Movie Interviews
In ‘Spider-Man,’ ‘The Odyssey’ or ‘The Bear,’ Jon Bernthal loves to ‘take it too far’
FA: Jon Bernthal, The Odyssey
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Jon Bernthal plays Menelaus in Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey.He’s pictured above at Comic-Con International in San Diego in July 2017.
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Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
Actor Jon Bernthal says he approaches his roles with “reckless abandon,” whether he’s playinga Spartan king in The Odyssey, or reprising his role as the Punisher in the new Spider-Man film, A Brand New Day. It’s also a philosophy he brought to the first monologue he gave in an acting class as a student at Skidmore College.
The students had been told to bring something they cared about and explain the object’s significance to the class — but Bernthal had forgotten the assignment. So at the last minute, he grabbed his catcher’s glove he had for baseball practice and spun a story about how his mother had given it to him on her deathbed. The truth was that Bernthal’s mother was alive and well — but the other students didn’t know that.
“While I was telling the story, [I noticed] the sort of grip, the real palpable grip that I have over the other folks in the room and I saw the emotion from them. And I knew it was something,” Bernthal says. “I was blown away. It was an out-of-body experience.”
Bernthal likens the moment in class to a street fight or a football game: “You stop thinking, you get out of your own head and you just go forward and you try to connect with something bigger.”
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In the case of The Odyssey, “something bigger” meant filming the movie’s iconic Trojan horse sequence.Bernthal’s character is one of more than a dozen warriors crammed inside the belly of a wooden horse that sits partially submerged in water. Some of the actors were positioned higher up in the horse, avoiding contact with the freezing water, but Bernthal wound up neck-deep. He says he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I love that I got to work for [filmmaker] Chris [Nolan] and … if he wanted to send somebody, I wanted to be that first one, for sure. I would jump at that again,” Bernthal says. “Our grit and our dedication is the one thing that we have control of in this world … and I love doing this.”
Bernthal previously appeared in the series The Walking Dead and won an Emmy award for his portrayal of Mikey in the Hulu series The Bear.
Interview highlights
On being on set with Odysseus’ men
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There was a group of [actors] that were Odysseus’ men that were on this journey throughout the whole piece. And a lot of them, you know, were in the background, a lot them didn’t take their helmets off for the majority of the picture. But I feel that that group of people really was the backbone of the film, performance-wise. They add so much, they bring so much in every day. They are grinding and grinding and what I was so grateful for is that I really got to be a part of that group for the first month and a half. … I was inspired by them.
On playing The Punisher in Spider-Man
I was quite trepidatious and hesitant about sort of getting into the superhero world. It wasn’t something that I was looking to do. … I love to sort of take it too far, to try to push myself to a place, push the audience to a place, where they can no longer be with this character, but then try to win them back through showing the fragility … showing how broken-hearted they are, showing how much pain they have.
On college actingteacher Alma Becker, who urged him to study in Russia
I would have done anything Alma told me to do. I believed in her. She believed in me. … She was a very, very wise woman. … [I was] this sort of private school kid from D.C. who thought he was all big and bad. … But mostly, you know, Russia is and was a place with such a rich theatrical history where being an actor is such a serious profession. You can’t do it without real rigorous training. There’s statues of actors in the city. It’s much more akin to being a soldier. …
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Boy, did she give it to me and sort of rip me apart. … I owe Alma everything. She ended up marrying my wife and I. She is the defining figure in my life that changed everything.
On moving to Russia to pursue acting
Living in this tiny little place with four other people, I slept on the floor, we turned the lights on, the cockroaches would go everywhere; you’d feel them climbing over you all at night. The buildings had curfews, so you could only get in and out at certain times, and then if you needed to get out, you throw the fire hose down and you’d rappel down out of the windows. I mean, it was a wild place in a wild time, but the most alive, the most impactful time of my life, without a doubt.
On getting into fights when he was younger
I saw my older brother get picked on a good bit. And I know that I sort of made a choice that that was never gonna happen to me. … I fell into sort of a natural protector role for my little brother, and then I think it just kind of got carried away. I think never underestimate the power of fear and shame and I think you can go from somebody who’s very scared into somebody who is very scary. …
You also then have a potential to go to the next place … where you’re comfortable and you’re confident and you are open. You’re open to all kinds of people. You’re open to all kinds of thoughts. And you’re not led by fear. You’re not led by shame. … You become curious. And I do genuinely believe that’s where I am now. I’m really hungry and open and curious. I really try not to judge folks, and I really do see that I’ve found wisdom and grace and beauty in folks that a lot of people would label as some of the scariest people out there.
Ann Marie Baldonado and Joel Wolfram produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
