With reporting by Josh Horowitz
“Young Ones” might be a post-apocalyptic drama with a stellar cast including Nicholas Hoult, Michael Shannon, Elle Fanning and more – but according to Hoult, what set the movie apart was really the living conditions.
“We were miles away from anywhere in this little bubble,” Hoult told MTV News about filming director Jake Paltrow’s now-in-theaters film, “and that’s often the situation with anything. You get in there, and meet these new people, suss each other out, and suddenly, hopefully, it all clicks into place and you find a groove. You’re living, sleeping – not sleeping – in a house together.”
Laughing, Hoult clarified his little sleeping gaffe, joking that he and his co-stars were in, “Just one giant bed, like ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’.”
Jokes aside, Hoult liked the close quarters, something that allowed him to get closer to co-star Shannon.
“when I first met Michael I thought he hated me,” Hoult recalled. “When you get to know him you realize he’s very dry, he mumbles along, doesn’t make a lot of eye contact, has this face which is so intense. And then hopefully he warms to you a little bit and then kind of takes care of you.”
Given he and Shannon were essentially living together for the duration of the “Young Ones” shoot, Hoult didn’t just get Shannon to warm to him – he also took the veteran actor on as something of a guru.
“We’d sit on the veranda in the evening,” Hoult said, “and I’d kind of quiz him about what he’d done that day, in that scene. Then the next day I’d be like, I need to try that in my scene with this, and try to steal ideas off him.”
You can see if Hoult’s not-so-stealth borrowing of Shannon’s acting tips panned out, as “Young Ones” is in theaters everywhere now.
Alex Zalben
Writer/Editor at MTV News. You can follow him on Twitter, but not in real life because that would be weird.
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