Interview: Miles Teller Discusses His Trip Down the ‘Rabbit Hole’

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CHICAGO – Miles Teller was star-struck. He had just landed his first film role, and found himself on a set surrounded by some of the biggest actors in Hollywood. Many of his scenes took place on a park bench, where he had tearful and poignant conversations with co-star Nicole Kidman. And yet, throughout it all, Teller held his own, delivering a carefully modulated performance of striking depth and nuance, solidifying his status as an actor of great promise.
 
Based on David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Rabbit Hole” explores the struggles of a couple, Becca (Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart), whose lives are thrown into disarray after their young son is accidentally killed by a teenage driver, Jason (Teller). The role earned Kidman her best reviews in years, as well as an Oscar nomination. Teller went on to star in two more features due out this year: Craig Brewer’s remake of “Footloose,” and Nima Nourizadeh’s comedy, “Project X.” Hollywood Chicago spoke with Teller about his first major acting gig, the atmosphere created onset by director John Cameron Mitchell, and the real-life accident that brought him a deeper understanding of his character.
 
HollywoodChicago.com: How did your initial interest in sports broadcasting lead you to a career in acting?
 
Miles Teller: I have a die-hard passion for sports. That was my first love. When you’re a little kid playing little league, you want to be a baseball player. So I was looking into it and thinking of going to Syracuse for broadcast journalism. In my [high school] TV production class, I would host the morning show, and I liked being in front of a camera. I was also a fan of the show, “Sports Center.” Those guys seemed to be very witty and entertaining but also possessed this massive sports knowledge. I was playing sports all year round in high school, so I didn’t think I would have the chance to do drama. I was doing kickboxing lessons with one of my best friends when he said, “Did you hear about the new musical [“Footloose”] they’re doing at the high school? We have to do this.” I said, “What are you talking about? That doesn’t really make sense.” And he said, “I’ll tell you what, since I’m giving you a ride home from school anyway, let’s just do this play and see what happens.” So we both auditioned for it, and he ended up getting the lead part, Ren, and I got the part of Willard. Flash forward seven years later, and I’m doing the same part in the movie, which is pretty wild. After I did my first play, I was hooked. I had the bug, as they say.
 

Miles Teller and Nicole Kidman star in John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole.
Miles Teller and Nicole Kidman star in John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole.
Photo credit: Lionsgate Entertainment

HollywoodChicago.com: As a student, were you able to perfect your technique in front of the camera as well as onstage?
 
Teller: The TV Production program in high school was initially where I got my feet wet in front of the camera, although I remember when I was eight or nine, I went to two summer camps. One was a cooking camp and one was a film and television camp where teachers taught you how to work a video camera, and then at the end of the week, you got a VHS tape of everything you did. But what’s funny is that on my VHS tape, there’s no sound, so my origins are really in the silent films, I guess. [laughs] I started in theatre in high school, although I had a friend who was making seven-minute, ten-minute short films. I did one with him called “Moonlighters,” which you can find online but I hope nobody ever sees it, because I was just fifteen, and…it was before it’s time, man! People just didn’t get it. [laughs] And then at NYU, I went into the Tisch program, which is a theatre-based acting program, and I spent my first two years learning the Lee Strasberg Method technique. And then for the next two years—NYU has a film and television acting program called Stonestreet Studios, which they’re still running. They do a really good job of introducing theatre actors to film. They also bring in agents and managers every Monday, and you can audition for them. So that’s a really great program. I’d like to plug them.
 
When you’re [performing] in a theater, every single person in that audience needs to be a part of that performance. Whatever you’re expressing needs to reach the back of the house. It’s a bigger space so you have to be bigger. But [in film], the camera is this silent bystander, this fly on the wall, this [presence] that’s just there to listen, so you can really do it for yourself more, as opposed to broadcasting out your performance.
 
HollywoodChicago.com: You had your first professional screen role in an episode of ABC’s “The Unusuals.” What was your experience like on that set?
 
Teller: I first started auditioning the January of my senior year, and I think I got that in March. And it’s funny because when I booked it, it was at the same time as my spring break. Every spring break, my friends and I get together, and that year, I planned a whole trip to Key West. I booked the hotel and everything. Then my manager tells me, “You just booked ‘The Unusuals.’” He was all excited, and I was like, “Ah, I gotta think about this.” He’s goes, “What are you talking about?” [laughs] And then I thought about it for a little bit and said, “Yes, I absolutely need to do this.” But that was great. I remember when I first showed up onset and they were shooting this scene right in the middle of a street in Brooklyn. In New York, you never have privacy, so anybody walking down the street can stop and look at the [filming]. And then, after an hour or two of hair and makeup, I was in that scene, and the people were all watching. It was very surreal.
 
The cast for that show was just incredible. It had Jeremy Renner, Adam Goldberg, Amber Tamblyn and Harold Parrineau. What I learned in TV is that everything happens so fast. There’s so much improv involved. I remember there’s a scene in the script where it just says, ‘My dad is in the jail cell. He falls down and collapses and I go to see if he’s okay.’ But when I got on the set, the [director] wanted to film it within the next ten or fifteen minutes, and said, “You collapse next to him and I want you to scream, your dad’s gone, blah blah blah. Okay, let’s set it up. Action.” And then as I’m screaming next to my dad, he’s yelling out, “More! Just keep going, keep going.” It’s one of those times where you can’t be the new guy on the set, and you just learn as you go. The guy who played my dad had a ton of TV credits, so whenever we had time, I would pick his brain.
 
HollywoodChicago.com: Actors tend to learn more from their fellow collaborators simply through observing their work, as opposed to garnering concrete advice.
 
Teller: Yeah, absolutely. It’s not one of those things where you can watch somebody do something and then you can instantly replicate it. But certainly, I think the best asset that you have as an actor is your [ability to] be in a space and absorb as much as you can. It’s interesting to see how two different people need two completely different directions. With John on “Rabbit Hole,” he’s working with Nicole Kidman, who’s obviously done a couple things. Then he has Aaron Eckhart and Dianne Wiest and all of these experienced actors, and then he has me. How he would have to interact with me on the set is completely different, especially because Nicole and Aaron and all those guys were pretty much in character, more or less, throughout the filmmaking. Since John is an actor himself, he was really sensitive and observant. He’d watch his actors do something and then just sprinkle a little guidance. He never had a megaphone, and would just come over and whisper a direction in my ear.
 
As for “Project X,” I don’t even know what I can say about that movie, but it was not intimate. It was a little crazier on that set. “Footloose” was a bigger studio film and the producers were onset all the time. But Craig is an independent film director himself, and “Footloose” was his first big studio film. I could always talk to him. He and I would be going through the lines beforehand, and I would say, “How about this? I think this is funnier.” He would think about it and either say, “That sounds funny, do it,” or, “Do it my way first and then I’ll let you do it.” So I’ve been really lucky. I haven’t worked with any directors who made me feel like I couldn’t speak up if something was affecting my performance in a negative way. It has always felt like a collaboration.

Rabbit Hole was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on April 19, 2011.
Rabbit Hole was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on April 19, 2011.
Photo credit: Lionsgate Entertainment

HollywoodChicago.com: Describe the atmosphere that John and your fellow co-stars created for you on the set.
 
Teller: John was sort of my linchpin in the whole thing because he picked me and Nicole gave the thumbs up. John and I were both living in New York at the time, so before we started filming, we would meet up once or twice a week at his apartment. We’d walk around the West Village, and later I realized that it was a way for him to make me more comfortable. There were no rehearsals. I met Nicole two weeks before [filming] at a lunch. It was me, the director, the DP and one of the producers. For the whole time, it was pretty much Nicole, the director and DP talking about the movie and different screen shots and Lars von Trier and all these things that I had no opinion about, but I didn’t care. I was just sitting there eating my salad and acting professional.
 
My first day onset was that scene where I go into the kitchen and Aaron yells at me. I had never met Aaron, and hadn’t even seen him until, “Action.” I asked John what he wanted me to do in the scene, and he literally told me, “I don’t want you to say anything about it. I just want you to walk into the kitchen and surprise me.” And I was like, “Jesus, I’m drowning here, John. Help me out.” So then I walk into the kitchen, say something to Becca, and then sure enough, there’s Aaron Eckhart. And in my mind, all I can see is frickin’ Aaron Eckhart. All I could see was Two-Face. That’s the thing about acting is you end up working with actors that you’re fans of. You have to put yourself on that same plane with them and just play the scene. It took a couple takes for me to not see them as actors. At one point, I remember admiring their acting while we were doing the scene, and I almost wanted to yell, ‘Cut,’ myself. In that particular scene, John told Aaron that it was my first film, my first day, and asked if he could just scare the s—t out of me, which he did.
 
After Nicole and I did our first scene, she was like, “Great first day of filming, Miles,” and gave me a hug. I remember showing up the next day, and I think she and Dianne had just finished doing a scene in the basement. It might’ve been Dianne’s monologue about the brick in the pocket. I went over to Nicole and said, “Hey, good morning, how are you?” She just looked at me with this glazed over look in her eyes and then just turned around and walked away. And I thought, ‘Holy s—t, I shouldn’t have done that. I overstepped my boundaries.’ When I talked to one of the producers, he said, ‘She’s pretty much always in character, you didn’t do anything wrong.’ As the friendship between Nicole and my character started evolving and became more complex, she would start showing those [emotions] in real life. So then I just thought she was a genius by the end.
 
HollywoodChicago.com: Was it challenging for you to create an emotional reality for a character whose life remains offscreen?
 
Teller: It’s just like the old Greek plays. Everything happens offstage. I didn’t want anybody to feel pity for my character. If you can imagine taking a child away from a mother, it will affect you somehow. When you put yourself on a bench with the mother of the kid you just killed, there’s a lot of emotional weight that comes with that, and you just want to be as truthful and honest about that as you can. You don’t want anyone to feel like you’re faking it.
 
HollywoodChicago.com: You’ve mentioned in past interviews that you were in a car accident not long before shooting “Rabbit Hole.”
 
Teller: Yeah, the summer after I turned 20, me and my two friends were taking a road trip from Connecticut to Florida. In North Carolina, we were going down I-95, and my friend lost control of the car. We flipped seven or eight times, going 75, 80 miles per hour and I got ejected out the window as it was rolling. Then once the car stopped rolling, my buddies were like, ‘Where’s Miles?’ I was laying 25 feet from the car unconscious, covered in blood. My best friend ran up to me, thought I was dying, and then I remember seeing him and being told I had been in a car accident. The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital.
 
HollywoodChicago.com: Did that experience influence your approach to the role of Jason?
 
Teller: As a twenty-two-year-old [filming “Rabbit Hole”], I honestly think that experience gave me a little more maturity than perhaps someone else who was in their senior year of college. It allowed me to go further beneath the surface of the film’s [subject matter].
 
HollywoodChicago.com: You can always tell that an actor’s doing a good job when he [or she] is actively listening, and there’s clearly a lot going on behind your eyes in this film.
 
Teller: I’d love for you to see the first day of dailies, because there’s no active listening going on there. [laughs] That’s just me going, ‘Holy s—t, you are Nicole Kidman.’
 

‘Rabbit Hole’ stars Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest, Miles Teller, Tammy Blanchard and Sandra Oh. It was written by David Lindsay-Abaire and directed by John Cameron Mitchell. It was released on April 19, 2011. It is rated PG-13.


 

HollywoodChicago.com staff writer Matt Fagerholm

By MATT FAGERHOLM
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com
matt@hollywoodchicago.com

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