Interview: Nick Flanagan (Actor, “Nick”)

The following interview was conducted by Kevin Scott (Exclaim, Torontoist) for the purposes of this press kit. Please free to re-publish excerpts from this interview, but we ask that the entire text not be re-published elsewhere, please.

Kevin Scott:
How did you become involved in this film?

Nick Flanagan (NF):
I would see Pavan around after we had worked together really briefly on another project, and he would always be like, “I’m writing this movie and I wrote a character specifically for you..,” … “I wrote a character specifically for you”. And then I would soon find out that the character was written so specifically for me that his name was Nick. And he was a writer, and a comedian. And I mean, that was pretty specific. So I was like “ok, I’ll do it…. For hundreds of thousands of dollars. And, a lot of Folgers coffee bags? Free Folgers. We’re sponsored by Folgers.

KS:
So what attracted you to being involved in the project?

NF:
Well, I like the guys who were working on it. They really are excellent at putting together a good group of people, so, a lot of the people involved in the movie are people that I was happy to think about working with. So I said, “Fuck no, I’m not doing this”. But then, my mother was like, “you got to do it”. Listen to mom. I dunno, no the first part was true about everybody who was working on it was someone I already knew and liked a lot. You know, it just seemed like it would be a good idea. I like acting. It’s not totally common to get someone to say they wrote something for you, and then also to have funding. It is somewhat common to get wrapped up in weird project, someone coming up to you and saying “hey I want to do a web series, we don’t have a camera yet”. But this had everything in place, so I just thought it would be fun to do. And low and behold, t’was.

KS:
When you’re shooting, what were some of the memorable moments?

NF:
Well, it is kind of this one big sloppy joe of a memory. With the top and bottom of the bun being I guess my last day and my first day of the set? I actually don’t remember my last day and my first day. When we shot that sequence where we I guess do drugs, that was very memorable. I think Leah mentioned this as well because it was just…lots of weird stuff happened. There was a power outage in the area we were filming and we were kind of on the fly trying to find places to shoot, and sort of succeeding at it so, that was just an odd night. That one was a bit stressful, just because it was, I don’t know how to act like I’m on drugs. That’s crazy. Then I saw the finished product and I thought it was a very good sequence. So that was nice, and a really memorable, slightly difficult moment. The stuff we shot at the Draper Street House was always really nice. We shot s scene there [pointing to the corner], Leah and I, and that was just really pleasant to work out because I was sitting cross-legged for most of it, which is a very comfortable pose. I mean, it was always pretty fun doing the scenes that I was in you know, because there was just so much going on with Leah and I liked just sort of working it out together and coming up with some things. So it was just always pleasant. We would always end up somewhere decent in terms of what we’d come up with. Also the scene where I’m really just an extra, I’m just watching the movie Diamond Tongues that she was in, and they screen the actual movie during the take, and that was four or five times – but the entire movie, I guess Matt Johnson improv’d all of his lines and it was so funny, and actually I thought Leah was so great in that movie playing that part, so that was memorable just because every time they would show the movie, I was actually getting more of a kick out of it.

KS:
That has to be an extra on the DVD.

NF:
Blu-ray extra. Laser disc extra. They could show it at the end of the TV show Extra.

KS:
What was it like working on this set?

NF:
This was, even though there was improvisation, this shoot was just really kind of more streamlined, it all went pretty smoothly. Again, I was here for the bulk of the Diamond Tongues shoot days and it was just like, smooth and there was this massive trailer, somewhere in Toronto, it had nothing to do with the filming of this movie. No, I don’t know it just went by so easily, the Diamond Tongues shoot. I was very impressed. Considering they were going through so many locations, and they weren’t leaving as much up to chance. They were shooting at rock venues and bars and places where its like basically you have a finite amount of time, but there were no stunts in any of those, so you know, its not like stunt men were getting killed and that was holding up shooting. So that was good. There were no deaths.

KS:
You think there’s a lot of improv I guess? How much freedom did you have to improvise your scenes?

NF:
Um, some amount of freedom, I don’t think I changed the name of the show my character works on “Dog President” or whatever.. “Dog Husband”. So that was in there, and obviously our relationship, like the core of it was the same. But we were pretty much recommended to improvise as much as possible. With the idea of what was happening. What was point a to point b. and really it just sort of became established that my character was going to be the one who was giving Edith kind of a hard time. So as long as I was doing that, giving her a friendly hard time it was all fine.

KS:
Most of your scenes are with Leah?

NF:
I think all of them except one?

KS:
What was your experience like working with Leah?

NF:
Working with Leah was great. Working with Leah was very fun. She was always just pretty sunny, and I was, you know very neutral [laughs], emotionally, throughout it. I didn’t have any huge scenes where I had to exert any kind of stress, so I think we were just keeping each other calm and it was awesome. We have lots of friends in common and that was definitely a great experience, of the shoot – just getting to know Leah, just hanging out and passing the time.