David Jonsson is already earning rave reviews for his standout turn in Lionsgate‘s Stephen King adaptation The Long Walk, but the Industry alum said he was initially hesitant to take on the project given its “really bleak” nature.
In a recent conversation with his Alien: Romulus co-star Cailee Spaeny for Interview magazine, Jonsson said his initial gut instinct was to pass on the film.
“Well, I remember reading it and it was really bleak, so much so that I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t think this is for me,’” he recalled. “And my agent was like, ‘Please, David, just take another look at it.’ And funny enough, I remember reading it and them kindly considering me for another role and I was like, ‘I’m not really interested in that one, but I’m interested in this one.’ And they were like, ‘We’d love to see you.’ So I met with [director] Francis [Lawrence] and had a chat with him about it and we somehow found a way of relating movies that we love to the movie that we were going to make. So we spoke about films like Stand By Me [another King adaptation].”
In The Long Walk, set in a dystopian 1970s-era America ruled by an authoritarian regime, 50 teens are selected to participate in the eponymous annual event, where they are forced to continuously walk or else be executed. Jonsson stars as one such participant, Peter McVries, as does Cooper Hoffman, who portrays Raymond Garraty.
“When I understood Francis’s movie taste, and that this was his passion project, I was like, ‘OK, I think I want to do this,’” the BAFTA Rising Star Awardee said. “But to try and answer your question about when I would know that I want to do something, I think it is when it kind of scares me. Do you know what I mean? I didn’t quite know this role because I thought, ‘Is this a horror? Is this a character study? Where are we going with this?’”
Jonsson likened his experience gleaning the script for the survival thriller with that of Alien, saying he looks to larger commentary within a movie to pique his interest. “It was really hard to see that and that scared me a bit. But I think that fear is where I should go,” he said of seeing the “movie inside the movie” in The Long Walk.
Aside from The Long Walk, now playing in theaters, Jonsson will be seen alongside Tom Blyth in Wasteman, which just had its TIFF premiere. The Rye Lane actor is also starring in Colman Domingo’s directorial debut Scandalous!, portraying Sammy Davis Jr. opposite Sydney Sweeney’s Kim Novak.
