{"id":133660,"date":"2025-08-10T06:18:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-10T06:18:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/133660\/"},"modified":"2025-08-10T06:18:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T06:18:14","slug":"weapons-star-alden-ehrenreich-on-gun-violence-mustaches-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/133660\/","title":{"rendered":"“Weapons” Star Alden Ehrenreich on Gun Violence, Mustaches and More"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT:\u00a0<\/strong>This article contains minor spoilers about \u201cWeapons<\/a>,\u201d now playing in theaters.<\/p>\n

\n\tHalfway through opening weekend, Zach Cregger<\/a>\u2019s genre-blending horror movie \u201cWeapons\u201d is giving audiences more than ghastly thrills and gallows humor \u2013 the film is helping its established cast show some versatility in a wholly original script.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnexpected and aggressive performances from Amy Madigan, Josh Brolin, Benedict Wong and Julia Garner abound in the project, which is certainly true of another key player: Alden Ehrenreich<\/a>. The once \u201cIt\u201d boy muse of the Coen Brothers and, later, an attempted franchise starter in the world of Star Wars, Ehrenreich shines as a stunted Podunk cop whose town is rocked by the wee hours disappearance of 17 children.<\/p>\n

\n\tEhrenreich\u2019s Paul is trapped in a marriage he doesn\u2019t want, working for his sheriff father-in-law and occasionally backsliding into addiction with an old flame and fellow fuck-up played by Garner. Neither is ready for the supernatural forces that turn their mundane self-destruction into a terrifying death trap. Variety caught up with Ehrenreich to discuss the film\u2019s symbolism (already the subject of much social media discussion), rocking a mustache and carrying the physical and emotional weight of his character.<\/p>\n

\t\tZach Cregger previously said that he wanted you and Josh Brolin for this film because of your work in \u201cHail, Ceasar!\u201d Is that true?<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI believe that\u2019s the piece of material that made him notice me as an actor, I\u2019m not sure about Brolin. I saw the \u201cWeapons\u201d script a long time ago, and thought it was one of the best I\u2019d ever read. Each character has such a specific world. It\u2019s a genre film, but it\u2019s completely different, especially in terms of quality. I met with Zach and we really got along, but then the strikes happened and all the other obstacles. I\u2019m lucky the stars aligned where I could end up in the movie.<\/p>\n

\t\tIs that mustache glued on, or did you go method?<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s my mustache. We had initial conversations about it, and I just felt, \u201cNo way. It\u2019s such a clich\u00e9.\u201d But then we looked at a picture of me with a mustache, and he said, \u201cLet\u2019s not cut it just yet.\u201d After we did a screen test, it just felt right.<\/p>\n

\t\tDid Zach have you do a ride along with a police officer?<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI did. It was something I really wanted to do. I went out in the middle of the night with an officer in Long Beach, and I also talked to another cop from a small town. Those two beats are enormously different. But the Long Beach officer helped me understand a day in his life.\u00a0I spent some time with him at his house. His wife was very lovely and agreed to be a stand-in. He handcuffed her in their living room and showed me how you hold someone to the ground \u2013 a lot of the things we end up doing in the film. Then we went to a cop bar.<\/p>\n

\t\t\u201cWeapons\u201d is a genre film, but it\u2019s got a diverse tone. You wind up doing a lot of action, which almost translates to physical comedy.<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the more important things for the character was to be carrying around as much weight as possible, physically and emotionally. I wear a bulletproof vest, and production was going to spare me because we shot in Atlanta and it was so hot, but we wound up keeping it. I gained some weight for the role, not so much to play a cop but to play someone moving through a life that really isn\u2019t his own. Someone in a circumstance, a relationship and a job, that\u2019s not genuine to who he is. And that is what\u2019s tonally unique about Zack. Francis Ford Coppola told me on my first movie [\u201cTetro\u201d] that if you write something really personal, it will become something no one has ever seen before. Because each one of us is completely unique and original. I think that\u2019s true of this movie.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhat do you think Zach is trying to say with this film?<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tTrying to boil it down to a thesis is probably in vain, I think this story is more like a dream. It\u2019s more poetic than rational. We had some conversations, [for instance] there is a moment where a gun appears in the sky.<\/p>\n

\t\tA lot of people are already talking about that.<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI think there\u2019s clearly some relationship between that gun and a bunch of missing children and school shootings. He didn\u2019t say that, but to me it feels like it\u2019s there in a poetic sense. The thing that feels more concrete to me is that all of these characters are an expression and a part of Zach. Julia said, during our press tour, that she kept making certain choices wearing T-shirts and glasses. In the end, she realized she was just dressing like Zach. It\u2019s proof positive that filmmakers should take more personal risks. It smells original, in the same way that the audience can smell when something\u2019s formulaic and they\u2019ve seen it a million times.<\/p>\n

\t\tYou recently converted a historic Los Angeles streetcar station into a playhouse. How\u2019s it going?<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been kind of amazing. We had a soft launch over the past six months. We did five staged readings. Our first full production is coming this spring, and the excitement is really encouraging. The goal of it was to have a kind of Off-Broadway-style theater on the east side of LA, and a home for artists where they can experiment. We started an acting class and a playwright\u2019s circle.<\/p>\n

\t\tHas opening this impacted how you work and perform?<\/strong>\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a way. I\u2019m as interested in impressing the people in that space as I am in a commercial audience. It\u2019s forced us to articulate some of our artistic values in the way that we want to work. On a personal level, when you spend your life as an actor, it\u2019s very itinerant. You\u2019re traveling all over, you can work 9 months on something that comes out and doesn\u2019t open and feels like it never happened. The solidity of putting this time and work and energy into a 120-year-old trolley station community? It\u2019s like feels very real and forced me to be a grown-up in a way I probably wouldn\u2019t have had to otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This article contains minor spoilers about \u201cWeapons,\u201d now playing in theaters. Halfway through opening weekend, Zach Cregger\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":133661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[13204,185,171,67,132,68,9826,9827],"class_list":{"0":"post-133660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-alden-ehrenreich","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-weapons","15":"tag-zach-cregger"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115003018779562865","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133660\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}