The Actor’s Perspective – Creating Context and Texture with ‘God Is A Bullet’ Actor Ethan Suplee

God is a Bullet follows detective Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who finds his ex-wife murdered and his daughter kidnapped by an insidious cult. Bob takes matters into his own hands and infiltrates the secretive cult to try to save his daughter. With the help of the cult’s only female victim escapee, Case Hardin (Maika Monroe), Bob and Case go down the rabbit hole with The Ferryman (Jamie Foxx) to save his daughter and find closure for Case from the cult – and its maniacal leader (Glusman) - that took so much away from her. 

Ethan Suplee has had a wide range in his acting repertoire, from TV comedies like My Name is Earl to the mind-bending thriller The Butterfly Effect, and to playing deplorable people like Seth in American History X. It's not unusual to be wildly excited to see his name in an upcoming film or television show, because you know Ethan gives it his all in his roles. 

In his latest role as Gutter in Nick Cassavetes's film God Is A Bullet, you wish there was more screen time with Ethan, but in the time we do spend with him, his character is a formidable presence. In this conversation with Ethan, he discusses his process when approaching roles, his creative collaboration with filmmaker Nick Cassavetes,  and what is a big turnoff for him when reading a screenplay.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: Your character is a man of few words, but you bring this body of intimidation to him. What initially piqued your interest to dive into this character?

Ethan Suplee: Nick Cassavetes brought up God Is a Bullet to me 10 years ago. And Nick is one of my closest friends. I'm a fan of his artistic sensibility. But also, I think that he has some of the most ironclad integrity of anybody I've ever worked with before. So, I trust that I'm not going to look foolish when I work with Nick. And so pretty much [when] Nick says, ‘I have something for you’ I'm doing it no matter what, which is not necessarily the case with everyone. And so, I knew about this a long time ago. I had no idea what it was about other than I thought it had a cool title. And then when he finally said, ‘We're making this movie this year’ - I think we were at the gym, Nick and I spent many years going to the gym every day together - and I was like, ‘OK, great. I should maybe read the script.’

And I have four daughters and a granddaughter. And I was, initially horrified because not that I've done a ton of movies that I think would interest my daughters, in fact, not many at all. But you know, this is a really horrible movie from the perspective of a parent. It's the worst nightmare. And then from that point, I just thought, ‘OK, well, this will be a challenge for me. So, I'm up for a challenge.’

The other worst character I've ever played was Seth in American History X. And I think that though, I shared no morals or values with Seth, there was an attempt in doing that to add some humanity to him, because I think just framing something as good or bad from the point of trying to develop a character, the characters not thinking of himself as bad, though I think of him is bad. So, in order to do that, honestly, I have to at least put a little humanity into him because he is a person, though I think he has a shitty childhood and poor education and lots of awful ideas and is wrong. He doesn't think he's wrong. So how do I make that honest? And I think Seth is even kind of cartoonish, but he's still a person. And the interesting thing with Gutter is I don't think he's a person. I think he's a sociopath. And I think that it was actually hard for me to remove all traces of humanity from him, and still make him an honest character.

Sadie: While you're working through all that, and again, I wish you had more screen time in this film, but you do have this intimidating presence in this film, what were the mental gymnastics you were going through to prepare for that role?

Ethan: Yeah, it was a lot of heavy music and time in the gym and thinking, ‘How do I have an evil thought? And what is that like?’ And then it was mostly, ‘What are the dynamics amongst this group? And what role does Gutter play and how do I communicate that?’ Gutter hates Case and that's expressed very little in dialogue, but I tried to make that as abundantly clear as possible throughout any scenes where she's mentioned or where I was in them with her. And the reasons for why Gutter hated Case were also gross.

I enjoy doing these things where maybe something's not in the script, but you create a story out of it for yourself and then it becomes interesting. Even if it's not totally communicating to the audience, whatever it is, it's interesting, and it's creating context and texture. And so all that stuff was pretty fun for me to do.

Sadie: Having worked with a lot of writer/directors, do you feel you have creative liberation to approach them with your ideas about a character’s backstory, or are they like, ‘No, stick to what's on the page’?

Ethan: I always try to have that story created before I show up for work. And then I want to have that conversation with the director also. And I think that, unfortunately with Nick, he has such good ideas that I'll come and I'll go, 'Here are all my ideas.' And Nick will say, 'You can do anything you want. But here's what I was thinking. And if you don't like what I'm thinking, you do what you're thinking.' And then I always just wind up liking what Nick was thinking. [laughs] That seems to have been my relationship with Nick, since going back practically to Blow which he wrote, where you can just have a conversation with him.

And he's thinking in textual ways that I'm not, I'm not always thinking in those terms. Because I'm not really thinking always of what the overall thing is going to look like. I'm thinking about it from the perspective of the character only. Like My Name Is Earl was a show about a guy whose brother fucked up and was making up for it. You know what I mean, but it was about Randy, that's the only point of view that I'm capable of having really...and I can try to have Earl's point of view and say, ‘What's the show about from his perspective?’ but it's a little bit of a stretch. And so, all of these things, I'm not really, totally paying attention to what is absolutely going on in a scene outside of what am I experiencing in the scene and what does that mean.

I can have really cool conversations with Nick, because he's also an actor. So, I think he understands that a little bit, I think there's a very, a bit of narcissism and selfishness with actors, which is not necessarily bad, because we're creating characters, and you're looking at us, and it can be pretty gross, but it can also be like, what it is, if we're being honest. And I think Nick understands that in a way that he can communicate, where not 100% of the other directors that I've worked with can.

Sadie: I would assume by this point, you two have a shorthand and are able to understand what his intentions are on the page to when he's giving you direction?

Ethan: Yeah, yeah. And he's open to dialogue about it - open to talking about it in a way that could be or has been annoying to maybe some other people who are like, ‘Just let me tell you to do X and do X!’ Nick will give you the philosophical reasons why X are correct, you know what I mean? Or he'll do that with me, but we are very close. So, I don't know, again, if this is just my experience - I couldn't love Nick more.

I've had some of my favorite direction from him, where it was a movie called Yellow that we did that I don't even think ever got released, and he just told me a couple of things, which made me see that it was like a two-second conversation, which completely changed my idea of everything that was happening in the scene in a way that somebody else might have just been annoyed and wanted me to hit my mark more.

Sadie: How often, if at all, says to you, ‘We’re going to roll the camera and let you feel it out’ or ‘You got two takes, and we’re moving on’?

Ethan: [laughs] No, Nick will shoot it until we have it and if I don't feel like we have it, he'll give me another take. And then if we have it in two takes, we can move on too. I'm a big fan of Clint Eastwood. I love Clint Eastwood. But there have been scenes in Clint Eastwood movies where you'll see that the dolly quite clearly went over a rock, and you're like, ‘You could have done that one more time’ - I understand.

My father-in-law, he's passed away, he was an actor named Geoffrey Lewis, one of the all-time great character actors like truly, "that guy" - I mean, he's in the legendary “that guy” status. And he did a lot of movies with Clint Eastwood. And he said, 'I once did the worst scene of acting I've ever done in my entire life. And it was the only time Clint Eastwood gave me direction. And he came up to me and he said, do you want to do that again?' And so I understand that, but at the same time, I want to know from the director that everything was perfect, and it can't always be perfect. But I trust Nick enough to know that it will be as close to perfect as it can possibly be.

Sadie: Right. It's all in service to the story and the movie. You've been in business for a while now, what is something that you gravitate towards on the page, or is a big turn-off for you when reading a screenplay?

Ethan: There's a happy middle ground between the stage direction - the descriptive stuff and the dialogue. And when there's too little, that's not great for me when it reads like a play. I don't like that. And when I'm reading a novel, I don't like that. So, I want somehow to be communicated the scene as concisely as possible, but then sometimes I think when it's too concise, and I'm struggling, going, like, 'OK, I have to now create this whole thing,' because it's not like a book, right? I expect to read what I'm going to see. And then very rarely is it exactly what I've pictured, and that's fair too because there's now 200 other people that are making that happen, but I want what I'm reading to paint enough of a picture that I don't have to do any work because I'm a lazy actor. [laughs]

God Is a Bullet is now in Theaters and available on Digital on July 11, 2023.