Alex Wolff: Getting Old

by Gill Pringle

The genesis of Old began when Shyamalan’s three daughters gave him an unusual Father’s Day gift – Pierre Oscar Lévy’s thought-provoking graphic novel, Sandcastle, about a group of people vacationing on a secluded beach who discover that they are aging rapidly.

The story immediately sparked The Sixth Sense director’s imagination, ultimately filming Old on location in the Dominican Republic, featuring a diverse cast including Gael Garcia Bernal, Embeth Davidtz, Vicky Krieps and Rufus Sewell opposite Australia’s own Eliza Scanlen and Abbey Lee.

But perhaps Shyamalan’s closest bond was with Wolff, 23, whom he cast as Trent Capa in Old, the pair sharing a love of literature; Shyamalan later selecting Wolff to interview him for a director retrospective at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Wolff first gained recognition as a child actor, starring alongside older brother Nat in Nickelodeon musical comedy series, The Naked Brothers Band.

When the series ended, the brothers continued with their musical and film careers, Alex going on to appear in Patriots Day, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

What drew you to the script for Old?

“Just reading the script, I was sobbing and screaming out loud and laughing. It was probably the most animated, the most outwardly responsive I’ve ever been just reading something. It’s such an incredibly powerful, moving, and thought-provoking story. But, for me, it didn’t even matter what the script was – Night is one of my big heroes.

In the film, you and Eliza Scanlen’s character Kara talk about missing out on all the rites of passage of youth – graduation and prom etc. You started your career very young, do you relate to perhaps having missed out on aspects of your own youth?

“Yeah probably. I treated this movie like a dream in that I tried to, like a kid, follow only my instincts and abandon any intellectual grasp on why I’m doing things and more work from the stomach rather than the brain. I read enormous amounts of literature on child psychology – Bruno Bettelheim and Jean Piaget – and examined their positions on child psychology and what it means to experience things and to not experience things; to have certain parents and to not have certain kinds of parents. I also examined my own childhood and watched old footage of myself and got into this gross cycle of narcissism, examining my own development as a person. So, there was an element of ‘Oh man, did I miss out on certain things?’ That definitely seeped in there subconsciously. But I don’t think I was as focused on that element of working when I was young because I didn’t feel like I was a child actor – I really felt like I was making a show with my friends and my family and my brother so it didn’t feel like that. I honestly just felt that being a hyper-active extremely emotional kid made me miss out on a lot of the joy and stability because I was just so emotional. And I still am but, as a kid, I was especially like that, so I think this movie helped me reconnect with it and resent it less, so it’s kind of an important feat for me, doing this movie.”

Did all that research help for the role?

“Yes, definitely. I got knee-deep in the research of kids and their spatial relations, how odd it is to have big arms, their mental limitations. But what I found the most helpful was when I connected to myself as a kid and was completely unselfconscious and open. That’s when I felt the most connected to Trent. One of the things that I’ve struggled with is adjusting to the posturing of adulthood. I’ve always really gotten along with kids and really connect to my childhood self. I’m extremely emotional and open. That is how I’ve been since I was a kid, and I felt myself as a teenager start to try to shut it off. So, when the script came, it felt like an allegory for what I’d been dealing with, which is that I felt that I grew up in 24 hours.”

How would you compare Old to Hereditary?

“This isn’t a horror movie and I want people to go in knowing that, so they’re not disappointed or they’re pleasantly surprised. I think Old is a more philosophical allegory for how we’re feeling at the moment, and how quickly time is moving. I think it’s really a drama. I think Hereditary had family drama elements, but it was a horror movie – it became very terrifying. I don’t think Old is terrifying in the same way. I believe that the concepts are terrifying, so people see it maybe as horror, but it’s really a looming drama filled with dread.”

The young kids that play yours, Eliza Scanlen and Thomasin McKenzie’s counterparts are real lookalikes. Did you interact with them?

“Freaky. And yes, I did and I loved Nolan (River) and Luca (Faustino Rodriguez) – who play my character at younger ages – but when I first met Nolan it kinda scared the shit out of me because he was so much like me. Personality-wise, he was actually very different as it turned out but just, looking at him and the way he moved, it was unbelievable casting.”

Haha. Me too. Where was Old filmed?

“We filmed in the Dominican Republic in the heart of the pandemic. I’m the luckiest person in the world that I got to leave during the pandemic and be on a beach. So many people didn’t have that experience. Initially, I had a miserable time during the pandemic. I got extremely depressed, and I hated it but, in the same breath, I didn’t have it 1/50th what most people had it, having to stay home for the whole time.”

What was the atmosphere on set?

“I think we were all very much together, very much in the same world – but the experience for all of us was very different in that we all had our separate things going on. It’s really an ensemble piece, almost like an Altman movie in that every single character has their own flushed-out background and we’re all interacting but we’re all three-dimensional people. I think each character in this movie could have its own two-and-a-half hour movie just about them and their own experience.”

Talk about working with Night?

“He’s a genius and a terrific and amazing human being and I thought that we had a special bond. I interviewed him at Tribeca for a retrospective of his work and I felt so honoured to be chosen by him, but I felt we had a special, similar love of films and we’re both huge cinephiles. I felt that we both put the gas in each other’s tank and revved up each other’s engines and pushed each other in an exciting way… but really, he is like a god to me. A god who I’m lucky enough to call my friend.”

Do you remember seeing his film The Sixth Sense for the first time?

“I saw it when I was about 12 and it ruined my life, it was so scary. Night, for me, has been the gift filmmaker of my life. I remember all his movies coming out and I would see every single one of them. I’ve admired him from afar for so long and he’s an ambassador of just being the middle finger of whatever the industry expects of you and making what you want and that’s what I’ve always wanted to live and be. Getting to work with him felt like a weird fever dream on what felt like to me as the most personal movie he’s ever made.”

What do you hope is the takeaway for Old?

“I think everyone’s going to have their own individual takeaway, otherwise it’s a huge missed opportunity. I think it’s a movie about aging and time moving quickly and life evolving at a rate that these characters are not comfortable with. I believe that this will have a whole group of people leaving the movie talking about it. I think a movie starts when the movie ends and it will be similar to Space Odyssey where, after the film, you’re all discussing what happened and what you thought it meant. Things like great art need to be discussed. It’s not supposed to force-feed anything down your throat. It’s not McDonald’s, it’s a full rich meal.”

Did Old make you want to live every second to the fullest?

“No. I like wasting time.”

Any new music on the horizon?

“My brother and I finished a record and it’s going to come out soon. We’re mixing it now.”

Old is in cinemas now

Main Image by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Universal