Eddington‘s Joaquin Phoenix only truly found his modern Western character after he’d spent some time exploring it on set. The Ari Aster film follows the citizens of the small Texan town of Eddington amid the pandemic and the death of George Floyd. Much of the film’s focus is on Joe Cross, the town sheriff, whose personal life is falling apart even as he decides to run for Mayor.

The character is one of Phoenix’s best performances in recent years, a raw and sympathetic portrayal of a man who increasingly makes bad decisions for worse reasons. ScreenRant attended a roundtable interview (along with other members of the press) in which Joaquin Phoenix discussed finding the voice for Joe in Eddington, the biggest surprises he encountered with the character, and his hopes for future collaborations with Ari Aster.

Crafting Joe For Eddington And Why Joaquin Phoenix Loves Ari Aster

“I Would Do Absolutely Anything With Him”

Joaquin Phoenix’s Eddington is the actor’s second movie with Ari Aster, but he’s hoping it’s not his last. After working together on Beau is Afraid, the pair reteamed for the more ambitious Covid-era western. After having a cordial relationship during their first collaboration, Phoenix reflected on how “when I look back at some of our conversations, it really seems like a family. I was excited by that. Even on Beau, he was very perceptive. But at this point, he’s armed fully with the information about how I work. He sees things before I’m even aware of them. That was great.”

The lead-up to Eddington took over a year, with Phoenix and Aster going back and forth about the script. “We’ve been through so many discussions about Joe. The very first thing for me was when I was reading this script, I just heard this voice. We got together, and I was like ‘I heard this voice.’ He’s like, “What is it?” And I was like, I don’t know! I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to physically bring it out. I don’t know exactly what is right, I just heard it in my head.”

“So we kept talking, and occasionally I would try things, and we spoke to this dialect coach. And we were like, we’re not meeting with a dialect coach. What are we doing? We were really trying to figure out who [Joe] is.” This anxiety carried over to the actual production, with Phoenix recalling how he felt like the voice still wasn’t there even by the first official day of shooting. “I was really struggling. I was really nervous. I felt like there was something missing from the scene. I couldn’t identify what it was exactly.”

“It was super uncomfortable because we were running out of time, we had to go to lunch, and we’d already burned an hour. We didn’t have anything, so I was really nervous. So I’m standing in front of the chalkboard, I’m practicing my lines, and [Ari] is standing next to me, and he’s going through the lines at the same time.” Ultimately, this proved to be the key to Phoenix unlocking Joe’s unique character, as Ari “takes on the feelings, he doesn’t separate from the character. He’s doing it, and I just feel him.”

“He made this gesture where he put up his hands and kind of went, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know him.’ That gesture was it. That’s Joe. Joe is always in this state of putting up his hands, trying to stop the world, trying to stop the things that are happening. Everything is falling apart, he’s losing grasp of his relationships and this idea of himself and what it means to be a man and to be an American, to be a man of power.

“It’s all slipping away. He’s constantly trying to put his hands up and going ‘no, stop, it’s going to be okay. This moment just unlocked it for me.” Asked if he’d want to continue to collaborate with Aster, Phoenix was quick to express a genuine hope for more films together. “I just adore Ari. I love his observations about human behavior, the way he writes, and really just how much he cares about making films. It’s pure. I’ve worked with a lot of directors, and there are so many different reasons why people do what they do.”

“There is something very pure and innocent about Ari’s love for film and for filmmaking, and that’s inspiring… I’ve made so many movies, they’ve reached a point where you can grow bored or complacent. Sometimes you don’t have the same natural fuel that you do when you’re 20 and trying to make it. To work with somebody like Ari, where that is still so alive in him and he sees it in you, it is a gift. I love working with him; I consider him to be a friend. I would absolutely do anything with him again.“

Fleshing Out Eddington, Character By Character

“Things Were Always Fraught, But In The Best Of Ways”

The Cast of Eddington includes some of the film’s biggest stars, like Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal, and Austin Butler. Phoenix and Pascal in particular develop a fascinating rapport as political rivals whose personal beef festers into their political ambitions and judgments of one another. “They’re all great scenes,” Phoenix told the press, “full of conflict and rumor and hurt feelings and insecurity. It’s everything that you would want, all the ingredients are there… I always felt like I was the beneficiary of the environment or the production design that fueled us.“

An early scene of the film sees Joe and Ted (Pascal) having a conversation through the window of Ted’s bar, something that Phoenix didn’t even realize when I first read the script, explaining that he initially thought he would enter the scene and then walk into the bar. However, this unique blocking excited Phoenix, who saw the moment as a “perfect kind of metaphor, there’s just something between us that is separating us from actually connecting.” According to Phoenix, taking that energy from the setting and production, even just the weather, can heavily impact a scene.

Phoenix couldn’t have asked for a better scene partner than Pedro Pascal, who “seemed very clear on who Ted was,” according to Phoenix. “It was early in the shoot, and I didn’t fully understand where I was [with Joe]. I was trying to figure out who I am. What do I want? What do I stand for? What’s important to me? In hindsight, I realized that’s exactly what Joe was experiencing. Ted is somebody who thinks that he knows that he’s doing exactly what he’s meant to be doing. What we were feeling really matched what was happening.”

“Pedro, even though he knew what he wanted, was so gracious in allowing me to find it. I was all over the map, and what you’re seeing in that scene is, I guess, subconsciously, I had really worked myself up into a state of frustration and anger and impotence.” Looking back at how production came along, Phoenix was able to find a similar collaborative spirit with his other co-stars, starting with Michael Ward’s Michael and Luke Grimes’ Guy. “I was able to really focus on and establish that relationship. We were doing that in real time.”

“We had some rehearsal days, but it’s hard to rehearse when the set isn’t completely done… It’s really just about having a conversation.” That extended to Emma Stone’s Louise, who throws in more complications for Joe and Ted as the former’s wife, given Ted’s short-lived romance with Louise decades prior. “So much of what’s at the heart of our relationship and dynamic is Emma’s character. I hadn’t seen Emma and worked with her on this film, so there were things I was discovering about her character and my feelings about her character through scenes with Pedro before Emma even arrived.”

“It sounds confusing, and at times, it is. But sometimes, it’s really informative. It’s really interesting how schedules work out, but sometimes it’s really to our benefit. By the time Emma came on set, I think she came on the third week, but I felt like I’d been shooting for three months. It felt so loaded and full of history, which felt crucial to their relationship… I was really grateful for how things played out. When [Emma] arrived, things were already fraught but in the best of ways.”

Why Joaquin Phoenix Became “Disappointed” With Joe’s Actions In Eddington

“I Was Surprised At How Much I Cared For Joe, And Then How Much His Actions Disappointed Me”

Ari Aster has always experimented with genre in interesting ways, but Eddington is an especially ambitious film from the Hereditary and Midsommar filmmaker. As much a tense modern western as it is a dark comedy and grim commentary on the current state of American politics, the film’s characters are deceptively layered in plenty of intense ways. This was especially true for Phoenix, who noted that “I knew my intention was to humanize Joe as much as possible.”

“I hoped that anybody who might come into it might have some preconceived idea of what a conservative sheriff in a small town might be like. I wanted to challenge those ideas, at least initially. That was definitely a goal of mine. I have to say, I ended up feeling a great deal of warmth for Joe. I really don’t know how to explain it. I think there’s a certain kind of sadness to him that — no spoilers — kind of allows all of that dissatisfaction and frustration and pain to manifest in the way it does.”

Phoenix admitted that as a result of this unexpected connection with the character, it became “disappointing” to see Joe making the decisions that he does. “[Joe] reminds me of so many people in the real world. In those critical moments that we all face, what kind of person are we going to be? I think I was surprised at how much I cared for Joe, and then how much his actions disappointed me.”