Greg Kinnear Discusses His Role in Heaven is for Real

(dramatic music) - Greg Knier, hello. - Hello. - Welcome to Miami. - Good to be back in Miami. - I saw your film, Heaven is for Real. You play this incredible preacher, Todd Burpo. Tell me, what was that like, filming that movie? - Well, we shot it up in Winnipeg, outside Winnipeg last summer, and Dean Semler, a wonderful DP, shot "Dances with Wolves." I mean, made that place look like a postcard.

It was like a character in the movie. You know, I was brought this script by Randy Wallace, who I'd worked with on "We Were Soldiers," and he's a great writer, wrote "Braveheart," and he had really adapted, I think, a nice story. Joe Roth, who was producing it, and he sat, who were very opposite guys, you know, sat down with me and just told me what the story was about.

And I was like, "Oh, that sounds like a good movie." And I think at the end of the day, the movie is, you know, first and foremost, I think it's entertaining. I don't feel like it's, my worry always with a movie like this is it could be very preachy about you know you need to think this and I don't think it does that I think it tells you the story and and it asks you know you're there's plenty there to chew on plenty to think about if whether you believe that this is the show is right here on earth or there's something afterwards is irrelevant there's there's a very human story here that is it's worth thinking about worth talking about and it was quite extraordinary what that family went through I think the acting that you did brought us in so much.

You're so believable that I could you know go see you every Sunday. You know as a preacher I think you did this acting job was phenomenal. And the interaction with the family with a little boy for Colton I think. Did you get to meet the real family and speak to them? I did. I well I talked to Todd a couple times before and you know met him. I met him actually for the first time while we were shooting which was like hi hi you know.

It was a a strange, strange, strange thing. Probably much more strange for him than for me. I've played some real life people before, but you try to get a little sense of who they are. I really like the notion that he was not just a preacher, that he's a father, he's the wrestling coach, he's a volunteer fireman. I mean, this guy was doing a heck of a lot in this small town, and I think that generally that is the way that it is.

I'm from a small town in Indiana, and you wear a few different hats, and that kind of, the sense of place is really captured nicely in the story. - Did you have to do any actual fireman training to look official? - Well, we met with, we did. We hung out with the local fire department guys, up where we were shooting, and they were really, you know, took it very seriously, and were very informative and, you know, they gave you a sense of, in fact, that horrible fire that had happened in Arizona happened while we were shooting on a day that we were shooting the big fire sequence on our movie, so Randy brought us all together for just like a moment of silence.

It was just a strange coincidence, but, you know, those guys, you know, as much as you kind of think, are they really, I mean, they're out there risking their lives. It's kind of a bold job to take on, and to do it volunteer work is impressive. - With all your different characters that you've played, like one of my favorites is Sabrina. That's my go-to character.

- I did not place the role of Sabrina, as you know. - But in Sabrina. - Been a lot of controversy about that, and I wanna clear that air on that. - But you're such a good comedic, and then you can get serious, and you're also a producer with Rake. What kind of hat do you like to wear more often? I like to wear the kind of hat where I'm on a beach and it's protecting me from the sun.

No I don't know, I like variety so I've been lucky to try a few different things in my career but I think that's probably what's made it interesting for me is to keep mixing up the deck. Well keep it up. Okay. Keep the work. Thank you. April coming out. I'm gonna see it again. Great. And I'm gonna tell everyone to see it. Your acting was awesome in it. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to meet you.