Many of us have watched The Order’s Tye Sheridan since he was an 11-year-old newcomer in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life. As is customary with many of Malick’s pictures, post-production took a few years, so Sheridan was 14 years old when he truly broke out on screen alongside Matthew McConaughey in Jeff Nichols’ Mud the following release year. He then became known for a string of teenage roles, particularly Scott Summers/Cyclops in three X-Men movies and Wade Watts in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One.
So that frame of reference makes his latest turn in Justin Kurzel’s critically acclaimed historical crime drama, The Order, all the more interesting. He plays Jamie Bowen, a local sheriff’s deputy, husband and father of two young children. Sheridan may not be a father himself, but based on his own small-town upbringing in Palestine, Texas, he had plenty of inspiration to draw on for his first paternal role.
“Most of my high school buddies got married and started having kids at 18 or 19. Some of them have three or four kids by now. So it didn’t feel like it was far from reality for me, but it did feel far from what I’ve experienced personally,” Sheridan tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I don’t have a family or kids yet. So it was a new challenge and dimension for me as an actor.”
Penned by Zach Baylin, the early 1980s period piece chronicles the real-life white supremacist group known as The Order. And upon seeing his high school friends getting caught up in it, Jamie can no longer sit idly behind a desk. So, at great risk to his young family, he teams up with a newly relocated FBI agent (Jude Law’s Terry Husk) to track Bob Mathews’ (Nicholas Hoult) group’s movements across the Pacific Northwest.
The film also marks Sheridan’s fourth film with his X-Men co-star Hoult, resulting in a unique dynamic since they were now on opposing sides for the first time.
“Nick’s a bud. It’s fun to test new dynamics with people, especially your friends. It’s like you’re both Major League baseball players, but you’re now playing against each other on opposite teams,” Sheridan says. “But at the end of the day, you’re there to make a great movie, so everything else goes by the wayside.”
Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Sheridan also discusses The Order’s relevance to current events and headlines involving militant groups and extremist movements.
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The Order is eerily of the moment despite being a 1980s period piece. These groups and movements didn’t just stop in the 1940s. Were you pretty rattled by the fact that history keeps trying to repeat itself?
I wouldn’t say I was rattled or shocked at seeing a repeat in history. We’ve done that since the beginning of time, unfortunately, but I have hope. I’m an optimist in the sense that we learn from our own mistakes, so I saw the importance of making this film. I didn’t actually know anything about this story when I first got involved with the project, and it has such resonant themes as a cautionary tale about extreme ideology and domestic terrorism. But it’s also about the sacrifice of law enforcement officers and the sacrifice that their families make for them to serve justice and uphold law and order and really save democracy and the integrity of our nation.
Beyond that, it has a lot of complex themes about family and communities and obsession, and I just found the movie to be so brilliant in terms of how much it said in such a finite amount of time. That’s really due to Zach Baylin’s amazing screenplay and Justin Kurzel’s direction, and I’m just honored to be a part of a project with so many amazingly talented people.
I’ve been watching you on screen since you were 11 years old in The Tree of Life and 14 years old in Mud, so I had a bit of a crisis once I saw that you’re now old enough to play the father of two young children in The Order. I just can’t believe how much time has passed.
Me too, man.
Did that realization also hit you like a ton of bricks at some point?
I’m from a really small town in Texas [Palestine]. Most of my high school buddies got married and started having kids at 18 or 19. Some of them have three or four kids by now. So it didn’t feel like it was far from reality for me, but it did feel far from what I’ve experienced personally. I don’t have a family or kids yet. So it was a new challenge and dimension for me as an actor to not only be responsible for yourself, but also your family. And this film really puts that under a magnifying glass for my character. Jamie has an indigenous wife [Morgan Holmstrom’s Kimmy] and two kids.
These guys he went to high school with took a left turn at some point, and he took a right one. They got involved with the Aryan Nation, and then they spun that out into a new group called “The Order.” It’s a white separatist movement, and they’re trying to accomplish a revolution that overthrows the government. So it’s a personal and imminent threat to not only his family, but his community, the nation and democracy itself. And to go on the chase and the journey of trying to stop these guys, he has a selfless resilience and strength to persevere.
Did you consciously channel any of your hometown friends into the role?
Yeah, but it was probably indirectly. You channel anyone around you who’s a father or a mother and the way that they put their family before themselves. That’s really what it was about for me in trying to flip that switch.
A few years ago, you and I talked about the purposeful contrast between the characters that you and Oscar Isaac played in The Card Counter. Asphalt City also juxtaposed your character and Sean Penn’s character. Did you approach Jamie and Terry (Jude Law) in a similar way to those previous pairings?
Well, the way that these two characters are modeled is there in the screenplay. Terry Husk, Jude’s character, is this guy who’s longing to have a connection with his family, but he’s been inundated by this obsession with the chase. And, ultimately, Husk looks at Jamie like he’s looking back through time at himself when he first had a family and before he found this obsession. Then, by the end of Jamie’s arc, he’s almost turning into Husk. So they’re almost one and the same at different periods in time, and it’s a poetic way to convey these two characters as they march on through this journey.
Yeah, later on, Jamie has this tantrum about the FBI not being proactive enough, and that felt like Terry’s volatility was rubbing off on him.
That’s a perfect example. Originally, that scene was written to have Terry be the one who’s blowing up and freaking out and losing patience with the FBI for not tracing this gun. We were doing the scene, and we just decided to turn it around. Justin and Jude and I talked about the idea of Jamie blowing up and trying it that way. So that’s what we ended up with in the film, and it’s harder to create those moments if you don’t have that trust and that bond with your director and the actors that you’re working opposite of. It becomes a really unique choice, specifically as it relates to Jamie’s character arc in the movie.
From 11 to 16, you worked alongside Brad Pitt, Matthew McConaughey and Nicolas Cage. And most recently, you’ve been on a run that includes Oscar Isaac, Ben Affleck, Sean Penn and now Jude Law. Have you been able to take stock of all your good fortune?
Every day I try to accept that and be grateful for all the opportunities that I’ve had. I wouldn’t change a thing. I’ve been super lucky to be surrounded by so many talented people, especially Jude on this project. He is a great guy to learn from because he’s an open book. He’s so dedicated to his craft, and he works so hard. Whether it’s an actor, director, producer or a screenwriter you admire, being incredibly dedicated to what they do is usually the one common thread. They work extremely hard, and all of their focus and energy goes into that one thing. I’ve always taken notice of that in people, and I continue to remind myself of it. So it’s an honor to get to work alongside some of the best actors and filmmakers of our time.
Jamie fails to have Terry’s six during a robbery, and later in the movie, he overcompensates for his earlier inaction. But he again doesn’t listen to his mentor in the process. Is Jamie just not cut out for this kind of police work? Is he meant to be behind a desk?
Well, the deeper thing that’s happening is that Jamie himself has accepted the obsession of the chase. You see him fully intoxicated by it. He’s trying to protect his family. He’s trying to do the right thing. He’s trying to overcome his fear. And he just loses his critical mind for a split second.
Did Jude shatter sugar glass in that earlier robbery scene, or did the VFX team add that windshield crack later?
No comment. (Sheridan smiles)
Oh, it’s a big secret!
You’ll have to ask Jude, but check out his hand when he puts his hand down. You might see something.
Nick Hoult is a fellow X-Men alum, so did that make for an interesting dynamic by the time you had your big scene together?
When you have a great screenplay that’s so powerful, it overtakes everything else. But Nick’s a bud. We’ve worked on four movies together now, and it’s always fun to collaborate with people that you love and love to work with. And it’s fun to test new dynamics with people, especially your friends. It’s like you’re both Major League baseball players, but you’re now playing against each other on opposite teams. That’s kind of what it felt like here. But at the end of the day, you’re there to make a great movie, and you’re fully immersed in that. So everything else goes by the wayside.
Steven Spielberg said earlier this year that Ready Player Two is still in development. Do you check in every now and then?
Yeah, for sure, but I’m not the guy that gets to make these decisions. So I have no idea where they stand in the process of making a sequel.
After I saw The Fabelmans, his filmography made all the more sense to me. Did The Fabelmans have a similar effect on you in a working capacity? Did certain choices and tendencies make all the more sense?
I don’t know if it added context to my working experience. When you work with someone closely, you get to know the person beyond the work. One day, Steven actually showed me some of the very first short films that he made, and it was really cool. He made those films when he was 16 years old, and even at that age, you could see by the way that he moved the camera that he already knew how to capture a story.
Jeff Nichols and David Gordon Green are dear friends, so did David see an early cut of Mud and cast you in Joe?
I’m not really sure exactly, but we made Joe a year [after Mud]. At some point, David was interested in casting a non-actor for the role that I played. But, technically, I was kind of a non-actor. I didn’t really have any experience as an actor. I’d worked on two films, but I had no credentials beyond that or any kind of background as an actor. I remember doing readings with Nick [Cage] at the time, and then there were a series of auditions with some other actors and maybe some non-actors for the role. So I’m not really sure what pushed David over the edge to cast me, but I’m really glad he did. We had a hell of a good time on Joe, and we loved making that movie.
Decades from now, when you’re staring into a crackling fireplace and reminiscing about The Order, what day will you likely recall first?
Justin makes compelling, gritty, dark movies, but he’s probably not the guy that most people would expect. He’s a really funny guy, and we laughed a lot while we were making this movie. It just felt like I was making a movie with my buddies. So I’ll probably just remember the joy of being with each other and the reactions that people are having to the film. I’m really proud that it excels in many ways, so I’ll just remember the good vibes.
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The Order opens in movie theaters on Dec. 6.
English (US) ·