Interview: Ayo Edebiri, John Malkovitch, Juliette Lewis and Stephanie Suganami on ‘Opus’
John Malkovich, Ayo Edebiri, Juliette Lewis, and Stephanie Suganami walk into a cult. Not a real one—though the way pop culture worship operates these days, it might as well be—but the insular, fame-drunk, and increasingly sinister world of Mark Anthony Green’s feature debut, Opus, in theaters March 14. The film follows Ariel, a young journalist played by Edebiri, as she’s invited to the remote desert compound of a reclusive pop icon (Malkovich), whose presence looms over the industry like a specter. For the cast, it was a chance to pick apart the ways celebrity, fandom, and blind devotion intersect.
For Edebiri, who stars as Ariel, the film’s protagonist, her character’s defining traits are a mix of ambition and being in way over her head. “Ariel is driven, curious and, if I can hyphenate, in-over-her-head,” she says when asked to describe her character in three words. “Or I guess I can take all the other words away for just ‘over her head’ as my thing. Over her head.” A journalist trying to make her mark, she finds herself out of her depth in a place where influence and power have been warped into something unrecognizable.
Juliette Lewis, who plays a high-profile gossip show host Clara Armstrong, doesn’t mince words about her character either. “Ambitious, hungry, vain.” A person who thrives in the world of industry whispers and public spectacle, her presence in Moretti’s orbit makes perfect sense; what is a celebrity without gossip after all? And as for Malkovich? “Disappeared pop icon.”
Before making his directorial debut, Mark Anthony Green spent years as a journalist himself, which could have meant a crash course for Edebiri on playing one. But she insists that wasn’t the case. “No, which I think is good,” she says. “But he told me a lot of stories if I asked, just about what it was like working at a magazine at a time where print media was sort of dying, but you still had some of those glory moments. I did ask some stories about interviews that he did that I’ve read because I love the celebrity profile, I think it’s really interesting. So yeah, he would tell me stories if I asked.”
For Malkovich, working with Green on shaping Moretti was an ongoing process starting from when he first read the script. “It was a very close collaboration,” he elaborates. “I liked the script, I think I understood the character and when I didn’t, I was quick to ask [questions] or quick to get a clarification about something. So my relationship with Mark Anthony was very collaborative and very good, and for me, it was a really fun experience with a very good group of people, and a very good group of actors and director.”
And since the film revolves around the cult of celebrity, it only felt right to ask—which musician would they be willing to follow? Lewis has an immediate answer. “For me, sometimes they’re guitar players or drummers,” she says. “So John Bonham. I just saw [the documentary] Becoming Led Zeppelin. I would follow him somewhere. I mean, if he was going to have a groovy drum circle in heaven, that sounds good. A drum circle in heaven by John Bonham.”
Malkovich leans toward the poetic. “Someone like [Bob] Dylan or Leonard Cohen, probably,” he says. “Or Joni Mitchell as well, who was a fantastic songwriter and performer.”
Edebiri, however, picks David Bowie as her choice. “I think David Bowie might be a good time,” she says. “Depending what era. It might be too good of a time. But yeah, Bowie.”
Suganami, on the other hand, say she’d go with Kylie Minogue. “She seems like a good time,” she says. “I want to be in that community. I love her music and I just feel like she would be a good time.”
A24 will release OPUS in theaters on March 14.