Charlie Plummer Talks About Words on Bathroom Walls

Automatically transcribed; may contain errors.

hey everybody it's allison with flick direct i hope you're all safe and healthy right now i had a great opportunity to do a zoom interview with charlie plummer who plays adam he's the lead character in the movie words on bathroom walls based on a young adult novel about a young man with schizophrenia check it out how are you doing today i'm kidding how are you doing i'm doing great tell me when you read the script for this movie what initially drew you to adam and what did you think you could bring to this character well i mean i think what originally drew me to it was the subject matter and then i think the thing that really got me was the approach on the subject matter and and i mean you know fortunately nick and tor and pete and mickey had all kind of i think adapted the book so well that that you know i was just i loved his his sense of humor his self-deprecating all that stuff i loved the side of him that's so passionate about you know cooking and and the art form of that it was just a full character and i think for me it was less of like what can i provide to this character and more just like what can i step into with this character and hopefully have fun with but also you know most importantly providing truth to his experience as much as i can um and so that's really what it was about i think but but yeah that was really where my head was at after first reading tell me what did you learn from playing adam what how are you different at this point in your life do you think i mean i think you know i think the the the overall one of them may be messages of the movie even though i don't know if that's the right way to say it but you know one of one of the themes one of the things i hope people think about after uh finishing the film is that is that that that dialogue about shame and i think people's perspective on their own shame and hiding and why you hide and why people have secrets and and i think that's something that i'll probably always be learning about in some way throughout my life but but definitely something that i feel like i've learned a lot about since making that movie even while i was making that movie um and just just yeah really understanding that and and and and understanding what's really going on behind the curtain of that as much as i can did you have any personal experiences that you pulled from to what when you had to play adam as being in those episodes and being panicked was there something in your life that you referred to um to get to that place yeah yeah i mean you know i tried to obviously connect it a lot back to you know what the people who actually do live that life and have that experience a part of their everyday life what that is but for me i mean i've been having panic attacks ever since i was 16 and i know how my body reacts when that happens i know you know it can manifest in physical like twitches it can manifest in things that you feel like you can't control so i knew going into that like i think i thought about that and i know like there are physical triggers that i find myself going into when i am starting to have that and so i wanted adam to have a bit of that as well um but i also i didn't want i didn't want to be heavy-handed with it either um but that definitely wasn't in for it i think i i understood the the the process of you know when that wave of darkness in the film for instance kind of comes about him how that kind of simmers with him and and then how that builds you know i have my interpretation of it for my own self but but yeah i think i could could understand tiny little bits and pieces through my experience well i have to say that i thought the film was fantastic it's pretty much because of both you and taylor and andy and everybody and i i think it's gonna really open people's eyes to look at mental illness differently so thank you thank you so much that means the world i mean that's really the hope with it i think you know that that conversation can just start really and then hopefully you know people keep going with it but uh but yeah thank you so much hey guys i hope you really enjoyed my conversation with charlie he was really terrific and the movie is fantastic so definitely watch it and don't forget to subscribe below so that you can get uh notifications about all the great content that we've got coming up stay safe and healthy [Music] you