ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Manodrome star Adrien Brody about the Lionsgate thriller. The star spoke about father-son relationships and his intense character. Manodrome is now playing in theaters and is also available digitally and through video-on-demand platforms.
“Ralphie (Academy Award nominee Jesse Eisenberg) is a man wrestling with outside forces and the demons within when he meets a mysterious family of men who welcome him as one of their own,” reads the movie‘s official synopsis. “As Ralphie struggles to define himself, pressure mounts, and a powder keg is lit that will blow a hole in the lives of everyone he touches. Joining Eisenberg is an all-star cast, including Academy Award winner Adrien Brody and the unforgettable Odessa Young. Experience a thrilling film about one man’s discovery that there is nowhere to hide from yourself.”
Tyler Treese: I thought what was so interesting about Manodrome was that fatherhood is really at the center of the story. Jesse Eisenberg’s character, Ralphie, is about to become a father. Your character, Dad Dan, serves as this male role model, and Jesse’s character never really had a father in his life. Can you speak to the theme of fatherhood that’s central to this film? We see real fathers, good and bad, and how they can take advantage of that power dynamic that is inherent to being a father.
Adrien Brody: I really appreciate you asking that, honestly. I feel like that is so core to the theme, not only the film, but I guess the repercussions of being raised in a broken home and how the childhood trauma for this character leads to a life of insecurity, self-doubt, and longing, right? And how commonplace that is, unfortunately, and how many grow up without a real father figure, whatever the circumstances are.
I think the character that I portray, Dad Dan, in a way, is well-meaning. He’s experienced his own trials and tribulations. He’s guiding people on a path that he feels will empower them and will give them the strength and the … I guess the clarity not to get brought down by their own internal pressures and societal pressures.
It’s dark, and it’s lonely. I feel, in a way, that father-son relationship is a very real thing in the sense that he also benefits from deeply connecting to Ralphie and seeing how Ralphie is so receptive to his ideas. In a way, as Dan has gotten older, he’s lost a degree of that intensity or has suppressed it, but he lives through both Ralphie’s turmoil and the clarity that he’s gaining, I guess.
I mean, clarity is not the right word, but the empowerment that he feels he’s giving him and watching that transformation take hold in this young man, I think, is something that he identifies with and longs for and is able to give to him even though he’s not a real father.
Your performance has this great charisma to it. You can tell that Dad Dan is able to really draw these men into listening to him and joining his group when it comes to that essence that Dad Dan has. What did you draw from for Manodrome? He’s not over the top, but he’s very eloquent. He’s well-spoken, but there’s a mysterious quality to him that draws you in and makes you listen.
Well, I appreciate that very much. I did a lot of research, and John Trengove, our director, had a lot of ideas. We discussed this character at great length before really even committing to doing the film together. More than any other film that I’d done, I really had many, many conversations during Covid. I was in London working but we were on Zoom calls constantly discussing this character.
We thought of him being a bit more … maybe I had initially thought of him as a bit more militant and hardened. But we ultimately landed on this place of … John had given me a very interesting idea of a backstory for him, and that he had done very well, I guess, with a business and a marriage and failures and a very relatable rise and fall, and some time in prison and learning new ways of coming to terms with things and shifts in them.
And then he studies and becomes this guru of sorts and has helped himself out of it and feels that he’s genuinely offering something worthy to these other men. I think if you portray anybody or if you look at anybody who believes what they’re doing is right, it’s hard to go at it with the same kind of judgment and cynicism completely opposed to it. You may think they’re completely nuts, you may think whatever you like, but you can’t discount their beliefs and why they got to that place. I felt like that was so important and because it’s such an easy character to hate, and the beliefs are so unhealthy. [Laughs].
There are so many fractured people in this world and in this country. It comes from a real place and it comes from a real need to make sense of their lot in life. This is the path that many people go down. So I tried to really approach it from a place of him coming from a place of healing, of sorts. [Laughs]. So it makes this very odd, I guess, relatable person with very extreme beliefs. At least, that was the intention.
