Nicholas Hoult was certain someone had made a mistake.
Clint Eastwood wanted to talk to him about starring his new film, a slow burn legal thriller about a normal guy faced with an extraordinary moral dilemma. Surely Eastwood meant someone else, he thought. But soon enough they were chatting on the phone about “Juror #2,” opening in theaters Friday.
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“I was so nervous,” the British actor said. “I remember saying to him, “I really like the script.” I was so eager to please.”
For Eastwood’s comeback, Hoult slipped into a pitch-perfect impersonation of his gravelly voice: “If you like it so much, I guess I’ll have to read it.”
Suddenly Hoult was laughing. The tension was broken.
“I was like, wow this guy’s cool,” he said. “He’s got a great sense of humor and we’re going to get along.”
Though there may be a healthy amount of English self-deprecation in the story, the spirit of it isn’t unique to Hoult. Eastwood, 94, is the kind of living legend that has even the most seasoned veterans a little starstruck. “Juror #2,” his 42nd film behind the camera, is getting strong reviews for being a smart, original courtroom thriller about an impossible conundrum.
In the original script by Jonathan Abrams, Hoult’s character, a recovering alcoholic with his first child about to be born, gets selected for jury duty on a murder case. But when the facts start to emerge, so do his memories and he’s forced to confront the possibility that he might have been unknowingly responsible.
“After the first read it had me,” Eastwood wrote in an email. “It made me think about what would you do if you were put in this situation? What is right? What is wrong? Who would you protect? A true moral dilemma. That’s something I’d want to watch.”
And he started rounding out his cast, led by Hoult who he called a true “movie star,” with supporting turns from Toni Collette as the ambitious prosecutor, Chris Messina as the public defender, J.K. Simmons as a fellow juror as well as Zoey Deutch and Kiefer Sutherland, who wrote a letter asking if there might be a role for him.
Sutherland had long imagined he’d cross paths with Eastwood. A lifelong Western fan, Sutherland’s late father Donald Sutherland had even worked with Eastwood a few times (“Kelly’s Heroes,” “Space Cowboys”). But when he read about the plans for “Juror #2” he felt a new sense of urgency.
“I always thought one day I would arrive at Mr. Eastwood’s doorstep. Then I realized that that time was maybe kind of going away,” said Sutherland. “I just said, ‘I’ve always dreamed of working with you and if there is a part, any part, I would just like to be able to have the experience of watching you direct.”
He was ultimately cast to play a lawyer and an AA sponsor to Hoult’s character. The screentime was relatively small, but the experience exactly what he hoped: A masterclass in the truest sense.
“I’ve worked with people that shout and get angry and they’re very demonstrative,” Sutherland said. “He was so amazingly quiet and calm and soft spoken. That’s someone who has power, when they can be that and get everything they need.”
On one of his first days, an assistant director was explaining to Sutherland how to navigate a doorway in a scene. Eastwood stepped in to stop the tutorial, telling the AD, “He knows what he’s doing.” Despite his 40-plus years in the business, Sutherland said he walked a little taller that day.
“It made my life,” Sutherland said. “I’m very glad I didn’t work with him when I was 18 years old, because I would have tied myself in knots.”
Collette similarly said she’s never felt so trusted.
“He’s so confident as a director, but not in a negative way. He’s just so present and allows it all to unfold,” she said. “I’ve never worked with anyone who’s so easygoing, to be honest.”
The film would also be the first time she and Hoult would share the screen since they played mother and son in “About a Boy” 23 years ago, when he was only 11. They’d texted a bit prior, but Collette was not prepared for the swell of emotion seeing Hoult, now 34, again. Then came their first scene together and it wasn’t going to be an easy one: In fact, fact, it’s the last shot of the film.
But that’s the Eastwood way. His efficiency on set is the stuff of legend. Sometimes you get two takes, but three is almost unheard of. Hoult said he and the actors on the jury even rehearsed in secret to make sure they would nail the lengthier scenes. No one wanted to be the squeaky wheel.
“He’s not efficient for the sake of being efficient,” Sutherland said. “I think Sydney Pollack, for instance, was really efficient and kind of when he became known for being efficient, started trying to show off his efficiency. … I think Mr. Eastwood just kind of looks at a set and looks at a scene and just finds the straightest way to shoot it.”
Much has been made about whether “Juror #2” is going to be Eastwood’s last film. But he’s not saying that, publicly or privately. In fact, when production went on hiatus during the actors strike, he didn’t even use that time as a break.
“I remember when we did come back from the strike, I was like, ’What did you do? And he was like, ‘Well, I was looking for new material,’” Collette said. “It’s nobody’s position to say this is his last movie.”
Sutherland added: “His parking spot at the Warner Bros. lot isn’t going anywhere.”