INTERVIEW: Dylan O’Brien On Working With Oscar Winners, Possibly Playing Nightwing, And The Curse Of The New York Jets

• BroBible recently sat down with Maze Runner and Teen Wolf star Dylan O’Brien for an exclusive interview.
• The 30-year-old actor discusses his Jets fandom, working with Oscar winners, and potentially playing Nightwing.
• O’Brien will next be seen starring in The Outfit, which hits theaters on Friday, March 18.

Of all the actors I’ve ever interviewed, Dylan O’Brien is the most like me. Certainly not in terms of acting chops or handsomeness — I’ll begrudgingly admit he’s got me beat in both of those categories — but in relation to where we’ve come from and where we currently find ourselves.

I’m 29 years old, he’s 30. He was born in New York City and raised in New Jersey, as was I. We both subject ourselves to the affliction known as the New York Mets and New York Jets. He was snacking on some lunch when we chatted, while I showed up to the interview wearing a Nike quarter-zip.

At the end of the day, separate-ends-of-the-spectrum lives aside, we’re just two dudes wandering through the universe at an age — your 30s — when society generally tells us, if not demands, that youth ends and the rest of your life begins.

And that, if nothing else, gives us common ground — a common ground where we were able to chat all things New York sports, playing an old-school Chicago gangster, working with Mark Rylance, potentially playing Nightwing, and more.

Maybe being a 30-something New York sports fan isn’t as bad as I thought it was after all.

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Rooting for the New York Mets and New York Jets

Eric Italiano: Folks, today I am joined by Dylan O’Brien, an actor you may know from projects such as Teen Wolf, Maze Runner, Deepwater Horizon, Love and Monsters — which I actually just watched last night, great time — and his new film The Outfit, which will hit theaters on March 18th. Dylan, congrats on the film, and thank you for joining me today, man.

Dylan O’Brien:  Dude, thank you so much.

EI: I wanna start with something that’s near and dear to both our hearts, a curse known as the New York Mets. Nah, I’m just playing with you, we’ll chat some Mets at the end if we have time. My Pops is from Queens, so I’m Jets and Mets. Are you both?

DO: Yeah, me too. I’m so excited about the Jets. Four picks in the top 38. Let’s go!

EI: Yeah, we’ll see about that. I can’t even remember the last good pick we’ve had.

DO: It’s hilarious. Elijah Moore is going to be a stud. And [running back Michael] Carter, too. I was talking about earlier how the most Mets/Jets fan thing about me —  I feel like I’m a pretty level-headed one — but I still will just get so excited, and even just coming off such failure, I’m just like, “I don’t know, but we got those four picks though!”

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Leading roles versus supporting characters

EI: If you can’t enjoy it now, there’s no time to enjoy it. The best time being a Jets and Mets fan is when the games *aren’t* being played. But let’s start with your new film, The Outfit. I’m curious: what’s the difference in your mindset when it comes to leading a film where you’re in virtually every scene like Love and Monsters versus being part of an ensemble, like in this film?

DO: There is a difference. There are a lot of different aspects to it. Sometimes if you are leading something, if you’re the eyes for the audience, you’re not necessarily the one who can come in and chew up the scenery.  You’re almost holding it down for everybody else and to serve as the honest engine to drive the film. And again, I don’t know if any of this is right, this is just my take on all of it: I think when you’re a supporting character, you have a little more room to come in and be a little splashier. It always depends on the piece as well, it’s not that a leading role can’t be splashy or flashy or meaty. It depends on the piece.

Something like this, I was excited to dip my toe into something, and I’m not there the whole time. I just play a role and then it’s about defining the role that you play in the piece, which I think is the same for anything. But you do have a little bit more leeway to chew it up a bit and you can go for it a little more.  You can take a little leg-kick and that swing.

EI: The point that you make — actually, great job, because it comes across on-screen — one of the notes that I wrote down when I watched this film was the energy changes when you walk in. You bring a different dynamic to what’s going on. And especially considering that not only does this film take place on one set, but it’s the main character’s domain. It’s very ordered, it’s very neat, and you come in and are just stirring shit up. And I thought that that was something that I hadn’t seen from you before, because I’m used to you being front and center.

DO: That’s really cool of you to say, man. I appreciate that.

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Crafting an authentic Chicago accent

EI: Let’s talk about that accent of yours. Margot Robbie, when she was getting her Brooklyn accent down for The Wolf of Wall Street, she said that she got into the zone by pretending she had fake nails on, and she found the vibe from there. How did you wrap your head around not only the Chicago accent but the mindset of a late 1940s gangster?

DO: Right, that’s really, really funny. It can be sometimes something like that. Some little characteristic or some little crutch that puts it together for you. The Chicago accent, I was completely unfamiliar with it. It’s not like I had it on deck and that I was always able to do it. I was like, ‘Fuck, what do Chicago people sound like?’

EI: The voice in my head is from that famous Saturday Night Live sketch from the 90s with Chris Farley.

DO: Yeah, I did a bunch of different things. First of all, I didn’t wanna do anything that sounded super on the nose, so I just tried to find my own way into it. I didn’t work with a dialect coach. We had a dialect coach who was in the vicinity of the film, and I had an hour session with her at one point just to balance off what I was doing to see if she would be like, ‘Do not do that.’

Accents are so personal, they’re so particular, so I wanted it to be imperfect. I started listening to this podcast, it’s literally like the “Chicago Accent Guy’s Podcast,” or something like that. And it’s just these guys doing furthest [Chicago accent] you’d ever go. It would also just crack me up, so I would listen to that, and there are elements where I can go super far here. I’d love to go far with it, and then I think there are times when you pull it back.

There’s also the North Side/South Side difference and I thought that was interesting to play with because Richie [his character] is, no doubt, North Side. Part of his whole thing is trying to be tougher than he is — he grew up a rich kid on the north side of Chicago, his dad’s a fucking mob boss, he wears fine fucking suits. He’s a rich kid. There are moments where you want him to read as if he’s trying to present street. When you meet kids who grew up wealthy and they’re insecure that they grew up wealthy so they try to overcompensate.

EI: I’m from Jersey, man, that’s like half the state.

DO: It’s half the state!  I just always found that so funny because it’s always the wealthiest kids that I knew growing up were the ones who were most insecure about their wealth. It’s insane. So there’s an element of that. And then getting the clothes on and the rings — the ring really helped me. My “Margot Robbie” thing is my ring for Richie. As soon as I put my ring on, I hang my hand. There’s something flamboyant and rich to me about that. He pulls up his little leather gloves and hangs his little hand as he’s talking shit to somebody. All those elements would get into me and I started just hearing the voice, so it was a mix of all this stuff.

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Working with Oscar winner Mark Rylance

Eric Italiano: You get to share a pretty meaty one-on-one scene with Mark Rylance, who is probably the definition of an “actor’s actor.” When you’re sharing a screen with someone that’s considered one of the greats, whether you want it to or not, does it affect how you prepare and how you perform? Is there a sense of “I’ve gotta bring my fucking A-game or else I’m gonna get smoked off the screen?” How do you go into sharing scenes with someone like that and is there anything that you learned from him that you’ll carry with you going forward?

Dylan O’Brien: As far as preparing to work with Mark, you definitely want to come in prepared and I wanted to know my shit and have ideas. Which again, you should always be doing regardless. But I guess there’s a little extra, how can it not? When you’re starting a new gig with any new people, what do you do? We show up early, we’re prepared — you’re starting a new game, you’re presenting your best self. As far as the performance, I was really wanting to not get in my head about who I was sitting opposite to. Because instinctively, I just felt like that would lead to me being not present and maybe doing too much.

Mark makes that really easy because he’s such a calming presence. There’s nothing uncomfortable about his presence around you and he’s so supportive, too. He’s such a fan. He’ll be like [impersonating Mark Rylance]: “You’re so amazing.” Which is hilarious, ’cause you’re just like, “…Dude.” But it helps in the moment, it makes you feel comfortable, I can relax and do my thing. I don’t have to over-compensate for anything. If anything, he’s also such a subtle actor on screen. And this is such a subtle performance that you’re just dealing with that anyway.

It’s like a nine-pager of us in chairs. I could have done it all day. He’s just so amazing. We come out of one take and he’s like [impersonating Mark Rylance]: “How did that feel? I felt like that one was really good.” And I was like, “Yeah, it’s fucking great, you know. How about you?.” And he’s like, “On that one, I saw you as a young Irish boy and I watched him die. I saw you, all of a sudden. You were in my arms, you were dying… you were a young Irish soldier. It was really amazing. What happened for you?” I was like, “Uhhhh…”

EI: “I’m just trying to read the lines, man!”

DO: “Not bad!” And that’s why you’re you, man. As far as learning something from him, I learned a lot about… He’s such, like you said, an actor’s actor. He’s a knighted theater actor who’s literally anointed by some as the greatest living actor. This guy is so respected and so admired and so experienced, and also comes up through the world where it’s the actor’s medium: the performance is a priority, the acting process is the priority in theater.

I came up very differently where oftentimes that was not the priority, and if anything, I was batted down or gaslit for trying to make that a priority in moments. Being like, “Hold on, let me get into this here,” or have ideas or wanna change something, or wanna do things differently or whatever. So it was really cool to watch him in a space and guide the process with just how he believes it should be done.

And we had a really proper reversal time, which you never get, and obviously, he’s the reason we got that. And [director] Graham Moore really wanted to protect that, so we got to rehearse the entire screenplay before we shot the movie, which is in a space that’s like a play, which is like un-fucking-believable.

EI: From what I’ve heard, that’s quite rare to have time to rehearse.

DO: Totally. You show up, you do costume fittings, do a test [shot], and then you’re shooting day one and you’re like, “Oh, woah, woah! I gotta have my shit together.”

EI: “I’m still trying to land this Chicago voice here!”

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What type of rules he pursues

EI: I was talking to Jonathan Majors for The Harder They Fall, and in that, he’s like a badass gunslinger Western cowboy, and I asked him, “Where does that archetype rank in terms of dope roles that an actor could take on?” And I imagine that a 1940s Chicago gangster is one of those roles where it’s just such an ideal of what *cool acting* is. Does that factor into your thought process when you take on a role? Like, “I wanna play *this* type of dude.” So then you go and seek it out. Or do you take what comes your way?

DO: No, it doesn’t happen in that way. Is a 1950s Chicago outfit gangster chain-smoking fucking, gunslinging, suited up in a $10,000 suit. Is that a dope role? Absolutely. But do you seek that out? No, I don’t necessarily. Because the team around it obviously has to be right anyway, or else you’re making something that has no substance to it. First and foremost, this piece just had such incredible substance to it. The screenplay was unbelievable. It was dialed in from the get-go. It is basically word-for-word — we barely changed it — and that’s incredible, especially now, because it’s really rare that a script is that polished going into production.

So everything was there, and the team that came in, too, I think the script really drew a lot of amazing talent. We had an amazing crew. There were like Oscar winners around: our production design, our director of photography — everybody is incredible. And obviously Mark as well. It has to be the right situation.

As far as it being a dream role, in terms of just being able to fucking sink into it and chew it up, it’s an all-timer. If anything, I was so trying to teeter back and forth, I was like, “God, I don’t wanna leave this set and feel like I didn’t leave it all on the floor.” And you really wanna soak in that chance. I only shot nine days on the movie. I was like, “Alright, I don’t wanna be ‘extra’ necessarily, but I really wanna chew this up and soak this in while I have the chance to do this.” I was very aware that it was very fucking cool.

EI: I definitely think you held your own without wading too far into being a caricature.

DO: Cool, man, I appreciate that.

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His ecletic yet clever 2021 filmography

Eric Italiano: I was looking through your work and I noticed in 2021 you made some very surprising, but what I think are very smart choices. You popped up in that Mark Wahlberg film [Infinite], you popped up on Curb Your Enthusiasm as yourself, and then you popped up in [Taylor Swift’s short film] All Too Well. Was this approach of appearing in smaller but different types of projects on purpose? Because you’re someone whose career started as the front-facing, A-list guy, so were you intentionally trying to spread your wings a bit this past year?

Dylan O’Brien: Yeah, definitely, definitely. It was intentional in that it was organic to who I am. It wasn’t strategic, necessarily. There’s a strategic element to it in terms of me wanting to operate in a way that is closer to how I feel. I’m 30 years old now, and I feel like I know who I am as a person and as an artist. I’ve always felt like I was a character actor.

But that’s what we do, anyway: we’re fucking always playing characters, but I do feel like that is my inner self and that’s what interests me, and that’s what I like to do. I don’t think I have one face that I just use, and that’s what I think is fun and cool. So yeah, I think it’s probably just me just getting that chance now to dip my toes in different things, and I just had a cool plethora of things that I came across this year. They all just felt really different, all felt like they really had a chance to be cool, different, original, off-beat things. Some of them I was only on for two weeks and then I’m out, which I had never done before in my career.

I think did five things this year, which is crazy. I was on four film sets, and then if you throw in the Taylor music video, and you throw in the Curb thing too and it’s six. And I think if you added all the days together, I probably worked fewer days than it would take to do one Maze Runner movie. It was really cool thing to switch it up and play all these different characters on these cool different projects that for each of their own reasons, I felt like I would do again and again.

EI: And I think that that friend is continuing with The Outfit.

DO: Yeah, right on. I appreciate that.

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Potentially playing Nightwing in the DCEU

EI: I’ve gotta let you go, so I wanna wrap with one more. And I actually swear I wasn’t gonna do this to you, but last night I was going through your Twitter and you tweeted about a little film called The Batman, which gave me the in. Now, if you look at the replies, there are quite a lot of people who wanna see you cast as a certain side character: Dick Grayson a.k.a Robin a.k.a. Nightwing. I don’t know if you’re aware of that or not, but I just figured that I would give you the chance to speak on that if you want to at all.

DO: Oh! I’ll speak on it: I am aware of it, I’ve seen a lot of it. Unfortunately, I have not heard anything about it on the professional side. It’s cool. It’s cool that it made its way to me. I’ve seen so much of it, to the point where I even asked my manager, “Is this even an actual thing? Or is this fully fan cast?’ And she was like, “It’s fully fan cast.”

EI: Keep your hopes up, man.

DO: Keep the lines open!

EI: Robert Pattinson said he would routinely check in on the new Batman film, and then one day they were like, “Yeah, we’re doing it!” So keep swinging.

DO: Oh really? That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

EI: Hey, I thought you were great in this film. I’m really excited to see where you’re taking your career. I wish you and our Mets nothing but the best down the road.

DO: Me too, me too. Thanks, Eric. It was awesome talking to you.

EI: Thank you, brother. I appreciate that.

Dylan O’Brien will next be seen starring in ‘The Outfit’, which hits theaters in the United States on Friday, March 18. In addition to O’Brien, the film — directed by ‘The Imitation Game’ writer Graham Moore — also stars Academy Award winner Mark Rylance, Zoey Deutch, Johnny Flynn, Dylan O’Brien, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Simon Russell Beale.

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