to the thing that she was too, you know, being an anti-Semite and, you know, a racist. And yet Lorraine deals with this character like she does with all the characters with such empathy. And I think for me, what it's really about that emotionally for me is public transgression. And now there isn't a lot of space for that nowadays. Right.

You know, these are people that, you know, for all intensive purposes, apart from Mavis, have a similar liberal leaning, you know, they're allies. And yet they're able to say the wrong things, horribly wrong things. They treat each other so poorly. And yet there is space for them to, to come back together and to be understood. And there's something that's quite freeing about watching something like that happen. And Sidney wants to change the world. He can be a little self-righteous about it at times.

There are moments of misogyny. You talked about the audience reacting. There were some gasps. I'm sure you hear them every night at some of the things he says. So what does he represent in this picture that you've just painted in the story? who is he at the center of it? Yeah, well, it's a fascinating thing that Lorraine, you know, looking through the different iterations

of the play that she was working on it, how it shifted. At first, it was about this friend of hers that put up a sign in her window and got a rock thrown through it. You know, she wasn't even someone that was very political, this friend of hers, I believe it was from like Oklahoma. And so she started with this idea, and then she switched it to this,

this man, this Jewish intellectual man that she says that she hadn't seen this kind of person be put on stage. This is pre- Woody Allen, you know, this is this kind of later we would, you know, kind of get to know this archetype in many different forms, but she really wanted to show this kind of Greenwich Village, intellectual, liberal person with lots of blind spots. Yes. And these were the people that she was also appealing to because she was living in the village at the time. And so this is the kind of guy that has it, has the empathy, has the knowledge to be a real radical, but is disillusioned.

And so when we meet Sydney, he's disillusioned with politics, with exhorting people. He's done it all. He's been part of every committee you can think of. And he just wants to just like do his little arts and crafts things and really just go off to the. mountain with his banjo and his wife who he's kind of come up with a story about who she is and she's changing right in front of them as well and it's a reckoning that starts to happen slowly you know these he calls them these vapors in the air they start to kind of attack it's this this evil around him which is his complacency yeah and he's you can tell he's even battling

with that too sure it's easier to be complacent than to have to actually do the work and To put yourself out there again. And he's actually, he's got an ulcer from it. Yes. Trying not to care. Right. Trying not to care. It's the bookend of the play is him starting with saying, like, can we just not, you know, do all this feeling stuff and talk about, you know, the mother crying and this and that.

Can we just not? And at the end, you know, as Iris is sobbing and weeping after a huge traumatic loss, the thing he says is the first thing for us is to feel again. And that's the first thing to feel and then we'll make something strong from this. And so I think, again, it's Lorraine's call to not let yourself get numbed out with cynicism. And it took that for him to feel again. Well, that's the thing, you know. It's like everybody else is abstract. When the young black kid dies of an overdose at the beginning, it's like, yeah, it's too bad, but what can I do?

But when it comes home, you know, when it happens to his sister, you know, that's, that's, that's what it takes and that's sometimes the consequences. You know, we keep it at bay, we keep it at bay, but eventually it's going to hit us. Hey guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Oscar Isaac right after the break. Welcome back now more of my conversation with Oscar Isaac. You mentioned Iris, played by the great Rachel Brosnahan. I have to believe part of the appeal of this project was that you got to work with her

eight times a week. Yeah, well, we did a couple readings of the play together, and it just came alive with her. You know, she's so funny and lacks any kind of vanity, which is amazing, because, of course, she's so beautiful. And just kind of opens up her heart every single night, and it's an incredible thing to witness, you know, that kind of flexibility between humor and pathos. and hysteria and solemnity. She just kind of runs the gamut the entire night. It's amazing. We joked about a two-hour, 45-minute performance,

but there has to be some strategy for you to maintain that pace. As I said to you a minute ago, I'm watching you at the end of that play. Wow, that was a lot. And then I thought, he's got to go eat lunch and do that again in a couple of hours. So how do you, as an actor, I'm always interested how it's obviously so much different than film acting. How do you as an actor, prepare yourself and get through those eight performances a week to bring that same level of quality and energy and emotion that you do? Yeah, it really is, it's an act of surrendering, really. You know, because I can kind of try to be like,

oh, well, I'll make this flag post, or I won't give too much energy here. I won't do this, but, but that never really works. It's a little more like, you know, surfing. You kind of paddle out and you see what's there and you just kind of loose and open. and you try to get up on the waves, and sometimes you'll fall off, and sometimes you catch something, and it's exhilarating, and each time it's different, you're still on the same board, you still have this material. And I think we've gotten to the point now as a company where the structure of the play holds us, so that even, it's amazing as an actor. Sometimes I feel like, ah, that didn't quite work, and I get a response that's very intense. You know, people get really

moved. And then some days where I feel like it's really working and the, you know, the people seem a little more nonplossed afterwards. So it's hard to tell. It's hard to tell. At this point, it's just we're able to trust it. And then, of course, just, you know, being on these steamers all the time and trying to sleep in. My wife is definitely, you know, taking the brunt of taking care of the kids right now. And we'll have a good vacation in the summer. You will have earned that vacation for Sure. It has to be so gratifying, though, with everything you've put into this to see the crowds, to hear them be vocal the way they are. And the critical reception, too, for your first Broadway outing, it's got to feel great. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a provocative play, you know? And so it's a kind of anti-establishment play. She's one of, like, the great nonconformists Lorraine Ansberry. And she's doing that in her play. And so the fact that it. It does provoke people. Annie and I talked about it too.

It's like both of us have this kind of rebellious streak in us. And yet the conflict is also you want to be accepted by the mainstream as well. It's like we want to say no to the mainstream. We don't want them to say to us. But that's part of what we're doing. And I think that's also what feels so great about it is that coming to Broadway with a play that's been overlooked, that's been called unfinished or been underestimated, I think. And to kind of take up that mantle and come to it

and something that hasn't been tested, that hasn't been done 100 times, you know. There isn't lots of great versions of different actors that have come and done their take on it. You know, this is a, it feels like a new play. And it has that energy to it. And I think that's what feels the most rewarding about it. Well, that's the beauty of it.

Here we are talking about this 50-year-old play that was forgotten, and then we're elevating it and giving her the credit she's due. So it's very cool. Part of the reason I love your success and your first Broadway outing too is because as I understand it,

this was sort of always the dream or the plan from the time you were a young kid putting on productions at home. Yeah. When did you sort of decide acting might be my thing? Again, it was like, it wasn't a decision. It's just what I was doing. As early as I could remember,

I was doing that. I was trying to do it at school. I was doing my own versions. My dad had a video camera. I would make movies. It never was like a career goal. It just started. It's just what I was doing.

And it grew and grew. And then once I was in high school, like, weirdly enough, that I started doing more music at that point and bands and at the same time making movies with my friends. And it just seemed like that was the path, you know, that I just, again, needed to kind of surrender to this thing that was happening. But you were writing stuff in an early age.

Yeah, yeah. Plays, musicals. Yeah, yeah. That's just what got to me somehow. I think that there was always a part of me that felt like an observer, not really participating in life, but more standing back and watching it and observing it and commenting on it a bit. You know, it's funny because there's a character in the play that says something very similar. I was just thinking that, yeah.

But that's how I've always felt as well. A bit of a Greek chorus. Yeah, yeah. Just kind of outside of a situation, never really in it. Always a part of me. And as I got older, and I started being up acting and doing art, it was a little bit of guilt there, you know, which is always like I'm always watching it to take something,

you know, being like a vulture of my own life, you know, to use that for later material for later. But I realized it was, I became an artist because of, of that. Yeah. You know, because that's what I was, that was just a natural inclination. And and it's, it's, it's not really career. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, um, it's storytelling. Do you think the fact that you were an observer was the product of you're bouncing around a little bit with your family and being new in a lot of places and trying to figure it out? Yeah, as an immigrant family, you know, I came from Guatemala a young age and we moved around so much. And so, yeah, there was, it was constantly coming to a new place trying to assess, figure out what role to play. And, and yeah, I think that that probably developed a bit from that. Stick around for more of my conversation with Oscar Isaac right after a quick break.

Welcome back now to the rest of my conversation with Oscar Isaac. You've talked about you grew up in a very religious household. How did your family feel about this acting? Like the thing that is important to me is what you were saying through your actions effectively is this artistic path that I think I might want to do. Was that well received in your house? It was. Yeah.

My father's, he would make movies with his brothers when he was younger on like an 8mm camera and, and was constantly writing music and playing music, even though he had gone through quite a religious conversion. It kind of coincided with Dylan's saved album, so we listen to Saved a lot. So that was always there. And the same thing with my mother, my grandmother on my mom's side, she was a singer in Guatemala. And so it was just, it was, it never felt like it was something that was going to, you know, be detrimental from my parents' standpoint. They saw, they saw something that was inevitable in a way. And so they were always incredibly supportive. We've seen the musical side pay off even in this play.

Yeah. Very nice on the band, Joe, my friend. Thanks. Thanks. Very impressive. Yeah, I was excited to take up that task. I actually had talked to T-Bone Burnett, who worked on Lewin Davis. And when this came up and asking him about the banjo, what do you think?

And so he gave me some pointers of what kind of banjo to get and what would sound good for this thing. You can play, man. You can play. So you have that band. I know you've been asked this before, but there's a moment where you play maybe in the same festival as Green Day. I've always said we opened to them, but we opened for Green Day. But we just happened to play at the same festival in like a stage, you know, maybe like five hours before. But it still counts.

We'll cut this together that you opened for Green Day. Yeah, you were big. But it certainly has paid off for you, all that musical talent that you developed back then. So how do you end up up the street here at Juilliard then at 21 years old? So you've got these dreams. You're writing plays. Going to Juilliard means, okay, this is something I'm really going to pursue. Yeah, that was a real choice.

But even the way that happened also was kind of like a falling into. I came up to do a very small play up here in New York at the Cherry Lane Theater. It was the first time I did a play up here. playing a young Fidel Castro. And I walked by Juilliard. And I said, oh, my God, here's Juilliard. And I walked in, and I said, can I get a application? Like, oh, well, the application was due last week already.

But you could get one for the following year. I was like, can I, can I? And I just kind of convinced you, can I just take it anyway? And I filled it out that night. I came back the next morning. And I just kind of schmoozed her a little bit. And I said, could you just please? It just happened last week.

I had no idea. I'm just visiting now. And so they put my application in. And then a month later or so, I got a call to come and auditioned for the faculty. And I had some of the, I remember Jerry Baman, who was a great actor who was in the play I was in. And Yule Vasquez, they were all these great actors that were in the play I was doing. And they all helped me with my audition. And then I auditioned and got in.

And that's when I had to let go of the band in Miami and be like, all right. So I'm going to do this. And that was one of the things that my dad said. He was like, you know, do what's before you with all your might, and this is what's before you. And so, so yeah, that began this path. I haven't left New York since. That's amazing. You charmed your way right into Juilliard.

Yeah. But people think, oh, you went to Juilliard, the path is paved with gold. You come out of there. I mean, it's still, you're struggling, right? Yeah. For, I don't know, a decade after that. Yeah, yeah. To get the gigs you hoped to get, right?

Yeah, it was. It was about a... Almost? Yeah, about a decade. after that, that I got my first lead role, which was Lewin Davis, inside Lou and Davis. You know, I did some supporting roles, and I got some, I got, you know, I did Shakespeare in the park a couple times and, did some off-Broadway, but that was the first, that was like

my first big role. I was just looking this morning, Lewin Davis premiered at Cannes 10 years ago this week. Mm-hmm. So we're in the middle of Cannes week right now. That's crazy. And so that was a decade ago. Wow. When you stop and think about what that film and that role and your ability to lead a movie in that way,

what that did for your career and your life, what goes through your mind? Well, just the irony that it's 10 years ago, and now I'm on Broadway doing, you know, back in the 60s in the village. You know, that's true. I'm playing folk music. Yeah, the circular nature of that thing. Keep coming back to it. I know. I wonder what I'm going to be doing in the 60s and the folk scene in 10 years from now.

But, yeah, no, it changed everything for me. And, like, as an artist, what it meant, you know, it just, it not only gave me a certain kind of confidence, but it just kind of aligned me with the kind of things that I wanted to do, which is just interested in difficult people. I'm interested in, you know, that was another one where it was like, some people were like, yeah, I don't really get it. He's kind of an asshole, you know. I'm like, yeah, but isn't everybody? Isn't everybody kind of an asshole? You know? And there's just something about those kind of characters that I think I find really heartbreaking and beautiful.

You know, the ones that seem to not be people that are worthy of our attention. And yet still have something to say, you know, I think that there's just something about those kinds of characters that really moves me. Yeah, because on paper it could be mundane. What's interesting about this guy. And you see it and you go, oh, right, he's all of us in some way. I don't know why. Even like being a kid, like we're driving by or on a highway, I'll look at a place that looks like really kind of scary and boring and sad.

And I just get my imagination fires off of like, what do you feel like to, like, live there all the time and to have to go to that mechanic shop every day, this kind of gray weather. I don't know why. There's something, there's some kind of gravitational pull towards that kind of stuff for me. Well, so that movie, as you say, this incredible run for you.

And I mentioned Jessica Chastain, your classmate at Juilliard. And then you start to work with her in movies in a most violent year, which you got tons of acclaim for that too. That had to be a moment to say, we were in school together, not knowing how this was going to turn out for either of us. And here we both are doing our thing. Yeah. Well, it was, I remember, you know, I was still auditioning a lot when Terrence Malick movie came out. And I just, I went to the theater. And I was so moved and just could finally see her just expand.

Tree of Light. Yeah, Tree of Life. Such a beautiful movie. And so just seeing, and I knew she had done so much work that just hadn't kind of, you know, the one movie didn't kind of come out at the time when she thought it was going to. And there had been some struggle there and sort of finally see it kind of break open for it. It was so thrilling. And then she went to bat for me for most violent year.

And it was such a cheerily. for me. And we got to do that. And it was so, so exciting. And I've just stayed close ever since. And our kids are close to the same age. And then we got to do scenes from a marriage, which was brutal. But again, also a real revelatory time. It's cool. You guys kind of have a thing going. People like seeing you on screen together. You do pretty well together. And then your world completely goes crazy when you're cast in Star Wars, of course. Force Awakens when JJ gives you that phone call. Was that a project you were aware was in development and that you wanted to be a part of?

Or was that just a shot out of the dark from JJ? I mean, I knew of it, but I didn't really think that there was necessarily something in it for me. So, yeah, that was a call out of the dark. I was actually doing the most violent year at the time when I got the call. I remember that because I still have the voicemail of Al. Robert Brooks calling me pretending to be JJ, saying like, you don't have to come out here. What are you going to be a robot? And so, yeah, I noticed.

I went out there and, yeah, it was a complete trajectory shift for me for the next five years, six years of doing those movies. It's obviously thrilling for guys like us who grew up on the Star Wars movies. Was there anything daunting about it knowing that there's going to be this expectation? It's this huge thing that people are so. excited about and I'm representing this thing that means so much to so many people. Yeah, I guess I've never been kind of smart enough to think about it in those terms, you know?

Don't overthink it. Yeah, yeah. What was daunting was being part of that machinery. Yeah. You know, and I think it really only hit me as far as like the, obviously I knew about the audience, but like I think it was the first Star Wars celebration when we came out and talked about religious experience. I mean, that was, it was such like a religious frenzy when we first came out to that stage.

And it was just, you know, 50,000 people with lightsabers just screaming their heads off. That was like, whoa. But, yeah, the machinery of being there. I mean, I remember it was like a second take or something and, you know, doing a scene. And Kathy Kennedy herself coming up and, like, changing my hair and being like, you know, I was like, Cathy Kennedy just changed. It was like, doing my hair for a second thing. Like, oh man, they're really micromanaging this thing.

This means a lot. This is going to be a long shoe, too. I mean, but she's, I love Kathy. She's been an incredible ally and friend and just someone that's just been such a great person to talk to as, you know, as I move into producing. Yeah. As a thing as well. But, um, but yeah, that was, uh, it was monumental. It's huge.

And what did it do to your life? What did it mean to you have interviewed Adam Driver about it? He said, I knew it was going to be big, but not until I was on the other side. I didn't realize, oh, this is sort of. have changed everything. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it did. I think I've been able to insulate myself to a certain extent.

Part of that is living in New York as well. You know, where I think a lot of people just also don't give a shit. It's so true. Everyone's so busy. They've got their own stuff. They're like, oh, it's that guy. Okay, whatever. So, so, you know, it didn't, I don't feel like there's a huge shift in my day-to-day

after that thing. But of course, you know, what it meant for my family. I was really, you know, my uncle who passed away last year really, really close. And he was in, Star Wars meant everything to him growing up. So I got to bring him to the sets. And I got to, you know, JJ even put him in the movie and both the first one and the last one. Really? This was like a little.

Oh, what a gift to give him. It was such an amazing thing for him. And it was such a lifeline for him. And so to share that with. With him, I think for me, has been the big takeaway. And of course, what it means to a lot of people, especially when I see little kids, you know, that look up to, you know, seeing a character

that also looks a bit more like them, you know. Yeah. You know, there's still, you know, Latino actors, you know, it's a few and far between, you know, there's more, but it's still a very special thing. Something really special that happened on Tuesday was Rita Moreno, who originated the role of Iris in 1964 on Broadway, came to the show on Tuesday,

and we brought her up on stage. And it was something so special for me that as this Guatemalan Cuban kid, dreaming of one day being on a Broadway stage, in this play, written by this queer black woman in 1964 in a time of great hostility, about provocation,

about inclusion, to invite the legend, the legendary Latin American actress Rita Moreno who originally the role onto the stage. It was just something that was just so moving about that. And to tie those two connected half century of history together. That's amazing. So your range obviously goes from those big budget movies. You're talking about this amazing play to Spider-Man.

Come on, man. You got the animated Spider-Man coming out. That's right. But you're sort of like a parallel universe Spider-Man, as I understand it. Is that right? Well, you know, the, the, the, the, the Spider-Verse films, these two, the last one, which is incredible. I think it's probably the best Spider-Man on film, I think I've seen, you know, it's just so funny. And it's just, the art is incredible.

Yeah, it's all about what was very wise about what they did is focusing on, on Miles Morales as Spider-Man. And the whole question of, like, who gets to say that they're Spider-Man? right so it's like sneaky there's a political thing in there you know about like with the fan of boys it's like well no the real spider man is peter parker and he looks like this he's not a little you know half dominican half you know black kid you know that's not real spider man and so the question of these movies is like well who is spider man who gets to say who gets to tell that story and so by breaking it into this multiverse of different spider people we get to explore that even further and the the one that I get to play is a guy named Miguel O'Hara, who's half Mexican, half Irish Spider-Man from Spider-Man

in New York, Future Spider-Man. And he's someone that because of a lot of trauma is very much about control, controlling how things go, what the outcome is, and what needs to happen in order for things to be okay. And so he ends up being a bit of an antagonist for this live wire that is my own. Morales, Morales, who maybe shouldn't even be here. Right. And what do you get, like, that experience, the animated thing, all that? Is that, in some ways, more difficult to get what you want into the character when you can't

show yourself and express yourself or easier? No, I think it's just different. It's just an exciting new avenue to, of expression, you know. Sometimes obstructions create way more creative outcomes, you know, because you're forced to kind of do something different because you don't have all the other stuff. So that was just such a fun process with Kemp Powers and Phil Lord. It was basically the three of us just kind of spitballing, making each other laugh. You know, I brought in, you know, speaking of my uncle, I brought in some say in some sayings of my uncle that he would say all the time that would make me crack up and we got

them into the movie and, you know, finding, finding this personality, this specific guy. What makes him so funny is that he's like the one not funny Spider-Man. Right, right. All Spider-Man are like so good with the quips And he just doesn't have that No one-liners Yeah which is in itself is kind of hilarious So that was just it was a blast to work with those guys

That's great You joked in your SNL monologue about like how you can kind of Do anything The way people look at you Yeah, you can do that, he can do that And you pull them all off Whether you're doing Spider-Man animator You're doing Lewin Davis or you're doing

Sidney Brewsteen so it's so great to talk to you Thank you for the time Appreciate it. Enjoyed it. Thank you. Thanks. My big thanks to Oscar for a great conversation, you can catch him in The Sign in Sidney Bruce Dean's window at the James Earl

Jones Theater on Broadway, now through July the 2nd. And my thanks to all of you for listening again this week. If you want to hear more of these conversations every week, be sure to click follow so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune into Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.