Getty Image
If you keep up with the entertainment business, then you’ve likely seen Shawn Levy’s name in tons of headlines in recent weeks.
While Levy has been out promoting his new four-part Netflix miniseries ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE — based on the 2014 Anthony Doerr-written Pulitzer Prize-winning of the same name — the 55-year-old producer and director has unsurprisingly fielded tons of questions about his *next* project DEADPOOL 3.
Now, while participating in junket interviews and discussing their past/upcoming work is part of the job description for actors and directors (and they’re certainly paid well enough to cope with it), there is something on a primal, human level that makes me feel bad about badgering these people with questions they’ve heard dozens if not hundreds of times before.
So, in an attempt to give Levy a reprieve and hopefully present an opportunity to speak about Deadpool 3 in a different light, we allowed him to ask us about the film.
In addition to our chat about DEADPOOL 3 and how the events of LOGAN will factor into the film, Levy also spoke with our Post Credit Podcast about ALL THE LIGHT WE CANOT SEE, its message of empathy, inspirations from INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, how Adam Driver helped him cast the villain, and more.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following has been edited and condensed for clarity
EI: Folks, today I am joined by Shawn Levy, director of NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM, FREE GUY, DEADPOOL 3 – poor guy has had to talk about it through every hole in his body for the last few weeks – and his new Netflix series, ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, which hit Netflix on November 2nd. What’s going on today, Shawn?
Shawn Levy: Hey, man, you must be special because you got a long slot for this interview.
EI: Well, you and I have spoken before, but you have spoken to tons of folks like me, so I don’t blame you if you do not recall.
SL: Where are we going first? Which of these titles?
EI: The one that you are here to promote, I promise.
SL: Love it.
EI: This is a team game here. The last time, actually, the last time I spoke to you, I asked you if you would want to direct DEADPOOL 3 about a day or two before the news came out, so thanks for that, by the way.
SL: Maybe it was your idea, maybe it was you who put this into the universe, and here I am halfway through making DEADPOOL
Adapting ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE in 2023
EI: The last time we did talk, we discussed how empathy is a common theme in your work, and that is basically the thesis of the phrase “all the light we cannot see” — it’s there even when humanity is at its worst. Unfortunately, World War II was almost 100 years ago, and we barely, if at all, seemed to learn. How do you personally process what this story is trying to tell us in today’s world?
SL: This story was always resonant to me. It’s a fictional story set in a real war, World War II, but then to be shooting it in Hungary when Russia was invading Ukraine, and to get this reminder of, “Oh man, these are not historical lessons that need to be learned. These are present day. These are reminders.”
And now, to be here in the fall of 2023 releasing the show, yet again confronted with, s—, we, as a human race, maybe, we progressed in some areas, but there are lessons we haven’t learned. And the truth is that you can’t wave a wand and make the world suddenly without hate and suffused with empathy. But this story is about the power of individual empathy, and individual humanism, and how you need to protect that. You need to protect that in the face of a world that feels really kind of relentlessly dark sometimes. You need to believe in the light we cannot see. And right now, I know a lot of us see a lot of dark things around us. And so the themes and messages of this show are, I did not anticipate it, how timely it would be.
EI: Let’s talk about introducing Reinhold Van Rumpel.
SL: We’ll just say Von Rumpel. It rolls off the tongue easier.
What he learned about Nazis from INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
EI: Von Rumpel, thank you. First of all, beautifully and hauntingly staged with the city on flames and the leaflets falling from the sky. Love that. The actor who plays him, Lars Edinger, is fantastic. But I would be remiss if I didn’t note that the scene obviously reminded me of another time that we were introduced to a terrifying Nazi villain as he menacingly sat at a table and drank. And that is, of course, INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. Now, I have yet to read the book. Is that how the character is introduced in the book? And how did you go about paying homage to that scene while also trying to do your own thing?
SL: The scene’s not in the book. The character of Von Rumpel is the villain of the book as he is the villain of the show. But Steven Knight — who created and wrote every episode of PEAKY BLINDERS, among other phenomenal works — wrote this character introduction scene.
And while it’s not an exact homage to INGLORIOUS BASTERDS because it’s not the opening scene of the show, it is the introductory scene to Van Rumpel. Look, INGLORIOUS is one of Tarantino’s best. I’ve seen it many, many times, as have all of us as movie nerds. But I feel like, really, the lesson of INGLORIOUS BASTERDS and that Christoph Waltz performance, just like Schindler’s List and the performance of Ralph Fiennes, is there’s only so much new that you can say about the Nazis. They are evil. What they did is unimaginably evil. The way that they legitimized hatred of the other is detestable.
If you’re asking an actor to portray a lead role who is a Nazi, you’re looking for what are the shadings, what are the dimensions other than evil? Because playing an evil character with pure evil is a boring performance. And so what Waltz did, what Ralph Fiennes did, and what Lars Eidinger does in ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE is to find weird and unsettling charisma, humor, and charm. These are the oblique angles into a character that come together to make for a more interesting performance. And I think Lars does that big time.
EI: Yeah, absolutely. I watched the whole show a week or so ago, but that’s the scene that’s just been going over.
SL: Can I give a shout out?
EI: Absolutely
Adam Driver helping him cast the role on Von Rumpel
SL: I have Adam Driver to thank for the discovery of Lars Eidinger. Adam and I did a movie like a decade ago called THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU and we’ve been friends ever since.
So, I called Driver, and I’m like, “Do you want to do ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE with me? Or have you already done the villain thing with Kylo Ren?” And Driver says, “Yeah, I’m not going to do that, but I’m working with this dude on ‘WHITE NOISE,’ this new Noah Baumbach movie, ANd there is this German actor who no one’s ever heard of over here, but this dude’s the s— You need to read him and meet him immediately.” So, based on just that, Adam Driver giving me the tip on Lars Eidinger, I called up Lars. He read one scene with three lines. I knew he was the guy because he was so watchable.
EI: I want to touch on what you said about him. Obviously, the rage and the evil in him is what you expect, but the sadness in the soul of his eyes…
SL: Wow. Thank you. That thrills me, and it will thrill Lars to hear that you felt that, because at the end of the day, this is not your typical Nazi villain. He’s not trying to kill Jewish people. He’s not trying to execute genocide. He is looking for a stone that he believes has a mythological power to save him from a terminal disease.
EI: And I, you know, I’ve not read the book yet, but I want to push back on that a bit to the extent where I don’t know if he really, in his heart of hearts, believes that it can cure him, but more so, it’s giving him something to hold on to in the failing days of the war and his health to continue his death march forward.
SL: That is a really, really interesting interpretation. And you know what — who’s to say? I do know this: it’s a really resonant idea, because sometimes what people need to survive is a hope for something to achieve, and the goal itself might not be the thing. It’s the road to the goal that is the engine that keeps you living and keeps you moving forward. That’s a very interesting interpretation.
EI: Whether you’re good or bad. Something that fascinated me in this story was the idea of all information coming from one place, the radio. Now we live in the opposite world where information, right and wrong, comes from everywhere all the time. I’m curious which you think is more dangerous and why.
SL: I’ve always felt that you could take everything this show says about radio. You could substitute the word radio for social media, and it is the same pattern. It is a new technology as radio was back in the ’30s that is an incredible tool of connection but also misinformation. And we see the same thing happening right now. Social media can be incredible. It can make us feel less alone in the world. It can be an exchange of ideas wherever you are in the world, but it can also be a conduit for hateful, propagandistic, damaging points of view. And so just like radio, I feel like there’s this technology that we haven’t fully mastered, and it’s as much a tool for bad as it is for good.
Discovering Aria Mia Loberti, a first-time actress
EI: I want to give you the chance to just tell me whatever you want to tell me about Aria Mia Loberti. Go ahead.
SL: I wanted to cast this blind protagonist with someone who is herself blind. So I did an open casting call. I found a seven-year-old named Nell Sutton and a graduate student in her 20s named Aria Mia Liberti. A Fulbright scholar getting her PhD in rhetoric at Penn State. Both of these girls had never acted before. Aria had never even auditioned before because she grew up in a world that she felt made very clear to her overtly and through media and representation that being an actor, that’s not really on the table for you. Some goals are not achievable. And so she internalized it. She became an incredibly successful academic. When I saw her audition, one of over a thousand, she wasn’t even in command of what she was doing. Her performance was pretty good, but not perfect. What she had was intelligence, strength, and a fierce presence that I knew I could work with. And that would be the bedrock of this heroic character.
LOGAN being canon in DEADPOOL 3
EI: As I touched on at the top, you have been getting peppered with DEADPOOL 3 stuff over the last few weeks. I’m going to try to change stuff up for you. Is there anything that you want to ask me about the film?
SL: What do people want out of this historic pairing of Wolverine and Deadpool? Please tell me.
EI: You actually touched on something that I was going to ask you. I have a LOGAN tattoo.
SL: But I’m not seeing the design, bro! I feel like I need you closer to the camera.
EI: Don’t worry. I wore sleeveless just for this. Love that film. And I’m sure this is something a lot of fans want to hear: how are you going to remain respectful of that film? And can you speak to the importance of that to you and Hugh [Jackman]?
SL: I have always said that I can’t wait for DEADPOOL 3 to come out because all I want to do is give interviews alongside Ryan where we talk about our reverence for the movie LOGAN. LOGAN is canon. We love LOGAN. That happened. I want the world to know, as the producer and director, all of us share a deep love and respect for Logan, every aspect of how it’s crafted, and all the events that take place.
EI: Shawn, You’re being saved by the bell from the thing I’ve got for Star Wars here.
SL: But your tattoo wins the day.
EI: I always have a blast when we chat, man. You’re just a great guy, and I root for you every time your name pops up. Can’t wait for our third talk.
SL: Thank you. Nice chatting with you, man. Love your energy.