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The 'Race' star takes on the role of 'Star Wars' actor Oscar Isaac.
It all started with a podcast.
At least, that's the case for a significant swath of people walking Homecoming, the new Amazon drama based on the Gimlet Media podcast of the same name. Heidi Bergman (Julia Roberts) is one of the most influential people in the field of post-traumatic stress disorder. The patients include Walter Cruz, soft-spoken and kind-hearted, whose playful demeanor makes strangers feel like lifelong friends – and can even challenge the professional relationship between therapist and client.
Just as Homecoming high-profile names like Roberts and Bobby Cannavale taking on the roles of Bergman and smooth-talking operator Colin Belfast, the podcast on which the Esmail-directed thriller is based on Catherine Keener and David Schwimmer voiced Heidi and Colin, and Oscar Isaac played Walter Cruz. For the streaming service adaptation, podcast creators Eli Horowitz and Micah Bloomberg went with a lesser-known name to play Cruz: Stephan James, best known for his turn Olympic athlete Jesse Owens in 2016's Race.
"We saw a couple of different people," Bloomberg tells The Hollywood Reporter about the search for Walter Cruz, noting that James was "at the top of the list of the casting people, but I was not particularly aware of his work."
James, meanwhile, was very much aware of Bloomberg and Horowitz's work on Homecoming before beginning the audition process. Indeed, it was the first podcast he ever listened to.
"I was working on a film in New York and in the middle of it, my manager feels this podcast," says James, who admits he was initially skeptical: "I'd never heard a podcast before, so I'm out of ignored But when I listened to the podcast, I just thought it was unbelievable. and I started imagining what it might look like, visually – which was challenging, because it 's so heavy dialogue.
The question goes to echo in James' mind before he finally resolves to film an audition for the role of Walter. A week later, he was sent to Los Angeles for a test with Roberts, who was already cast. One can only imagine the nerves coursing through James' veins, heading into an audition opposite of one of the most famous faces on the planet.
"It's weird, because of the amount of dialogue I had, Julia was the last person I thought about," says James. "It was not until after I left the room that I thought: 'Dang, that was just Julia Roberts!'"
As James recalls it, the chemistry reads in a relatively small room filled with executives, Esmail and Roberts: "Everybody's waiting for you to start your audition." Meanwhile, me and Julia are talking about dinner plans, what's happening tomorrow? They're waiting for us to start an audition, and we're having our own moment. "
James already had a person in his corner: "Stephan actually feels in a tape, and usually I'm doing it," "Esmail tells THR. "I just could not look away from this warmth and vulnerability, but at that time you can see that it's a pain and suffering." scene, they could have been there, they had a connection.
There's a similar level of ease between Roberts and James' characters, therapist and patient, who breaks the barrier. From James 'point of view, the natural dynamic with Roberts is quite easy – but there is also the actor' s own understanding of Walter Cruz, a man containing multitudes.
"Everything I have been important," James says of how he approaches the characters in his career. "This struck me as an opportunity to be a vessel, or a voice for a lot of the dead who is coming back from their lives and having a life expectancy. And I just felt like I could be a voice for those guys I found something interesting about his naivety and his innocence. "
Given that he first encountered Homecoming Through the podcast, James easily quotes Isaac as an inspiration for his own performance, despite never having met the man: "I'll tell him this when I see him, but there are certain nuances just in his voice and the way things were playing I thought it would be helpful in translating it to the screen. "
Homecoming is now streaming on Amazon Prime.
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