In Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, the actor embraces complicated loyalties, combustible friendships, and a deceptively simple rule: play it real.
Ask Sam Rockwell how he moves between dark comedy and genuine heartbreak, and he offers an answer considerably less complicated than the characters he plays.
“The rule of thumb is to play it real,” he says. “And if you play it real, you’ll be okay either way, comedically or dramatically.”
Speaking at an October 14 press conference for Wild Horse Nine, Rockwell repeatedly returned to that idea. Trust the writing. Believe in the stakes. Let the audience decide when to laugh and when to feel. It is an unshowy explanation for a demanding kind of acting: finding emotional truth in people whose behavior can be funny, frightening, and deeply troubling, sometimes within the same scene.
Finding the Person Inside the Problem
In writer-director Martin McDonagh’s film, Rockwell plays Lee, a CIA operative whose professional obligations collide with personal loyalties. Opposite John Malkovich’s Chris, he navigates a relationship shaped by affection, tension, and the unsettling possibility that trust may not survive the job. The story’s Chilean political backdrop raises the stakes, but Rockwell’s way into the material begins with the person caught inside it.
“He’s a company man, and he’s trying to sort of navigate through this job,” Rockwell explains. “There’s a lot of conflict in Lee.”
That conflict is the point. Rather than smoothing away a character’s contradictions, Rockwell looks for the humanity within them.
“I always feel empathy for my characters, even though they might do questionable things,” he says. “ I have to discover the humanity in them,” he says.
Empathy, in this account, is not an argument for innocence. Rockwell readily acknowledges that some of his characters are “quite horrid.” His task is to understand their perspective well enough to portray them as people, not simply as a collection of objectionable acts. Occasionally there is redemption, he says. Occasionally there is an antihero. The moral uncertainty remains part of the work.
“Play the Love”
For all the danger surrounding Lee and Chris, Rockwell describes their connection in surprisingly tender terms. McDonagh’s most important reminder was not to sharpen the hostility but to preserve the affection underneath it.
“Martin was just always there to remind me to play the love,” he says. "Even when they argued, there had to be love between them, like an old married couple."
That instruction gives the film’s central relationship its emotional logic. An argument carries different weight when the people having it know each other intimately. A joke can disguise hurt. A threat becomes more disturbing when affection has not entirely disappeared.
Off camera, Rockwell and Malkovich found a much easier rhythm.
“We were constantly joking around and running lines,” Rockwell recalls. “We had a lot of fun on the job.”
Occasionally, he admits, they even broke into laughter during takes. Yet the levity did not eliminate the concentration required when the material turned painful. For the most emotional scenes, Rockwell describes having to shut out distractions and give himself permission to reach the necessary place. “It takes tremendous focus,” he says.
The Work Behind the Ease
Rockwell’s account of filming on Easter Island is refreshingly short on glamorous adventure. Asked what he did on days away from the set, he said he usually stayed in the hotel, preparing.
“The days I wasn’t filming, I was usually running lines for the next day’s work,” he explains. “And it was scorching. So, I didn’t leave the hotel very much. It’s not really an interesting story.”
It is, however, a revealing one. The relaxed humor of his answers sits alongside a practical commitment to getting the work ready.
His collaboration with McDonagh rests on similarly grounded foundations: mutual affection, compatible work habits, and a shared love of movies.
“We talk about a lot of the minutiae of the characters,” Rockwell says. “We have a similar work ethic and we have similar tastes in films too.”
Those conversations include cinematic reference points, with Five Easy Pieces among the films discussed for Wild Horse Nine. Preparation can also mean research: recalling Three Billboards, Rockwell mentions police ride-alongs and meetings with burn survivors, whose generosity he singles out.
Generous With the Spotlight
Rockwell is just as enthusiastic about the people around him. He calls Parker Posey “a force” and praises her skill, recalling that she came to Easter Island to read opposite him off camera. He speaks warmly about Malkovich, Steve Buscemi, and the wider ensemble, describing McDonagh’s casting as eclectic and full of possibilities.
His memories of the island are equally personal. Alongside the heat and an unidentified crab-or-spider-like visitor in his trash can, he remembers Rosa, a former bodybuilder who owned a gym, and Julio, a driver. The people, he says, were welcoming, and the experience was beautiful.
When asked about McDonagh sometimes writing roles with him in mind, Rockwell responds not with a declaration of artistic importance, but with gratitude.
“I’m very lucky that this person writes for me,” he says. “Very lucky.”
That modesty is part of what makes this portrait of Rockwell so appealing. He does not turn acting into a mystical exercise or pretend to have an answer to every question. He discusses learning lines, finding concentration, trusting a collaborator, and remembering that even an ugly argument may contain love.
The performances may exist in complicated territory. His guiding principle remains beautifully direct: “When in doubt, be real.”
Read our review of Wild Horse Nine out of Tiff below
