Tom Cruise Has “Never Seen” A Character Like Digger Rockwell
The cast of Digger talk prosthetics, cinematography, and off-screen friendship.
If you’ve seen the trailer for Digger, you know it’s impossible to ignore Tom Cruise‘s massive prosthetic transformation for the film. Adorned with a fat suit and facial prosthetics, Cruise becomes the titular Digger Rockwell, a wealthy oil tycoon who must prove he is humanity’s savior after starting a climate disaster in Greenland.
“When you see yourself [with wigs, makeup, and prosthetics],” co-star Riz Ahmed, who also wears prosthetics in his role as an assistant to the President (John Goodman), explains, “you’re instantly there… You kind of start moving differently, and when you see your face and it looks different… It was quite transformative.” Cruise, Ahmed, Emma D’Arcy, and Michael Stuhlbarg sat down with Fandango correspondent Nikki Novak to talk everything Digger, from prosthetics to finding a character’s voice and the camaraderie among the ensemble cast.
Cruise breaks down his process behind finding Digger’s signature Southern accent: “It’s, really, you have to find a vocal language that’s going to service the story and service the tone. You’re experimenting: Is this too far? Is this not enough? Does it service the language? Does it service the tone?”
“Our job is a really technical job. Obviously there’s other stuff in there too, but you treat everything with the kind of precision and preparation that I assume one might if you’re, you know, planning a dangerous stunt. And that’s honest to the medium,” Emma D’Arcy, who plays the character Lina, tells Cruise about his behind-the-scenes work for Digger.
While Cruise might be the leading man of Digger, he extends compliments to all of his co-stars. In fact, the complimenting happens so often that Novak jokes the cast of Digger might be “the most complimentary cast” she has ever talked to.
The four co-stars also share memories from set, including one instance when Cruise’s co-stars insist he do his iconic Les Grossman dance from Tropic Thunder, and another when Ahmed gleefully reminisces about eating watermelon carpaccio as a stand-in for sushi.
“When you’re in a room like that with the kind of generosity and uniqueness of each of us, it’s been likened to instruments in an orchestra of sorts. But like musicians, there is great delicacy with blending harmony and finding harmony together,” Stuhlbarg, who plays Goodman’s Vice President, muses.
The cast of director Alejandro González Iñárritu‘s latest epic have definitely found their harmony, though it might sound less like an orchestra and more like, as Cruise ad-libs in the film, “bang bang bang.”
Check out the full Big Ticket interview above to see Cruise, Ahmed, D’Arcy, and Stuhlbarg compliment each other, talk about the 10-year process of making Digger, and explain what “Digger down” means.
Digger opens in theaters October 2. Get your tickets here.
