EXCLUSIVE: Ben Affleck Discusses Returning To The World Of ‘The Accountant’ For ‘The Accountant 2’
Christian Wolff and brother, Brax return for another intense adventure in The Accountant 2. To promote the film’s release, BeautifulBallad got the opportunity to hear from one of the stars of the film, Ben Affleck, about returning to the role of Chrisitan Wolff in The Accountant 2.
On wanting to continue this story with a sequel: “It had a longer life in terms of like the just real-life feedback that I get from people, what movies they would mention when they come up to me, and so I definitely was aware like, ‘Oh, wow, that movie seems to still be being watched.’ I think it’s also a function of the fact that like streaming really started to take off after this movie, so people had the opportunity to pick what movie they’re going to watch.”
On personally returning to the franchise: “I love this character. I really enjoyed playing it. Gavin [O’Connor] and I both very much were drawn to the idea of bringing John back and expanding on that because we both really were like, ‘This guy’s fabulous,’ and we love it, and we both felt like there was a lot more to do. And the only thing that I would rephrase from your question is they really brought me back. Bill and Gavin spent a lot of time in the intervening years developing and putting together in a meticulous, patient, detail-oriented, character-driven way, what it could be, because both were quite mindful of not wanting to repeat it, not wanting to just, you know, ‘Hey, they like the first one. Let’s just figure something out and do another one.’ So everything about it was appealing to me.”
On Cynthia Addai-Robinson performance: “The secret of this movie is that Cynthia is the protagonist really. And she’s the lead in the movie. She is the entree for the audience, which means we get to play character parts. There are a whole bunch of expectations and stuff that go with being the lead in the movie because, as Cynthia says, the audience is really projecting themselves onto you. And so we’re like a dual-aggravant in some ways to her, and if you look at the math of the story, it’s about her being brought into this, seeing this person be killed, trying to find out what it was and what she has to go through to get there and the resolution of her story, and that’s something that I find very artful and interesting, where this person is the lead of the movie and you have these dual character actors in there. So that affords Jon [Bernthal] and I the luxury of doing the sort of two-hander as you call odd couple thing.
On approaching the action sequences to this film compared to a superhero film: “What makes it interesting and what made me think that we could do something that would actually connect with an audience in the sense that they feel something for what’s happening is because Gavin’s approach is always about, it’s not about this is a shot where visually it looks cool because of X, Y, and Z elements, and we’re going to construct it in such a way, and then you have to reverse engineer why in the world you would be doing something that would lead you to that place, it’s always driven from like what does each character want, why are they doing this. There’s a grounded reason for it, and then his gift is to take that and make that visually compelling.”
On line dancing in the film: “America doesn’t expect it. America wasn’t asking for it, but they’re going to get it. That’s what I mean when you say big swing. That was one of the fun things about this thing, the idea that here’s a guy who’s trying to figure out, he wants to have a relationship with a woman, he’s trying to figure out how to do that, like how to put yourself out there. He’s not comfortable extending himself, he doesn’t really know how to flirt exactly, he’s not comfortable. Like so many of us, it’s not easy for anyone figuring out relationships, particularly the very early part where you’re trying to gauge like, ‘What does this signal mean? Is this person looking at me? Do they like me? Am I going to humiliate myself if I go over there?’ And what he does is kind of a lovely thing, which is he uses something what he’s comfortable with, which in that case is the ability to recognize and identify the pattern of line dancing, because it is so structured and patterned, to participate in this, and it’s the perfect way that he’s comfortable to stand next to this woman who he’s attracted to and wants to connect with, because it’s kind of like parallel play with little kids. You don’t have to look at somebody and engage them, but you get to be with them and do something next to them, and he finds a way that he’s comfortable doing that. And it required, a lot of me. I probably am not going to get a lot more demands from my line dancing work.”
On how he prepared for that scene: “I think what’s charming about it is when somebody puts themselves out there to do something that they’re not necessarily great at, but they’re trying, and that’s sort of what any of us can do. Some of us are great at things, like Jon, the fighting comes easy to him. The action scenes with him is sort of like playing in a basketball movie and you’re like, ‘Oh, you played professional basketball. Okay, great.’ Whereas like these women, the action, like Cynthia and Daniella, they trained like crazy and brought incredible aptitude. Those fight scenes are a function of tremendous commitment, and dedication, and emotional perseverance that was astonishing. And for me, I’m coming at this line dancing thing like I don’t really have the natural gifts, but I’m willing to try, you know? I would say they did a hell of a lot better with the action than I did with the line dancing. Luckily for me, it wasn’t supposed to be good.”
The Accountant 2 drops in theaters on April 25.
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Photo Credit: Warrick Page/Amazon MGM Studios