Like most voters in the blue state, Fisher Stevens remembers being surprised by the 2016 election, which elevated Big Apple real estate market magnate Donald Trump to the Oval Office with the strength of the red state’s support. So the actor and filmmaker tried to sue America’s growing cultural divide in the best way he knew how: making a film. After the election, Stevens chose the script for Palmer, Cheryl Guerriero’s drama about a former college football star – played by Justin Timberlake in his first live role in four years – who returns to his small southern town after serving time in prison.
“I felt out of touch with most of the country when Trump was elected, and I thought it would be better to learn more about America,” he told Yahoo Entertainment during a break from filming the third season of HBO’s Emmy-winning drama. , Succession. (Stevens plays Roy’s family partner, Hugo Baker, on the show and describes the experience of filming the third season late during the restrictions of the COVID era as “necessarily intense”.) “When I read this script, I thought, ‘This film is about people coming together and finding unity and family in the most unlikely places. ‘”
Three years passed between the election of Trump and Stevens finally entering the set of Palmer in the fall of 2019, and the film went through different iterations over that period. Originally written to happen in Alabama, financial constraints and schedules pushed the stage for Louisiana. Stevens had different actors coming in and out of the project as well, the first of whom would have changed the project significantly. “I originally offered the film to a black actor,” he reveals. “We didn’t get very far with him, but I started the conversation. I was very interested in this story and it would have been a very different film. Being African-American has its own challenges, and I think this is a film that could be made by an African-American director as well. “
With that initial idea discarded, Stevens worked his way down the list of other available actors – a list that did not include Timberlake. “He hasn’t acted in a while,” says the director about the Trolls star, whose last role on camera was in the 2017 Woody Allen drama, Magic wheel. But he was persuaded by the Timberlake management company to meet the Memphis-born musician, who was touring with his Forest Man album at the time. “I started to have a dialogue with him, and he was very attentive and collaborative. He hadn’t been in a different film Trolls at some point, then he was getting back into the rhythm of acting, and that was the perfect way to get back to him. At one point, we talked about him potentially singing in one of the songs in the movie, but then we decided, ‘No, let’s just keep this performance pure.’ “
As a Southerner, Timberlake also served as a guide for Stevens in his attempt to capture the region’s social and cultural realities and how they impacted individuals like Eddie Palmer, who returns to his grandmother’s home after his prison sentence ends and struggles to find work and avoid problems. Helping him on his way is a boy named Sam (Ryder Allen), whose addicted mother (Juno Temple) abandons him for long periods of time. “Justin and I are attracted to the idea of people who have gone through difficult times,” says the director. “Not just those who are getting out of prison, but also people who were addicted to drugs and alcohol and were trying to pull themselves together. We were shooting in places where there were a lot of prisons around and where meth addiction was a problem. All of these things were very real where we were. “
The small town seen in Palmer it is actually a combination of three Louisiana locations: Ponchatoula, Hammond and Reserve. “The people there let us into their lives,” notes Stevens. “We got along really well. In fact, I gave the script to several people who lived in the area and they said, ‘My God, do you know my sister? This is her story. ‘Or:’ Do you know my cousin Rufus, who played football? This is his story. ‘It was as if they gave me the seal of approval. “
Even while interacting with residents, Stevens was hyperconscious of the divisions between them, divisions that still exist in the post-Trump era, with President Joe Biden now in the White House. “There was an election while we were there for governor and obviously it brought a lot of talk about the political situation in this country,” recalls Stevens, referring to the 2019 governor race between Democratic incumbent John Bel Edwards and Republican challenger Eddie Rispone, a vocal advocate for Trump. (Edwards ended up winning re-election.)
“We couldn’t have been more different politically, but we saw things similarly in terms of being neighbors and human beings. One of the things President Biden said in his inaugural speech that I loved was: ‘Be willing to put yourself in the other person’s shoes just for a moment.’ That’s what I try to do when I make films: put myself in the shoes of people as a filmmaker and not as a judge. Part of the beauty of doing this is that we don’t judge, we just present a slice of life. “
While Stevens and Timberlake successfully incorporated themselves into the Louisiana landscape during production, a widely publicized incident reminded him of the dangers of driving an internationally recognized face. In November 2019, Timberlake was photographed in New Orleans hand in hand with his co-star, Alisha Wainwright, starting a wave of tabloid coverage that eventually resulted in a public apology to his wife, Jessica Biel.
Stevens, who was there that night with the rest of Palmer cast, recalls the surreality of seeing the story go viral. “It was so harmless,” he says now. “It was just drinks with the cast. Unfortunately, the photographer caught Justin and Alicia at a time when they were talking about a scene. I would like to be there directing them, but I was not – I was in the background. It’s a drag when these things happen: a photographer with a very long lens photographing very selective moments of a conversation. “
Even as Stevens expects Palmer will somehow help Biden’s appeal for national unity on a cultural level, he remains deeply critical of the position that many Republican lawmakers have on issues such as voting rights and the environment – a cause that is close to his heart. “We are finding that many climate deniers are many of the same people who are defending Ted Cruz’s theories that the election was rigged,” explains Stevens, who directed the 2016 climate change documentary, Before the Flood. “It’s all misinformation and the antithesis of what Palmer is about. The film is about bringing people together, and this is the opposite of what Cruz and the climate denial movement are doing to this country ”.
“But I must say that I am very happy to have a Native American, Deb Haaland, as secretary of the interior, and Michael Regan as head of the Environmental Protection Agency,” continues Stevens. “And Biden issued an executive order returning us immediately to the Paris Agreement. When I did Before the Flood, I felt that we were on the right track to put the world back in a place of climate change recognition and do something about it, and then Trump brought us back to the dark ages. Around 2018, I even wondered if I could continue to make environmental films because there were so many dark forces fighting against us. But now there is light. “
Palmer is broadcasting on Apple TV +.
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