by Gill Pringle in LA
In portraying a conspiracy-obsessed alien believer in Yorgos Lanthimos’ absurdist dark comedy Bugonia, Jesse Plemons immediately turned to a good mate . . . an ardent “extraterrestrialist” within his tight circle of friends.
“I have a friend that happens to be the most knowledgeable person about aliens,” he says trying to keep a straight face.
He’s not kidding. “He’s told me plenty of things in the past and I always tried to listen. Now, I’m asking more and – as is the case with anyone who’s really passionate about something – you need someone that wants to listen,” says Plemons who plays Teddy in the film, who, together with his cousin Don [Aidan Delbis], has gone deep down the conspiracy rabbit hole.
“He could just talk for hours, and it was fascinating. I asked him a lot of questions about when it started and, err, like his earliest memories of deciding, ‘Yeah, they’re out there’. Like, what was going on his life? And all that was really interesting,” Plemons says of his research for Bugonia co-starring with Lanthimos’ favourite muse Emma Stone.
Debuting at Venice, Lanthimos’ English-language remake of Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 South Korean film, Save the Green Planet! focuses on Teddy and Don and their plot to kidnap a powerful CEO (Stone), suspecting that she is secretly an alien who wants to destroy Earth.
People becoming fanatical about conspiracy theories was fascinating for Plemons. “I actually think that my favourite part is the beginning weeks and months, because you’re looking for anything that is interesting and inspiring and just following your nose and gathering as much information as you can, looking for a way in.
“I think it’s a ton of different things. In the beginning phase, I had a friend that recommended this book that laid the foundation for my understanding of how people are lured into conspiracy theories and the root of that.
“And then, I also work with an acting coach, and we do dream work and stuff, and so it’s just a slow process where, bit by bit, you’re putting it together and finding the thing that resonates with you, that seems like the most interesting.
“I’m also trying to find the way in that doesn’t feel like work, that feels like I’m following some trail and my curiosity. When I feel like I’m working, I don’t feel like I’m very good,” says Plemons, 37, revealing how the actors literally began rehearsing while conducting press for Kinds of Kindness in London – a triple role for which he won Best Actor at Cannes last year.
In common with all of Lanthimos’ films, Bugonia is a dark comedy with more emphasis on the dark – although Plemons does a spot-on impression of the Greek director’s accent when he recalls how he would periodically tell the cast, “Remember, it’s a comedy!”
Talking in Los Angeles, Plemons shakes his head. He’s not so sure. “I hope some of this is funny. But I guess in any comedy that I’ve ever done, it’s not funny to the characters, and the stakes in this was intimidating,” says the actor who first became a household name on the small screen with Friday Night Lights, Fargo and Breaking Bad.
“We were shooting sort of chronologically, and so I knew what was coming in that third act. And I was like: ‘How am I supposed to do this?’ Because the circumstances and events just go from bad to worse to unimaginable,” he concedes.
Forceful in his beliefs and methods, Teddy may appear to be a tinfoil-hat lunatic, but the anger and fear that he is motivated by – capitalist exploitation, ecological disaster, and a sense that, as he tells his cousin Don, “nobody gives a fuck about us” – is starkly real.
But his motivations are only complicated by a darker history that gradually, and terrifyingly, boils to the surface. “He’s been dealt a pretty shitty hand in life,” says Plemons. “He’s got a mother that was a part of this trial opioid drug treatment that left her in a coma, and he just desperately wants to help, but he’s gotten a little lost along the way.”
In his mother’s ramshackle isolated house in the American heartland – although actually filmed in the UK – Teddy’s time outside of his factory job is spent beekeeping, researching the true order of the universe, and training with Don to prevent a takeover from an alien species.
He has cycled through every fringe political and conspiracy subgroup out there before latching onto a theory about Andromedan control. But all his deep dives into rabbit holes have perhaps been a defense against the tide of grief and an overwhelming sense of futility in a society that seems to have used his family and cast them aside.
“He was just left to try to sort through all these feelings of absolute powerlessness and hopelessness,” Plemons says. “All this bubbling inside him – ‘where do I put this? How do I take control over this awful circumstance that I’ve been left with?’ This belief that he’s landed on has given him a sense of power and purpose and a way to sort these things, even in an indirect way. Anytime the past is brought up, he always takes it back to this mission.”
Plemons sees in Teddy what is, if a more extreme version, a similarly tragic reality that exists for many in an era of division and disconnect. “So many people feel in the world today that they’re just completely overlooked and forgotten,” he notes. “They’re just sort of being blown around by the powers that be.”
As Bugonia’s shooting schedule headed towards its disturbing denouement, Plemons was particularly anxious on behalf of his neurodivergent co-star Aidan Delbis.
“Having Aidan on that set completely changed the dynamic, and we were all really mindful and sensitive of what his experience was going to be,” says Plemons.
“That was the first thing I said to Yorgos, ‘Yes, he’s amazing, but how are we not going to traumatise this kid who’s only 18?’ But Aidan is just one of the more interesting people I’ve met,” says Plemons.
“And he is a horror fan and he’s tough, and he’s got a real sense of self. It was amazing to watch him throughout that process. He had acted in a few school plays, but this is his first film, jumping into the deep end with Yorgos.
“I felt so protective over him, and was so attuned to how he was doing,” Plemons says, also explaining how Delbis worked with acting coach/guide Elaine Hall, founder of the Miracle Project, a theatre group for neurodivergent kids which led to two-time Emmy-winning 2007 documentary, Autism: The Musical.
“It gave us a lot of comfort having Elaine there, and being able to talk to her the entire time, and ask her any questions. It was a really wild experience to be acting with Aidan, and to see the moment where something shifted and he started using his own experiences and was present. I could see it happen. I was amazed by him. It was incredible,” says the actor.
Furthermore, he notes that Bugonia’s script was so rich and well written that there was little to discuss regarding its tone.
“I agree that this feels different, in comparison to some of Yorgos’ previous films. And I think he’s always sort of shining a light on aspects of us as a species and how absurd and twisted and dot, dot, dot, all that.
“But I also think he’s got a bigger heart than he wants to let on,” Plemons says.
Bugonia is in cinemas 30 October 2025
