Jesse Plemons is used to being cast as "straight-up creeps".
The 29-year-old actor admitted his role as lovely divorcé Gary in new movie ‘Game Night’ made a refreshing change because his character had a "heart of gold", whereas he’s grown used to dark roles thanks to his parts in the likes of ‘Breaking Bad’, ‘Black Mirror’ and ‘Black Mass’.
Asked how much of his disquieting screen presence was influenced by directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein and screenwriter Mark Perez, and how much was his own, he said: "I think it was a mix of both. That was my interpretation of the script. Gary seemed like the creepiest guy with the heart of gold, which I liked! I haven’t played that before. It’s usually just straight-up creep. So yeah, they definitely allowed everyone to bring their own inspiration or choices to it."
As Gary, Jesse has a number of scenes where he gives long, slow speeches to his neighbours, who are played by Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman, and the actor admitted he loves being able to make his co-stars feeling uncomfortable.
He laughed: "[They were] just waiting! Do you know how much fun that is, to be able to do that in an environment where it’s like, ‘That’s right! Good job!’ That was a lot of fun."
Asked if he likes to make people feel as uncomfortable as possible, he laughed and added: "Yes!"
Jesse had a brilliant time working on the movie because everyone was so funny, but he thinks some of the most amusing parts of the film were left on the cutting room floor because it was impossible to keep everything in.
He told Vulture: "It was everything you would hope for on a movie like this. The directors, the Johns, are both hilarious, and the script to begin with was one of the funniest scripts I feel like I’ve ever read.
"The [alternate take] that I think about the most — where it was just like, ‘Wow, Gary is crazy’ — was when they all come over to my house, and we’re having lamb shanks and playing Jenga, and I start talking about my wife. For about 15 minutes or so, we just started riffing about how much I loved my wife. I can’t remember most of it, but it was a lot of fun."
Jesse Plemons used to creepy roles
