Wyatt Russell On Under the Banner of Heaven & Falcon and The Winter Soldier

Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for the real-life crime explored in Under the Banner of Heaven.

With award conversations in full swing and the Best TV Shows of the Year (So Far) being discussed at the halfway point of 2022, one of the shows that most stood out for me and that I’m still thinking about since watching it is the FX series Under the Banner of Heaven (streaming on Hulu). The story unfolds as Detective Jeb Pyre (Andrew Garfield), a devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or the LDS Church), and his seasoned partner Bill Taba (Gil Birmingham) investigate a prominent Mormon family, the Laffertys, for the role they played in a horrific crime while also forcing Pyre to question his own faith in ways that he never could have expected.

The series clearly comes from a very personal place for its creator Dustin Lance Black, who was inspired not only by the true-crime novel by Jon Krakauer but also by his own experience and journey with the Mormon faith. With flashbacks delving into the origins of the LDS religion, along with the exploration of the violent consequences of unyielding faith, the seven episodes of Under the Banner of Heaven are unsettling, heartbreaking, and handled with care and compassion by all involved.

As Dan Lafferty, a man who ultimately warps his idea of true faith enough to justify and embrace the heinous actions he takes, Wyatt Russell gives a performance that is complex and layered, equal parts charming and frightening. During this 1-on-1 interview with Collider, Russell talked about how deep he dives into roles, what he did to prepare for this specific role, finding a way to connect with Dan, how they wanted to approach such delicate subject matter, never wanting to do “murder porn,” and wanting to ensure they gave Brenda Lafferty (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones) the justice that she deserved. He also talked about the importance of a filmmaker’s vision when it comes to the projects that he wants to work on, why he was initially hesitant about joining the MCU and what finally sold him on playing John Walker in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the potential of that character in the future, and whether he’d like to try his hand at directing in the future.

RELATED: ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’: Wyatt Russell & Sam Worthington on the Challenges of Playing Their Characters

COLLIDER: You’ve previously talked about going down the rabbit hole with this character. What is your process for doing that? How deep do you go, when you’re preparing for a role? Did you go deeper than usual with Dan Lafferty, in an attempt to try to understand him? How do you know when to stop going down the rabbit hole because more information won’t necessarily help you anymore?

WYATT RUSSELL: With playing a real person, you have a lot more material to draw from than making up somebody that doesn’t exist. Just informationally, there was a lot of information available, and I read as much as I could and watched as much as I could. And then, there were audio recordings of him in prison, speaking with somebody, that wasn’t an interview. It was just a conversation. People can say things a certain way in interviews, so those audio recordings were very valuable. I had a lot of that stuff to draw from. And then, I watched documentaries on polygamy and just the Mormon faith, and absorbed as much as I could. I try to absorb it and not go in with any preconceived notions about anything, so that you can maneuver the way it needs to be done. I don’t live my life in a way where my work is combined with my real life. They’re very separate things. I’m a private person. I don’t share anything on social media. I don’t feel the need to don’t feel more connected, in that way.

I don’t need any of that stuff to seep into my real life because it’s a real life. I never really feel like I need to stop going down the rabbit hole, but there are times where you’re just reading so much and digesting so much that you go, “Okay, I’m done for tonight. I’m turning my brain off of this and moving onto something else.” You just develop a switch, over the years of working and experience, that you can turn on and off when you need to. When it’s done, it’s done and it’s over. I did reach a point where I said, “I don’t really need to do that.” I had a call that was gonna be set up. I had to give them my number, and after I did that, I regretted it. And they took the number down wrong, so when that happened, I said, “Okay, I think I’m done digging for more information. I have what I need.” For me, that’s where it stopped.

Once you’re actually shooting, do you prefer to just be in whatever moment you’re shooting, for whatever scene it is, as opposed to trying to think about the full guy and everything he’s done, and keep all of that in your head the whole time? How do you typically approach that, once you’re working on set?

RUSSELL: Once you’re actually working, hopefully you’ve done enough preparation to where you don’t need to think about it. You just go to set and you’ve prepared your scenes. You’ve rehearsed them, if you’ve had the opportunity to rehearse them, and talked them out. Hopefully, it’s just in you and you don’t have to think about anything. Things come out the way they come out and you adjust, but you’re not thinking about things, as they go. That’s like the old folk tale of the centipede walking, and then the frog says, “How do you move all those legs?” And then, he starts to think about it, and he dies. You just do it. You don’t think about it too much. That all comes with preparation, and hopefully you’re prepared enough to feel free on the day to do what you need to do to be the person, but it’s all already there.

This series starts with the crime scene, which provides this sense of dread throughout each episode because we know what’s coming and we’re bracing for it. It really brought this feeling of tension to everything, that felt disturbing and unsettling the entire time. Did you always know, from the beginning, what that moment would eventually be and how it would be shot?

RUSSELL: I knew that was obviously gonna be in there, in some way, shape, or form, because it’s the culminating moment of the story, in terms of how it was gonna be done. You never know how it’s really gonna be done until you get there, but one of the things that I wanted to make sure of was that it was gonna be artfully done. I knew it was gonna be because it was Dustin Lance Black, his writing, and his vision. It was much more effective, the way that they chose to do it, which is the way I was hoping it would be done. Making sure it wasn’t gonna be some gruesome, horrible scene was important to me, and Lance said, “It’s not murder porn.” That’s not what it was meant to be or what anybody wanted it to be, and that’s certainly not what I wanted to do. The only real caveat I had was, “I’d really love to do this, but I don’t wanna do that.” And they were already like, “Of course, yeah. We’re not gonna do that.”

What Dan and Ron Lafferty did to Brenda is horrific enough, but then there’s her infant child. Since that was something that had to be included, in some way, I really think the way that it was handled was so emotionally effective.

RUSSELL: Yeah, it’s always more effective when you’re showing why and not how, and that was always the goal. It was never really a whodunit, as much as it was a why-they-did-it. It was important that we were able to express the reality of what happened without showing the way that it happened. We wanted to give Brenda the justice that she deserved, in that moment of bravery, standing up to these guys, and still trying to change their minds in her last moments. It was a very, very brave thing to do. Hopefully, that came out of it. Hopefully, that is what people can take away from her life. She stood there, until the bitter end, and tried to make a difference.

What was that like to shoot? Was it very clear in the script, as far as what you would be doing and the way that scene would be shot or were there a lot of conversations between you, Sam Worthington (who plays Ron Lafferty), Daisy Edgar-Jones (who plays Brenda Lafferty) and Dustin Lance Black?

RUSSELL: It was pretty uncomfortable to do, just because of what we had to do. Daisy is one of my favorite actresses now, and an unbelievable actress. She took on the brunt of that because she had to be the recipient. It’s really difficult to do that, and then also deliver what she had to deliver. Sam and I and Daisy, with the stunt coordinator, and Lance, and the director, Tommy [Schlamme], went over it a lot, trying to choreograph it as much as we could, to get what they needed out of it. In terms of knowing what we were gonna do before we got there, it was very difficult to know that because you don’t know exactly how it’s gonna go when you get in the room. You have to make it work for the cameras and make it work for the story.

When we got into it, it became more and more clear, as to how things needed to be, but it was very uncomfortable. It really leaves you sick and feeling not well, at the end of the day. You have to shake it off. It’s not a fun scene or a fun day. But at the end of the day, you felt like, “Okay, I think we got the most out of it that we could and we did the best that we could.” It’s hard, even looking at it, in the moment. You just have to surrender to the fact that, this is what you’re doing and this is what it was, so you’ve gotta make it real, as difficult as that can be.

I would imagine that’s definitely not a scene that you’d ever want to have to watch either.

RUSSELL: Yeah, I won’t watch that scene. There’s no point, for me.

How do you portray someone like Dan, in a way that’s honest and authentic? Do you just have to come to your own interpretation of that, since there’s never really any way to fully understand someone like him and how he could do what he did?

RUSSELL: Yeah, you have to connect to things that you see as human. Unless you’re playing a robot, they’re human beings with feelings and emotions, and you’ve gotta access those and find some similarities so that you can play it real. You don’t wanna be a caricature of something. In our conversations and rehearsal, prior to me getting the job, the humanity of Dan was important to access the evil of the deed and the sinister quality that is within somebody who seemingly, on the surface, is just the nicest guy.

Part of the thing that was scary about Dan was that he did listen. He was a great manipulator, and great manipulators get people to like them and follow them. He did that while smiling and being a seemingly good guy that you’d wanna follow. Nobody wants to follow somebody that they don’t like. When you listen to him speak in prison, he’s not some evil, crazy guy. That’s the really scary part. You go, “This conversation, as it exists in a vacuum, I don’t hate him.” You have to give it context for yourself when you’re talking about him and talking to him. That’s the dangerous part. You have to give everything context. You can’t just let it exist in a vacuum. But existing in a vacuum, Dan was a very polite, very nice person who’d give anybody the time of day.

You’ve been doing such interesting work, as an actor. Lodge 49 was such a great show. And then, you went on to do The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which was so incredibly different. And Under the Banner of Heaven is so different from both of those. Has that been intentional, as far as playing characters in projects that are so incredibly different? Do you feel lucky that people haven’t seen you clearly as one particular thing?

RUSSELL: I’ve felt very lucky to work with great filmmakers. I’ve never tried to capitalize on the thing that Hollywood or the business sees you as, in that moment. It’s easy to go down that road because that’s the path of least resistance, in a lot of ways. If you do one thing well, like you play a stoner in college, they want you to play a stoner in college. If you play a jock in college well, then they want you to do that again. If you play a bad guy well, then they want you to play a bad guy again. There’s always a bit of an uphill battle, in getting people to see you as an actor or see what your talent can bring and how you push yourself to say, “No, I think I can do that, even though maybe nobody else thinks I can.” You find your boundaries and find what you’re good at. I’ve been very lucky to always go down the road of just wanting to work with the best people that I can and play the best parts that I can.

When you get to work with Rick Linklater, you get a lot out of that experience, more than anyone can know. And when you get to work with people at Marvel, you get a lot out of that experience. When you get to work with Academy Award-winning writers and producing teams, the knowledge you gain is always so much, and then you’re able to bring that to the next job that you do. So, with the career that I’ve had and the luck that I’ve had with working with people that have seen me as certain things at different times, I love being able to play very, very different characters and run the spectrum, as much as I can. And then, you look back on it, and hopefully one day, you’re really proud of the many different things you were able to do. That sometimes means you didn’t go for some of the low-hanging fruit that you could have done.

I look at a career in film as a very long process. It’s a great thing to be able to do because you can do it when you’re 90. I wanna be able to look back on my life and my career and say, “I did the best I could and helped the filmmakers as much as I could, on the projects that I was doing.” And I can look back and say, “Hopefully, I did a good job playing all of these different characters.” My favorite actors are able to disappear into certain things. Being pigeonholed as certain things, at different times in your career, is like a compliment because it’s great to have people think you can only do that thing, and then you’re like, “Okay, maybe I’ll try this.” It’s fun to be able to explore all those things, and I’m very lucky to have done them with great filmmakers who can exhibit the performance in a way that makes you look best.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is so big and so wide-reaching now that it seems like, if you’re a working actor, you’ll be considered for a role in it, at some point. How do you feel about the role that you ended up doing, and what has that whole experience been like?

RUSSELL: I feel like every actor says this, but at first, I was very hesitant. If you were a fan of Lodge 49, you weren’t going, “This guy’s gonna play Captain America.” I had that same reaction. I was like, “Are you sure you guys want me to play Captain America?” You don’t know what you’re auditioning for, so I was like, “Okay, I’ll go in and audition and see what it is if I get it.” And then, I got it and I was like, “Okay, cool. Who am I playing?” I had a meeting with Kari Skogland and Zoie Nagelhout at Marvel, and they showed me a picture of Captain America. At first, I was like, “Oh, my God.” Captain America is a very difficult character to play because his moral compass is always pointing north.

It’s a difficult character to pull off. And when you have somebody who was so good at it, just do it, who’s so beloved, you’re going, “I don’t wanna play that guy. That’s impossible shoes to fill. No. No way. I’m just not your guy.” And then, they were like, “No, no, no, it’s this other character.” He turns into this anti-Captain America and bizarro world Captain America. As we started talking about it, I was like, “Okay, I can have some ownership over this character because I can make it what I want, in certain ways.” They gave me the leeway to really do that and put a stamp on it. The working experience was so great because they really listened and they took into account the ideas that you had. Hopefully, I was presenting concise and clear ideas, so that I wasn’t being confusing. I ran with the character and was really happy with the way it turned out. They gave the character some pathos and it was an interesting character in the MCU that hadn’t been done before. It’s always great to do somebody that hasn’t been done before because you get to really put a stamp on it. I had an amazing time. They’re amazing to work with.

What was the most unexpected aspect of doing a Marvel project? Had you heard stories from anyone that you know, that had already worked in the MCU, and did the actual reality of it compare, in any way?

RUSSELL: I knew a couple of people who had done it. The person that I called and that I really listened to the most was James Gunn. We became friendly because he produced a movie that my wife (Meredith Hagner) was in, called Brightburn. James is just a great filmmaker, and I’ve always deferred to great filmmakers. They’re the ones who are making the movies and they’re the ones who have their hands on all the buttons, so they have contact in every area and experience in every area. I really did lean on his opinion of what the character was. I didn’t know much about the character when I got it, and he just gave great advice. He said, “Look, they’re great to work with. They make sure that it’s good.” Coming from him, that vote of confidence really did make me feel like, “Okay, we can make this good. I can make this character fun. I can make him interesting. I can make people enjoy hating to watch or enjoy watching this character because he’ll have many different things going on. And they’re allowing me to do that. They want the conflict.” That was really the person I leaned the most on.

And my dad (Kurt Russell) had done the movie with him (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2). My dad’s a veteran actor of many years, so he’s seen it all. It was just another interesting experience in a big movie, but he also said, “They’re really good. Kevin Feige is a master at knowing what works, knowing how to fix something, and knowing what something needs.” When you’re in good hands like that, you feel very taken care of, and that’s a really good place to be if you’re an actor. If you get the opportunity to work in the MCU, you feel pretty lucky.

It also feels like it’s not done and that we’ll see that character again, at some point. Is it an unspoken thing that, at some point, you’ll come back? Have you actually heard anything about the future of the character? Do they keep you in a secret Marvel training camp?

RUSSELL: No, you never know. They do a really good job of keeping it secret. It’s part of the allure. You always hope that you can come back and you hope that you’ll get the phone call. If I pick up the phone and it’s Marvel on the other end of the line, you’re like, “All right, cool. Let’s go to work.” As for the Marvel secret training camp, that was two and a half years ago, or almost three years ago no, that we like actually shot [The Falcon and the Winter Soldier]. All of the training and everything that I’d done, if I do get the phone call, it’ll take a lot of runway to get back in shape like that. I’ve lost every ounce of muscle and physique that I had, but that’s the fun part. Honestly, that was a big part of taking the role, as well.

I’m an actor who makes my living playing different people. Part of my fear in doing Marvel was that I don’t wanna be one thing. That hasn’t worked for my career. I’ve always played different people with different looks. But they really embraced the fact that he’s different. I don’t have to stay on the diet of 14 chickens a day and seven eggs, every nine seconds, and waking up at five and going to work out for seven hours. I don’t have to keep up with that, thank God. That’s just too much. I can only go in spurts. I’m gonna be 36 years old and I’ve had an entire professional sports career, so I don’t know how much longer I have, doing action films. Everything had broken down before I started acting.

Would you like to see that character lean more into his villainy? Is that something you’re hoping for if you get to come back to him?

RUSSELL: I haven’t really even thought about, if the character comes back, what I hope he becomes. There are so many different ways that you can go with it. I just hope that whatever it is, is continued along this line of this struggle with self. That is something that I can do, as well as I think it needs to be done. As long as he has that conflict within himself, he can have a change of mind and he can go through therapy. There are lots of different ways you can go. I only ever hope that it goes an interesting way, but a certain way, that’s not up to me.

What’s next for you? Do you know what the next project is that you’ll be doing? Are you someone who’s always reading scripts, trying to figure that out? Do you intentionally take a break and not read scripts, in between things? How do you figure that out?

RUSSELL: The short answer is that there are some things circling around, but I’m not sure yet. And I always approach it like that. I’m not sure until I’m a hundred percent sure. I look at it like you’re going down the river in a raft and everything’s good and you’re floating along, and then there’s a little vortex pool over here that’s pretty cool, so you go paddle over there and check it out. You swim in the vortex for a bit, and either you like it enough to stay in that vortex for a while, or you paddle out and go down the river and see what the next vortex looks like. I don’t try to maneuver things too much.

I do have filmmakers that I say, “I’d love to work with that person,” or “I’d love to work with that person.” It’s all the same people that everybody knows. That guides my process. All it ever is, is that, if a filmmaker that’s making a movie likes me and wants me to be in it, and I think the filmmaker is fantastic, then I’m interested. I look at it like that. It’s all filmmaker-driven. I look at my job as I’m here to enhance the project and enhance their vision and help them make it as good as they can. I don’t put too much pressure or expectation on what I’m gonna do next or what happens next. That’s not something you can control. I’ve got enough stuff going on in life, to not have to think about it too much. It’s a non-answer, but I just take it as it comes.

Do you see yourself directing? Is that something that you want to do?

RUSSELL: Yeah, one day, I’d like to. I love the way film works. I got injured when I was 19 or 20. I got a concussion. I never wanted to be an actor. Acting wasn’t something that called me. So, when I got injured, I said, “Well, I might not do this forever. I might have to go do something else. Let me look into it.” I always loved film, and I’d watch movies and old movies, even when I was playing hockey. And so, I enrolled in this USC summer film course that was a directing course. We made four or five short films, and they all had a set of stipulations and rules. I had such a blast. I worked with people that were not athletes. They had never played sports. Coming out of that, I really did say, “I really do love telling stories and I would like to direct something one day.” But I wanted to go to work. I didn’t wanna spend the next five years of my life, trying to get something made. I wanted to go to work and I wanted to make money and I wanted to get experience, and I’ve had such great experience from all of the filmmakers that I’ve worked with.

Hopefully, one day, when I do direct a film, I can amalgamate all of those experiences and use them to make something that’s as good as it can be. There have been things that I’ve circled around, here and there, and thought about tossed it around my head. When the time is right, it’s right and you know it’s right. You have to have a story that you really, really, really wanna tell because it’s a year and a half of your life, that you’re doing that and nothing else. With acting, you can make five movies in a year. With directing, you’re really settled into one. So eventually, one day, I’d like to try it, but we’ll see when that day comes.

There are some actors that never seem to want to direct, but clearly which filmmakers you work with is important to you, so directing seems like something you might have thought about.

RUSSELL: The filmmaker is everything. As an actor, you can’t go do something where the filmmaker has no vision and no idea what they wanna do, or even has half of a vision or half of an idea of what they wanna do, and expect to turn in a great performance. So much of filmmaking is visceral and so much of an audience experience is almost purely visceral. You don’t intellectualize a movie experience until after you’ve felt it. You don’t take it in that way. You feel it, and then you can talk about it. You don’t talk about it, and then you feel it. So, getting on board and with somebody who viscerally understands what they wanna feel and what they wanna do is so important.

Next to that, in order to make that happen, there are so many different things that go into that visceral quality. What’s it gonna look like? What’s it gonna feel like? Who have you hired to do the production design? Who’s your editor? You can turn in the greatest performance of all time, and if a director doesn’t love the editing process and feels like they’re making the movie for a second or third time in the editing bay, it can end up an entirely different movie from the one that you shot. There’s so much control that a filmmaker has after you’re done. You can only turn in the best performance that you can. After that, you’re done.

It’s a filmmaker’s medium, and it always will be. Bryan Cranston said this, but you can’t take B material or C material and make it A material if you don’t have the filmmaker. If you have the script and the filmmaker, you can always bump it up a letter grade, but you can’t bump it up two letter grades. That all requires a great filmmaker. You’ve just gotta have it. They can turn a mediocre script into a great movie. We’ve all seen those movies where you’re like, “It was an okay script, but I loved it.” That’s because the filmmaker had a vision. I’ve always had great relationships with filmmakers. I feel like, through the process that I’ve lived some of my life and seen what I’ve seen, I have empathy for filmmakers. There’s so much that goes into it, that sometimes people don’t take into account.

Actors don’t necessarily take into account sometimes, just what’s on their plate. I’ve always felt like they have a friend in me. I think making movies is a very special process. To me, they’re the best magicians. You pay your 20 bucks to have them fool your emotions into feeling a certain way. It’s not just about fooling my eye and my mind. You have to fool my heart into crying and into laughing when I know, before I go in there, that none of this is real. It’s all fake. It’s all on a set. It’s all with camera guys and people eating Snickers in the background, behind the camera. It’s all fake. But they can trick your emotion into feeling a certain way if they do it really well. To me, they’re just the best magicians and, as an actor, you’ve just gotta be a great magician’s assistant.

I really appreciate you talking to me about these projects and about your career. Under the Banner of Heaven, for me, was just so effective and moving, and everybody did such incredible work in it. It seems like it must have been so hard and challenging to do, and yet you all told this story in a way that I can’t imagine it being handled any better.

RUSSELL: That’s nice to hear. That’s so much to do with Dustin Lance Black and Imagine, the people that created it, and FX for sticking with it. It had been in development for so long. They were trying to find a way to break the story, and they didn’t make it until they knew they had it right. That’s a big kudos to them, for staying that course and making something that was so effective. It’s been received with mixed reviews inside the Mormon community, but there’s a reality to the story that’s hard to deny for anybody of any faith. Whenever you do any kind of expose on faith, you’re gonna ruffle some feathers, but so far, it’s been worth it. Lance spent a long time on this, so I’m really happy for him, that he was able to make this and maybe not close a chapter in his life on it, but at least complete one and have it be received so well. He’s very deserving.

Under the Banner of Heaven is available to stream on Hulu.