Knives Out director denies reshaping Daniel Craig after Bond: ‘He can do anything’

Knives Out director Rian Johnson and his detective star Daniel Craig were looking to shake things up a bit when they sat down to plot the crime yarn franchise’s next entry after filming their ‘big and broad’ 2022 comedy sequel Glass Onion.

‘We thought it could be fun to pull it down to earth a little bit for the next one. My translation for how to do that was to find something personal to write about,’ Johnson tells Metro – and that’s how Wake Up Dead Man was first conceived.

While still largely a humorous whodunnit in spirit, this film goes a bit darker (but cosier) with its crime setting, adding in a large dollop of religion with its Catholic Church community of characters in smalltown Upstate New York.

‘I grew up very Christian, and I’m not a believer anymore, so it’s complicated – and working all those complicated things into a big, fun, entertaining Benoit Blanc murder mystery, that seemed like a really tantalising challenge,’ Johnson explains.

There is, of course, precedent for this in the genre, with Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage, and even more so for Johnson, GK Chesterton’s Father Brown short stories proving it could be a delicious combination.

‘They show that it can be a bit like peanut butter and chocolate with the themes of morality and human guilt and culpability that come with the faith discussion, and a story where somebody’s murdered, and you have to find the guilty person for it.’

Wake Up Dead Man’s killer cast of characters assembled

It’s a task that wasn’t easy, though, the filmmaker admits, including when he was fleshing out his new cast of characters, to be brought to life by a formidable list of A-list talent, including Glenn Close, Josh O’Connor, Jeremy Renner, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Kerry Washington, and Andrew Scott, among others.

O’Connor’s Father Jud Duplenticy, a boxer-turned-reverend described as ‘young, dumb and full of Christ’, serves as Wake Up Dead Man’s protagonist, sent to a small-fry local church after an infraction, only to find himself implicated in the murder of his eccentric new boss, Monsignor Wicks (Brolin).

The beginnings of Jud came easiest to Johnson because he was initially putting in him ‘all the things that I still treasure in my memories about my time as a Christian, and all the things that I think the world needs more of that are embodied in Christ’s teachings’.

‘But he was also the most difficult, because you put all that in a character… and it’s a pretty boring character! So you’ve got to figure out what his actual conflict is, figure out the darker things inside him that make him human,’ the writer-director shares.

Luckily, a lot of that came thanks to his odd-couple relationship with Craig’s Blanc, who arrives to solve the case and whom Jud sees as his redemption from the suspicious townsfolk – despite his identifying as ‘a proud heretic’.

‘The fact that they’re so ideologically opposed, but are working towards this common goal, but in different ways. I mean, that’s every buddy cop movie ever made, right?’ points out Johnson of the duo’s chemistry.

We wanted to pull it down to earth a little bit for the next one

Darker elements are also provided by the town’s mistrustful locals, including Washington’s uptight lawyer Vera and her politician-wannabe half-brother Cy (Daryl McCormack), Kunis’s local police chief Geraldine, newly separated and miserable Dr Nat (Renner), Close’s obsessively loyal laywoman Martha, and disabled former concert cellist Simone (Priscilla star Cailee Spaeny).

Wake Up Dead Man’s actors ruminate on religion and the film’s relevancy

‘Rian and I had very similar upbringings in the church, and whether you’re still in the church or you’ve left, it’s something that will always be close to me and informs who I am today,’ Spaeny shares with Metro.

‘I really understood Simone and where she’s coming from, and her sort of scepticism but also the strong need [for] community and home and to be heard. I found it really moving, inside this incredibly entertaining murder mystery.’

Kunis identified with Geraldine as ‘the least religious character’, although she remembers an early conversation she had with Johnson ‘talking about his 20s and his realisation about life versus church’.

‘It was one of my most favourite conversations I ever had with anybody. I grew up in a Jewish family as an atheist. I was very much raised just accepting everybody, but I find religion to be fascinating – I love it – in every aspect: good, bad, all the things.’

Washington felt very personally connected to Vera after writing her 2023 memoir Thicker Than Water, in which she discussed ‘realising that my dad is not my biological father’.

‘So this idea of how we define family, how we think about it, what is loyalty, how do we define belonging, what is truth? Those ideas are very ripe for me, and Rian and I had really great conversations about all that.’

Vera’s unpleasant sibling Cy is an entitled, gilet-wearing schmoozer – ‘there’s plenty of examples of Cy Dravens in the world currently’, McCormack points out, who feels his character has only become more relevant since shooting the film last year.

‘Cy has this beautiful monologue at the beginning where he’s listing all the things that he’s tried his hand at [including book-banning, 5G conspiracy theories and anti-trans rhetoric] and yet he seems dumbfounded that he doesn’t make for a good politician. That really set the tone for him because he doesn’t actually know who he stands for and he’s getting swept up in this – and then has this fervour to really carry it out.’

Scott is bitter best-selling sci-fi author Lee Ross, another more challenging person to relate to – if very engaging, as played by the Fleabag and All of Us Strangers actor.

‘I guess I like the idea that he’s an original thinker. He doesn’t sort of fall into a crowd easily, and he’s creative in a sense. I’m not sure that I would wear sliders with socks myself,’ he quips.

These are all new additions to the Knives Out universe, with Blanc abruptly arriving with his signature air of mystery and a new, shaggier hairstyle.

Daniel Craig back as Benoit Blanc – and beyond Bond

Craig continues to have fun as the flamboyant Southern gentleman detective, drawing out his lines and leaning into the campness of cosy crime. It’s streets apart from his stoic and clipped James Bond, the role that has defined his career until now – but Johnson disputes the idea that he re-introduced the star as a comedic talent

‘Obviously I love him in the Bond films, [but] I had seen him in a lot of his other work, and I had seen him on stage, and I knew his background, and I just always knew this is an actor who has an almost infinite toolbox to pull from. He can kind of do anything. So it wasn’t “Oh, he’ll be great for Blanc because of this, or that”. It was: Here is an actor who can just kind of do anything. He’s a cool guy I’ve always wanted to work with, let’s do it!’

In Wake Up Dead Man, we get further teases about Blanc’s personal life, following Hugh Grant’s fabulous Glass Onion cameo, with Johnson thrilled to indulge his past as a ‘high school theatre kid’ and involve some rather unexpected Andrew Lloyd Webber music, including the Phantom of the Opera overture.

‘Licensing that piece of music from the soundtrack album for it made me very, very happy,’ he discloses, and I tell him it did the same for me.

‘I think that the audience feels delight when you are delighting yourself – or that’s at least the only compass you can kind of go by.’

Why there won’t ever be a Benoit Blanc prequel

But any fans interested in a Benoit Blanc origin story prequel or learning more about him in any detail should prepare for disappointment.

‘Blanc is only interesting to me in so far as he is the detective in a whodunnit movie, and by that I mean I’m never going to be interested in taking a side road to explore an element of his personality or a flashback to explore why he chose to become a detective, or anything like that.’

However, he won’t miss an opportunity to reveal a small glimpse at something.

I’m never going to be interested in taking a side road to explore an element of his personality or a flashback

‘I loved dropping tiny hints of a previous case that he solved that was very famous at the Kentucky Derby – little things like that, just to hint at a bigger realm, I think are really fun. But to me it’s important that Blanc is always firmly attached to the spine of the story.’

Filming with such a sprawling cast also allowed the actors to have fun on set with one another even when they weren’t acting – ‘we were obsessed with each other’, as Washington puts it.

‘We all had trailers, but we never went [in them]. I think the only thing I ever did in my trailer was change into my costume. Once we were on set, we were together all day long, in between every take, bonding, getting to know each other, spending time, sharing our souls,’ she laughs.

‘Everybody was completely glorious,’ agrees Scott. ‘But hanging out with Glenn Close who’s had the most extraordinary career – she’s just a bit of an icon, isn’t she, Glenn? – and just her insane passion for acting. She cares and wants to know what people are talking about, and she’s having a laugh with everybody, and she loves being part of a company.

‘I found that very inspiring for somebody who doesn’t need to be like that. She was just amazing.’

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is in cinemas now. It streams exclusively on Netflix from December 12.

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