Glen Powell, Wyatt Russell, and J. Quinton Johnson came to Metro Detroit to discuss Everybody Wants Some!! and we were honored to get to sit down with them and discuss their experiences.

interviewer photo
Montgomery Jones

Everybody Wants Some!!, named after the Van Halen song, is being hailed the “spiritual sequel” to the cult classic Dazed and Confused. Was there any pressure to live up to the status of Dazed and Confused, despite the similarities?

[RUSSELL] It was never mentioned. The way Rick works is he understands that there is no way you can make an actual sequel to Dazed and Confused, it’s not possible. It’s not the way he makes movies. But he kind of, I think everything is a spiritual successor to everything he does. When you go back and watch all of his movies, there’s a through line through them and that’s his mind. This had the same elements of Dazed and Confused, it was an ensemble, it was people having fun, it was school, but other than that I can’t draw too many similarities between the two movies. They’re in very different times in their lives.

[POWELL] It’s one of those things that if you try to be Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, or Parker Posey, in those types of movies then you’re setting yourself up for failure. I think this movie is really original and unique. We put our own glove on the canvas.

[JOHNSON] When you work with someone like Richard Linklater, like when he takes notice of you, other people notice that notice. So that’s great for all of us as we go forth in our careers. We’ve talked about capitalizing on the momentum. There’s a certain momentum that when you get cast in these things and these things start to come out, you have to be ready and able to capitalize on those. I think so much of that is still doing the work and prepping yourself for when opportunity comes knocking, you’re ready to open the door to warm chocolate chip cookies. You know what I mean?

Ensemble Cast photo
interviewer photo
Montgomery Jones

How much of your real life personalities are in these characters?

[RUSSELL] When you get to know the guys, you get to know their personalities as time went on and everybody had about 5% of who they were in their character, but we’re actors so we play- people sometimes forget that tapping in to that part of your personality is something that’s important for the character, and everybody played a 100% of that 5%. That was how everybody started to get their character. I’ve got a little bit of this guy in me, everybody’s got a little bit of this guy and then you just hone in on that 5% and that becomes who you are.

[POWELL] And I would even say art imitated life and life imitated art in a really weird way where people started talking like their characters.

[RUSSELL] Most of the time you’re filming and people are meeting on day one. Rehearsal is a luxury you never have and you can only do when everyone is unknown like we are.

Ensemble Cast photo

Powell elaborated by stating that a lot of movie stars don’t like rehearsal and that this was “really special, it’s not always like this”. This cast stayed in cabins together, played baseball, went over lines, took dance lessons, repeat. Their relationship transcended that of mere co-stars in a movie.

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