Paul Walter Hauser on ‘Black Bird,’ Chris Farley, and Hitting ‘Rock Bottom’
Paul Walter Hauser is the rare actor who can make audiences laugh hysterically and break down crying, sometimes within the same project. From early guest spots on comedies like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Community, to his breakthrough roles in dramatic films like I, Tonya and Richard Jewell, to his deeply disturbing performance as the real-life convicted rapist and serial killer Larry Hall in the Apple TV+ series Black Bird, Hauser has proven himself a force to be reckoned with on screen.
But as he reveals in this episode of The Last Laugh podcast, it has taken a toll on his personal well-being. We get into all of it, including how he broke into the business by writing a movie for Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, why he manifested a role for himself on Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave, hitting “rock bottom” and getting sober during the filming of Black Bird, and the Chris Farley biopic he is more ready than ever to make.
Hauser grew up thinking he wanted to be just like Farley. Then, for a while, it was Jack Nicholson. But it wasn’t until he discovered Philip Seymour Hoffman that he could see his ideal future clearly.
“I looked at Capote and Along Came Polly next to one another and I thought, well, this is the real benchmark,” he says. “Can you do 10 out of 10 drama and 10 out of 10 comedy? Can you kill it in equanimity? So that’s been the benchmark for the last 15 years.”
He might not have reached the late Hoffman’s status in Hollywood quite yet, but he’s determined to get there by sheer force of will. Hauser explains that since the very beginning of his career, he would walk into audition rooms “with the energy of somebody doing bench presses while snorting cocaine.” Never a great athlete in school, he made acting his sport. “I’m going into this room ready to knock your ass out, that was my mentality,” he says. “I was very kind to all my competitors, but in my head, I’m like, dude, I’m gonna eat you with a fork and knife.”
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That competitive spirit extends to Hauser’s years-long efforts to make a biopic film about his original comedy hero, Chris Farley, who died 25 years ago this week at the young age of 33. The 36-year-old Hauser feels like he only has a few more years left to pull it off. But if he does get to play the SNL icon on screen, Hauser vows, “I’m putting in the same amount of effort I put into Larry Hall into Chris Farley. It won’t be small.”
Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation. You can listen to the whole thing by subscribing to The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts, and be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Tuesday.
So let’s talk about Black Bird, which is definitely your most disturbing performance to date. You’ve described it as being the most challenging work that you’ve done. What went into your decision to do it? And were you a little scared to dive into this particular pond?
I was kind of not scared. And to put a finer point on that so people don’t worry about me all of a sudden, I would say I wasn’t scared because anytime I play a real guy, which I’ve done three or four times, all I have to do is look at the picture to know whether I can play him or not. It’s just something I intuitively know. I know I could play Teddy Roosevelt. I can’t explain it, but I know. So there was something instinctual about that. But then you pair that with Dennis Lehane’s dialogue and his writing, and you pair that with Taron Egerton, who is coming off Rocketman, it wasn’t like I made it a winning team. I was joining a team that was already winning.
How do you go about trying to relate to a character like that? Because you have to get inside his head to some degree. You have to understand where he’s coming from, but it gets difficult, I imagine, when it’s someone this loathsome who’s a serial killer, rapist, just a really messed-up guy.
I don’t know what my process is, but I will say, what you see there is just me over-committing. If you told me to act like a bear, I could do a cartoonish sketch comedy version of a bear or I could really tell you, “I’m a bear. I’m gonna prove to you that I’m a freaking bear.” And then you would get weirded out seeing me grab a live fish and bite its head off. You don’t have to be that kind of actor, but I’ll say I have to be that kind of actor. There are other people that probably are British and are very well-trained and smarter than me and they will do something tactfully. I sort of immerse myself and I do things as much for real as possible and I call it a day. And for whatever reason, I think that does have an effect on how much people believe the performance.
Yeah, but that must also take a toll on you to go that deep into it.
Yeah, definitely. I had a moment of the shoot where I was just like, I think I need to leave. I haven’t told this story yet, because I didn’t even remember it until recently. I think somewhere in July or August of the shoot I just left for like three days. I had to cleanse my soul. I went to Michigan. It was kind of like Dennis Rodman with the Chicago Bulls where he is going to Vegas for two days. I had a version of that on this project. And I had some personal drama, too, going on at the time. I was newly getting sober and I was really having some issues with self-hatred and confusing my priorities and I just wasn’t in a good place personally, while playing a character who was in a bad place. So it was very much compounded. And for the first two or three months of the project, I was drinking and ingesting a ton of marijuana when I was off camera.
Was it partly playing this role that made you want to get sober or got you to that place?
I think the role exacerbated my behaviors that were already there. And then it was a launching pad for me to hit some version of a rock bottom and want to clean up. And by the way, people are going to hear this and use their imagination and think I was drinking vodka in my trailer before heading to set. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about, the producer tells me, “Hey, we shifted some scenes, you’re not going to work Friday, so you have a three-day weekend.” And then Friday at 11:30 in the morning, I’m like, I kind of want to make a pitcher full of margaritas with mezcal. And then I’m drinking during the day and then I’m ordering a bunch of greasy food and then I skip my workout because I feel like crap. And then I get really stoned and then I go online shopping and buy things I don’t need and I hate myself. It’s a cycle, bro. It’s a cycle of bad behaviors that the world probably looks at and goes, some of that’s not that bad. But it is if it’s causing you to hate yourself. So I had to clean up my act.
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How did things change for you once you did stop drinking and stop smoking weed during the shoot?
I think the impact was trying to gain a sense of control, trying to find newfound confidence where it hadn’t been previous. And to try to prioritize, because there’s an older version of me from recent history that only cared about winning an Oscar and an Emmy and being accepted by his peers and secretly hated himself and didn’t want to make any life choices, thus magnifying and increasing my own detriment. So I was kind of sick of that guy. He’s a good guy and he’s still a nice guy, but he’s woefully immature and insecure. He’s prone to self-harm ideation and he’s not responsible and he’s not going to be a good dad or a husband. So the guy I am now, I’m really grateful for, because I’m 14 months sober, I’m super happy, genuinely, I don’t have self-harm ideation anymore. And I have a better capacity for love and wisdom, because now I know what matters. The Hollywood game, none of it’s real. What does Denzel [Washington] say? He has some quote where he says, you’ll never see a U-Haul following a hearse. And I think about that all the time. You can become best friends with freaking Lady Gaga and Brad Pitt and you can win three Oscars, it’s not like your life gets any better. Your life just gets busier and more complicated. Your life gets better when you practice self-care and you love yourself and you minimize risks and you do things that matter to you.
Do you feel less ambitious, less competitive than you did a few years ago?
No, I’m viciously ambitious and I’m viciously competitive. I just happened to chill out a little bit and have some healthier perspective.
So you mentioned Chris Farley as an early influence at the beginning of our conversation, and I know there’s been talk over the years of a Chris Farley biopic that you were trying to make happen. Is that still something that’s on your mind? Still something that you are trying to make happen for real?
Oh, hell, I don’t even know if I want to do it. But I feel like I’m called to do it if the movie is getting made. No one alive will do or can do what I would do with that part. And that doesn’t mean they’re not talented or good. It just means if that movie is getting made, I’m the guy. I’m 36. I think there’s a couple more years where I could still play him. I would say after 40, I wouldn't want to play Chris. I think I’d be too old.
I remember reading that you had a unique take on it. What is your idea for what an ideal Chris Farley biopic would be?
I think I’d like to see it a little more dramatized and see Chris’ true point of view. Everybody’s always saying stuff like, “And then Chris took a crap out of a 40-story window in the middle of Manhattan!” We don't need another “Chris is stupid and fat” movie. We already got the documentary stuff, we’ve already got the comedy sketches. I want to see a movie that’s about the real Chris. And then what’s fun is, as an actor, I get to code-switch on screen. And you see me go from being the real Chris to, [breaks into Farley impression] “Well, I guess I’ve got to get in character and start scaring folks!” I could get into that whole thing and it would become a very showy performance by the nature of the psychology. That could be a fun, showy role for me as an actor, but also give Chris a bit of a voice and perspective that says, hey, this guy had feelings and thoughts that were a little unattended to and instead he sacrificed himself at every turn to try to be the man he thought people wanted him to be, which was a boy.
Listen to the episode now and subscribe to The Last Laugh on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts, and be the first to hear new episodes when they are released every Tuesday.
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