Note: This Q&A for Split has been edited to avoid any and all possible spoilers for the film.
M. Night Shyamalan recently premiered his newest film, the multiple personality tale Split, at the AFI Fest in Los Angeles a few months ahead of the thriller’s January, 2017, release date. The picture was welcomed with a round of applause from the crowd in the packed Chinese Theatre, and those in attendance at the screening were then treated to a late-night (or early morning) Q&A with Shyamalan and a number of the film’s cast members as well, including James McAvoy, Anya Taylor Joy, Betty Buckley, and producer Jason Blum. There, in front of an audience of people buzzing with questions from the film, they all provided some interesting insight into the backstory of Split and what it was like making the stylish thriller.
Here are some of the best moments from the night.
When asked about the film’s underlying message of self-discovery and its strangely hopeful theme and if that was his intention all along, Shyamalan said, “It was. I’m astonished [at] this disorder and I’m very intrigued by psychology in general. You know, I spoke with these actors about it, but I’m sort of an eternal optimist, and you know the idea that the existence of these multiple personalities comes from when they’re a child, and they get to live all of these different lives side by side. It’s just astonishing.”
“When you get a script like this, you really can’t think about money that much,” said McAvoy about the film’s budgetary restrictions and the challenges of bringing his character to life. Your agents and lawyer definitely do, but you don’t, you just know that this is an amazing part, and you hear that Night is doing it, and he’s interested in you, and that immediately hooks you for it. You know, I remember talking to Night, and he told me before I read the script to keep an open mind, and prepare myself for a wild ride. I remember reading it and asking a lot of questions right away, and he told me, ‘Don’t worry about it, just keep reading. You’ll figure it out,’ and he was right. I finished it and just saw it as an amazing opportunity to play a whole bunch of different, interesting characters.”
Buckley, who plays one of the more integral roles in the film as Dr. Fletcher, revealed that the screening was actually the first time she’d seen the completed film, and went on to praise McAvoy’s performance. “James McAvoy I’ve always been a huge fan of,” she said, “but besides being a movie star, and I’ve always enjoyed watching his tremendous films over the years, he’s such a down to earth human being. Just so available and immediate, it was such a pleasure. What he’s doing as an actor in this film is so remarkable and difficult, going from beat to beat to beat from character to character, I was amazed watching it. I’d gotten to see some of it before on the set, but to see it all come together it was just remarkable, James, absolutely remarkable.”
This is now producer Jason Blum’s second time producing and working with Shyamalan on a film after The Visit last year. “I think it was even more fun this time because we know each other and have a relationship,” he said. “It made everything easier, and I really was just happy to be along for the ride with this talented group. I really was just sitting in Los Angeles, being happy to just let these guys do what they were doing, and then being very happy with what they did.”
“He’s being modest,” interjected Shyamalan. “What Jason does, being a champion for artists in this town, that is a rare thing. This town is a heat-seeking missile, and if you’re hot everyone’s calling you, and if you’re not then nobody is. That’s not Jason, he is just a champion. I don’t know if I would have had the courage to do these lower budget movies, and shoot with less time than usual, and do it the way we were doing it if I didn’t know I had a big brother looking at me and saying, ‘You can do this.’ We all need courage, you know? And while it might seem like, ‘Oh, you’ve done all these movies before,’ but the truth is that I’m just a scared kid every time trying to do it. I literally get insecure about it, and go, ‘Is this going to work? Should I do this? This is crazy.’ You know, there’s a million things about this that you’re not sure about, and like I said in the intro, didn’t West Dylan Thordson do a great job with this score? [This is Thordson’s first feature film credit as a composer.] You just have to go with your gut, and I don’t think I would have had the courage to do this alone. You know, it seems like this [is] ubiquitous in Hollywood, champions of artists, but Whiplash doesn’t get made without Jason, and this movie certainly wouldn’t have.”
According to Shyamalan, even after all this time in the industry, it doesn’t seem like that fear of failure will ever go away either. “It’s terrifying, it’s absolutely terrifying, but that’s part of what’s important, right guys?” he said. “Is to risk yourself completely as artists? If you feel safe, I don’t know what we’re doing. I think you know, doing these lower budget movies, and doing them this way, makes me feel humbled, learning. You know, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be sitting here, and have this honor of showing you this movie, I might not get that. There’s a million ways it could go wrong, it’s always on a razor’s edge.”
He continued, “You know, I wrote this part not really knowing who to play it. Pretend that I’m pitching this part to you as an actor for instance, you know, ‘I wrote this part, but it has to be someone who is good with physicality, someone who is good with drama, comedy, and this is the important thing, someone who is unbelievably courageous. They can have the craft, but are they going to be confident enough to go with me, and say, ‘I’m going to be laughed at, this is going to be ridiculous.’ Something that you forget when everything is said and done, but you know James is so courageous.”
McAvoy added, “I like being bold and brave, you know, but you only really need to be as brave and bold as the part you need to be. It’s not that common when you get a part then that requires you to take a blind jump like this, and you know I like doing that because I just like doing that, but I also felt safe because I’ve never worked with a director whose more on everything, knows every word of the script inside and out, and knows every single decision he wants to make because he’s already planned it, and then makes the movie that he wrote. You’re very aware while you’re making the movie, that he’s designed it in his head already, so you’re not like, ‘Oh we’ll just figure it out on the day, or Oh! I like that, let’s shoot that today.’ No, it was, ‘I know the movie that I want to make, the one that I know is right and good, and is the story that I want to tell,’ so you feel weirdly even braver taking that plunge.”
Because of the film’s intense, non-stop dark tone, it was important for the cast to keep things as light as possible during filming. Anya Taylor Joy said, “I mean, we certainly had a lot of fun, we needed to. You know when you’re making a dark movie, it’s important to have the space to decompress and be light and we actually joked around a lot on set, just in between takes. You know, one of us would be crying and then it would be cut and we’d be laughing, and then we’d kind of go back into that state. But of course there are some scenes that definitely require you to have to stay there, but because we didn’t have to go back so much, it was actually kind of nice. It was dusty though, which wasn’t great, we were all like wheezing by the end of it. The tunnels were not fun [laughs].”
James McAvoy in Split
When asked what it is, specifically, about Shyamalan’s films that makes him want to work with him too, Jason Blum said, “I think a lot of it comes from his personality, which is that he’s so passionate and enthusiastic about what he does, and that carries over all aspects of filmmaking, and I think you can see that in his movies. To add to a little bit of what James was saying, is that I love low budgets for a million reasons, but one of the things that I find really cool about it, is that no one on a low budget movie is making a big paycheck. Everyone is there because they believe it, they may be participating in it, but that means they think the movie is kind of worth investing in, and so that creates I think a great feeling on set where everyone is working because they love this, and they think they’re making something great. If it works then great, and if it doesn’t work then that’s okay too, but everyone is there for reasons other than money, which I love.”
Split will be released in theaters on January 20, 2017.
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