So what did you think of the script and this character?

I liked it. I mean, I’m not a Marxist Marxist, I’m more of an anarchist, but there’s a lot of the Marxist ideas that I love. So the thought of playing a Marxist captain of a $250 million luxury guy was appealing. The script was amazing. He lets people try stuff and everything, but the script even if you just shoot it exactly as it was when I first read it was incredible. You rarely see that kind of talent. He’s just brilliant the way he gets you in a situation, it makes you uncomfortable. He’s the master of That tension, that discomfort.

Your character shows up for only part of the film, when they’re on this yacht together. But was there ever a possibility of him going to the island?

There was an idea to do that, but I just schedule-wise couldn’t make it work. The idea was I get on the island and we’re sitting there in a circle in the group and I start laughing hysterically and then a coconut falls, hits me on the head and kills me.

How long did you end up shooting your part of this?

A couple of weeks. I loved doing it. I was supposed to be there like literally March or April 2020 right at the start [of the COVID 19 outbreak] and I was just like, “I’m gonna bail.” I thought, I guess we’ll kiss this one goodbye. And they said, we’ll wait for you, so I didn’t get there till June, but things were still, you know, crazy, but it was an incredible experience. I just think that the way he works is so interesting — he’s always shaping things and moving things. And if I try to do something funny, he doesn’t like that. He likes humor to come from just social interaction. That’s, that’s why you don’t see me going over the top, which I probably would have.

Since it was the early days of COVID, what did it feel like for you on set?

It wasn’t quite as extreme as subsequently when I worked after that on bigger projects. That’s a bigger, bigger hassle, where everybody’s got people walking around yelling “Red zone! Masks! Put your masks on!” Mask and goggles, even a face shield. And I think it’s not very conducive to good work. As one who doesn’t believe in the germ theory, I find it rather absurd.

So it made it difficult to work for you?

Yeah, it makes it difficult. And they’re still keeping these absurd protocols. You know, the American economic forum did a study and they studied all these different aspects of what went on in the pandemic, and they all the states in the U.S. that didn’t do the protocols fared better by far than the states that did. I’m sick of like, you’re wearing a mask., and you think it contains your breath. — but if it did you’d die, you’d be breathing in your own carbon monoxide.