‘Primetime’ Star Skyler Gisondo On Pushing Beyond His Comfort Zone & Teasing What’s Next For Jimmy Olsen

You’d think in the last year, especially given that he’s coming off a successful outing as Jimmy Olsen in James Gunn’s Superman, that Skyler Gisondo would imagine himself as pretty cool. Though, jokingly, by his own account, nothing quite topped appearing in Phoebe Bridgers’ “Lost Boys” music video. “I never felt cooler in my life than being in a Phoebe Bridgers music video,” he tells Deadline, recalling how the appearance prompted texts from people he hadn’t heard from in 15 years, saying, “Dude, I had no idea you were so cool.” On the day of our conversation, Gisondo is in Florida, perched at a nearby playground beneath a vibrant blue sky. Bright-eyed, handsomely freckle-faced and dressed in colorful attire, he is all smiles and eager to chat. Ironically, it’s a decidedly sunny setting for a conversation about Primetime, Lance Oppenheim’s dark, satirical thriller. There is a familiar eagerness in Dan, the aspiring actor Gisondo portrays, but the similarities largely end there. When Dan takes a job as a decoy for Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) on To Catch a Predator, his excitement about the opportunity gives way to an increasingly disturbing reality. Dubbed “Decoy Dan,” he finds himself in the middle of a glossy, exploitative operation that is a far cry from the acting career he imagined for himself. For Gisondo, the role presented its own challenge. He admits that reading the script initially left him questioning whether he could pull it off. “It was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, and ultimately the most gratifying by far,” he says. Watch on Deadline A day after our conversation, Gisondo received a Gotham Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Performance, becoming Primetime’s sole acting nominee. Below, he discusses stepping outside his comfort zone, returning to comedy with Focker-In-Law, and what lies ahead for Jimmy Olsen. DEADLINE: Help me unravel the timeline. You were in Phoebe Bridgers’ “Lost Boys” music video, directed by Lance Oppenheim. But you had already been in Primetime by that point? SKYLER GISONDO: Right. The music video was maybe six months after or perhaps even longer. But Primetime happened because Lance had seen some of my work and wanted to talk. I was elated because I had watched Some Kind of Heaven and thought, “This guy is clearly an unbelievably gifted filmmaker.” For Lance to have already achieved such a high level of mastery at such a young age is incredible. It usually takes directors a long time to get there. I had never worked with a director my age. So, we immediately developed a real friendship, and I was in disbelief that he was interested in me for the part. I remember asking him in our first meeting, “Dude, what have you seen of mine that convinced you this would be a good idea? I don’t want to talk myself out of this incredible opportunity, but at the same time…” Phoebe, though, to my understanding, had never really acted before, but she knew Lance organically and went quite far back. She was amazing, especially given that she had never acted before. In addition to being a generationally talented artist, she’s just the best and such a great hang. We all became friends. When her music video came together, I thought I had never felt cooler in my life than being in a Phoebe Bridgers music video. I had people texting me whom I hadn’t heard from in 15 years, saying, “Dude, I had no idea you were so cool.” It gave me an incredible amount of cred, and it was so much fun. Thankfully, I hadn’t been overly exposed to her music before the movie because I would’ve been freaking out the entire time. I would’ve been fangirling and wouldn’t have been able to keep it together. Before the music video, I went through her whole discography and, like everyone else, was in awe of her. It was such a fun experience. Lance and our other friend, Pablo [Rochat], directed the video together. I’m still bumping that album [Lost Weekend] nonstop. It’s so good. I vacillated wildly between thoughts of major imposter syndrome. I’d never done anything like this. Am I capable of it? Do I have this thing in me that he thinks I do? I’m not convinced that I do. But ultimately, those thoughts are a distraction, and you try to shut them out.Skyler Gisondo DEADLINE: You’ve played a lot of characters who are funny, charming, and usually serve as conduits for the audience. Dan has some of that earnestness before he goes into darker territory. Did you see Primetime as an opportunity to challenge how people perceive you as an actor, particularly after a year that also includes Jimmy Olsen in Superman? GISONDO: I was really excited by the opportunity to do something I had never done before. I was initially unsure I could do it after reading the script. I’d heard actors I love talk about being drawn to challenging projects, and I almost never understood that. I thought, “Why would you want to show up scared to work every day?” For the first time, I understood it. A lot of that was Lance instilling an incredible amount of confidence in me from the beginning. He’s the kind of filmmaker you trust. A lot is out of your control as an actor, so it doesn’t really behoove you to overly concern yourself with where everything is going to land or what the perception might be. All you can do is put one foot in front of the other, be present, and look at everything through the lens of your character as you’re reading the script. That’s really all there was. I vacillated wildly between thoughts of major imposter syndrome. I’d never done anything like this. Am I capable of it? Do I have this thing in me that he thinks I do? I’m not convinced that I do. But ultimately, those thoughts are a distraction, and you try to shut them out. In this case, with Dan specifically, those thoughts were almost helpful in a meta way because there was so much from my own life to draw from. Having started acting when I was so young, I understood that quiet desperation and eagerness Dan has when he first comes into the picture. When you start thinking about the big picture, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. It really is one scene at a time. It’s, “What are we doing today? What is this scene? What is this moment?” That’s why, as an actor, working with the right filmmaker is everything. What Lance and his editor, Dan Garber, ultimately did was take this very small piece that you contribute as an actor and make it part of a much larger puzzle. When it all works, it’s incredible. The whole becomes so much greater than the sum of its parts. I was surprised, too. Lance has such a distinct visual style, as does his cinematographer, David Bolen. Watching the movie for the first time, I had never seen myself that way. It had never occurred to me that I could exist in that kind of movie or world. It was an immensely formative experience because I found that it was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, and ultimately the most gratifying by far. When you see a movie work, it really is a magic trick. Everybody has an idea of what they’re doing, but you can’t possibly understand how you fit into the whole until you see it come together. Everyone brings their own thing to it, and then you have a filmmaker like Lance who creates something so exciting. It really lit a fire under me moving forward. I don’t know that it would’ve been lit otherwise. I know I want to pursue that feeling of uncertainty and fear in the work. Primetime A24 DEADLINE: OK, we have to talk about this friendship dynamic between Troy and Dan. I don’t think Dan needed to apologize to Troy at the end. Troy was helpful in the beginning, but I think as the movie goes on, Troy becomes passive-aggressive or slightly envious. What’s your take on their relationship? GISONDO: Hm. You know, I think they have a very odd, special relationship. Eric [Rahill] was so unbelievably funny and is just a singular kind of actor. He brought so much to that character; ultimately, a good amount made it into the movie, but a lot of it also didn’t because it was so funny. I don’t think anyone knew where to put it, almost because he could take a scene and go somewhere completely new every time. Should Dan have apologized though? You know what… I think it’s wrong of Dan to come at him. I do think Troy wants what’s best for Dan, and that’s why he’s not as immediately excited about the opportunity as Dan is. He’s trying to make sense of what it is, while Dan is still in a place where he’s ready to compartmentalize and get excited about whatever it is. He has this job; he’s going to be on TV. His buddy is being a good buddy and saying, “It doesn’t really sound like acting, man. It doesn’t really sound like what I know you want to do.” So I think Dan is in the wrong. Honestly, I hadn’t thought about it, but I think Dan’s in the wrong there. I had never seen myself that way. It had never occurred to me that I could exist in that kind of movie or world. It was an immensely formative experience because I found that it was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done, and ultimately the most gratifying by far. Skyler Gisondo DEADLINE: Fine. I’ll accept your answer. GISONDO: I appreciate it [laughs]. DEADLINE: Working with Robert Pattinson, what kind of conversations did you two have when Dan has to step in and essentially become Chris Hansen while he is having a panic attack outside? GISONDO: What’s funny is that when you watch the scene in the movie, it seems obvious what it’s about: Dan doing his best Chris Hansen impersonation. But going into the day, it was clear on the page that Dan was trying to fill the role of hosting the show and moving it forward. It wasn’t clear that he was literally going to try to impersonate Chris. As much as I had thought about that scene, it was only about half an hour before we were about to shoot that it occurred to me that it would be great if Dan literally tried to channel Chris. Rob was on set shooting something else, so I flagged him down and said, “Hey, dude, can we run through this? Can you read my lines? How would you do this scene?” He was fired up about the idea, so we spent 15 minutes with him basically being my acting coach for his version of Chris Hansen. I’m very lucky it worked out that way and that he was on set. I think the idea came to me when I saw what Lance and Bolen had cooked up with that camera move, that iconic move where it comes around to Chris. It struck me: “Oh, this is that moment. Dan needs to…” I think Dan is excited by the opportunity to do some real acting, to channel a character, because he still doesn’t really understand Chris’s motivation or what he’s doing. Earlier in the movie, Chris says to him, “Nothing I do is acting, Dan.” But I think Dan is still trying to find his place in the show, and he sees this as an opportunity to create a character in that moment. DEADLINE: Where do you see Dan by the end, when he gets his SAG card? Has he learned a lesson from everything that happened? GISONDO: It’s interesting because that final scene wasn’t originally in the movie. Lance called me a few months after we wrapped and wanted to shoot another scene with Dan. We talked about what that could be, and we came up with the idea of him getting his SAG card. It was originally scripted so that when someone asks, “Are you an actor?” Dan thinks about it for a minute and then says, “Yes.” We did that a couple of times during this one-day pickup in LA, but something wasn’t working. Lance suggested, “Why don’t you try saying no?” We tried a few takes like that, but it didn’t feel right. Then he said, “Let’s try to just look at him. Just look at him for a while.” I was already playing the scene as if Dan were somewhat traumatized by the experience. There’s this strange man knocking at his door, bringing up all these uncomfortable memories. We found that was the most interesting approach. Dan hadn’t considered whether or not he was an actor anymore in the year since the show or whatever. But now, finally, the thing he always wanted is in the palm of his hand. I don’t know that Dan knows how he would answer anymore. I think the ending is perfect. Lance’s instincts were totally right. I don’t think Dan knows anymore. Primetime A24 DEADLINE: So, next we’ll see you back to being charming again in Focker-In-Law. Talk about joining this franchise and its cast, which includes Ariana Grande, Robert De Niro, and, of course, Ben Stiller? GISONDO: It was awesome. Those movies meant so much to me as a kid. I think we all grew up with them. Ben is somebody who’s been an enormous influence and inspiration to me, and a real hero of mine. He and I had worked together years earlier on Night at the Museum. I played his son, and I was 17 at the time. It was a very formative experience because it was the first time I had been a bigger part of a big studio movie. We were filming all over the world, so I was wide-eyed the whole time, soaking up as much as I could. It was so interesting to reunite with Ben 11 or 12 years later. I realized how much I had absorbed from that experience. I would see him doing things before takes and recognize little things that I do. I’d think, “Oh, I got that from him.” I didn’t even realize I had picked that up from that time. John Hamburg, who directed the movie, also made I Love You, Man, which is one of my favorite movies of all time, as well as Along Came Polly. John has had a hand in so many of the comedies that shaped me as a person and an actor. And, of course, you have the greatest actor of all time, literally Robert De Niro. Every day on set was a total out-of-body experience. Then there’s Ariana Grande, one of the most mega-talented performers and artists of all time. She’s been around for what feels like my whole life. It was insane. In some ways, it felt like stepping onto a superhero set, even more so than Superman. You’re shoulder to shoulder with all these total icons, and it was great. It definitely felt like huge shoes to fill. You really felt that sense of responsibility: “Oh my God, I cherish this so much. I don’t want to mess this up.” We had a great time. Ari is, in addition to everything else, unbelievably funny and an incredible actress. We all knew that, but I hadn’t seen her do something like this. She was brilliantly funny and collaborative. I basically tried to ask Robert De Niro as many questions as possible and spend as much time with him as possible without bothering him. We had a great time. I’m excited for people to see this movie, and I hope they respond to it. John did a really good job of making this movie feel like it lives in the same world as those first movies, even these many years later. DEADLINE: And sometime next year, we’ll see you in the Superman film Man of Tomorrow and in The People v. Gorilla Grodd. Under the new James Gunn and Peter Safran DCU regime, you’ll be the first to get your own show: what new aspects of Jimmy Olsen are you excited to explore? And are you nervous about it? GISONDO: We just wrapped. This is uncharted territory for me, and I don’t know what I can say. I really don’t want to get fired, and I really don’t want to get in trouble [laughs]. DEADLINE: I understand. GISONDO: I can say American Vandal is one of my favorite shows of all time. Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda, who were behind that show, are also behind this one. For what this show is, I don’t think there was anybody else in the world who could have done it or who could have done what they would’ve done. I think it’s an approach to this world that I’ve certainly never seen before. People can expect something different. In the movie, Jimmy, because you’re getting a smaller dose of him, it’s [not as big of a performance]. On the show, I can be a little more off-the-wall in some ways. I can take bigger swings. There’s a difference between being a piece of the puzzle in a very big movie, where you can come in, take really big swings and try things, and being more at the center of a story. It’s a different kind of thing. I think the stakes of the show are surprisingly big. It’s deeply funny, and I think people are going to be surprised by the stakes, where it goes, and how big it gets. It’s definitely a more intense version of Jimmy Olsen than we’ve seen before. I don’t think I can get fired for anything I just said [laughs].