00:03I'm Oscar winner Ben Affleck. You heard that correct. Two-time Oscar winner. Ben Affleck
00:07is in the building. He is a director, producer, co-writer, star of the new movie. It's called
00:11Animals on Netflix. So he plays Mark Kimball, a mayoral candidate in Los Angeles, when his son
00:17is kidnapped for a ransom. So Mark Kimball and his wife, played by Kerry Washington, they are
00:22great together, are forced to confront their past secrets. Secrets is a word here and make some
00:27high stakes decisions. Yeah. Do you have any idea how easy it would be for me to kill you
00:33right now? Is that why you got me out here? No, no. If I wanted to kill you, I'd have
00:40done
00:40it already. You're here so you can understand what it feels like. Live with the humiliation.
00:47The humiliation? When you lose everything you built, everything you cared about.
00:54Aren't you worried you're getting caught after all this? No. From now on, you're the one
01:01who's going to be living in fear.
01:04Kerry was so good in that scene. That's an interesting clip because it's a very, very crucial
01:10scene in the movie. Very important scene in the movie.
01:12Ben, we've all watched the movie. This is so exciting to me because the title is Animals and
01:16it just shows that we can all, under the right circumstances, be an animal. You would agree?
01:21Yeah. I mean, it's sort of what it's about. What happens when something so scary or difficult
01:27happens to us that we have to kind of like take off the mask that we wear all the time
01:32to be good people and all that stuff and our kind of advertised selves and then having to
01:39reconcile like who might we really be under those kinds of circumstances. But we have the
01:46full Oscar campaign underway for Gayle King.
01:49Oh, hold on now. We were going to get to her.
01:52Amazing. What would she like to work with?
01:54What would she like to work with?
01:56For those who don't know, Gayle King made an appearance in the movie.
02:00But can I just say something about how this man works? Number one, I memorize my lines as I'm
02:05interviewing him. You're a good student, Gayle.
02:07I'm a very good student. Interviewing him and Kerry.
02:09I take it very seriously. I memorize my lines. I get there. And so I'm waiting for him to
02:14have cues. And he doesn't say the line I'm waiting for. He goes, well, just make it up.
02:19Just pretend that we're having this interview. I go, make it up on the fly.
02:23What about my lines?
02:24What about my lines, Ben?
02:25I just wrote that out to give you an idea of the kind of thing it was. But I was
02:28like,
02:28you know how to do this. You do it every single day.
02:31Yeah, but it's different.
02:32And that's how it came across.
02:34You say that, but as soon as you said that, you were like, OK, back. And then all of a
02:36sudden,
02:36I felt like doing that thing with you. I was like, I really felt like I don't want to give
02:41away what happens at the end.
02:42Right.
02:42But I have never in my life.
02:44You felt like you were in the hot seat.
02:45Yeah.
02:45You felt like you were being interviewed by Gayle King.
02:47OK, that's good. I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about you and Kerry together.
02:51Yeah.
02:51Because I thought that was such genius casting.
02:54And writing.
02:55And writing. And writing.
02:56And I should say that she really wrote it with me.
02:59What do you mean?
02:59The way to get that was that we had to work on it first, talk about, like, in a very
03:03kind of
03:04vulnerable way that was very private, like, talk about our experiences with, not specifically
03:09in a gossip way, but with marriage, vulnerability, intimacy, because it's really about a couple
03:14that is turned into partners and built up a lot of resentment. And on the surface, everything
03:20looks good.
03:20And there's betrayal in the marriage.
03:22Don't have a real connection. And actually, it's kind of about to me, like, how much can
03:28we can we really and should we really show the person that we're married to all those
03:34things that we think are unattractive about ourselves or we're not proud of or whatever
03:39it may be. And that there's a real risk to that, because if you get rejected for your
03:44real self, it's devastating.
03:46But if a person can love you, even for those things that you don't like about yourself,
03:51then maybe there's a another kind of intimacy and marriage.
03:55And it really is about exploring that. And our characters get to a point, I think, in
03:59the movie where they're just ready to, like, let go of the marriage and they don't care
04:03anymore. So they kind of go, forget it. You want to know who I really am?
04:06This is who I really am.
04:08So what's interesting is the casting is incredible. You got Steve Youn, Jillian Anderson, who's
04:12incredible.
04:13You've been working on this project for a long time and casting originally looked very
04:18different, right? You had you want to tell the story?
04:20Sure. Originally, we had, originally I was, look, I had started R.S. Equity really with
04:25Matt in part because we were like, Matt Damon, yes, sorry, whose, I should say, whose wife,
04:32Lucy, really produced this movie, did an incredible job.
04:35She's a badass and was good on the set, yes.
04:37And Matt just has his name on there, but don't think he did any work.
04:39All the work.
04:41Lucy knows what she's doing, yes.
04:42But the truth is, you know, at first it was very, it was a little bit more of a plotty
04:47kind of kidnap movie. And I thought Matt and Jen, who I really want to work with. And
04:51when you know people well, you feel like, oh, there's stuff about them that I know that
04:58people don't know that I want to, you know, as a director, I thought I'll bring out this
05:01stuff and it'd be great.
05:02Unfortunately, then I found out very close to when we were shooting that there was another
05:06movie with a similar kidnapping plot that was in production ahead of us. And not only that,
05:11I thought it was directed by Spike Lee and starring.
05:13Yeah, and I was like, let me not compete with these guys.
05:17So we just thought, well, we'll just let it go.
05:20And, you know, everybody was disappointed, but nobody, nobody was thinking, you know,
05:24that was the right idea. And then Matt went off to do, unfortunately, this terrible,
05:28tiny film, disappointing movie, The Odyssey, that nobody saw.
05:32Hope it works out for him.
05:35And of course, he's embarrassed and I don't want to rub that in.
05:37But he's, anyway, the truth was actually, it was kind of a dream come true for Matt.
05:42I was really, truly happy for him and he had a great experience.
05:46But while he was off doing that, I kept thinking about this story.
05:49And what I was thinking about was more about the exploration of marriage and these questions
05:54of like, what is the most important thing?
05:57Is it the shared money and house?
05:59Is it the shared children?
06:01Because, you know, marriage started off as like a contract.
06:03People didn't even know each other.
06:04I was like, you love your spouse.
06:06Ben, I'm divorced.
06:07Marriage can be very hard, even to good people.
06:11What you also don't do, Ben, in this film is you don't shy away from the fact that you
06:15are in an interracial relationship.
06:17There's a lot of dialogue that really is very pointed.
06:20And that really wouldn't have been possible without Carrie's writing it with me and her
06:24courage.
06:24And I was like, I feel like movies over time have gotten to a place of like, well, you
06:29can't say this and you can't say that.
06:30And if we're going to have interracial relationship, we're just going to pretend that we're just people.
06:33And it's all just dandy.
06:35But that's not reality.
06:36That's what's so great about it.
06:37If you have an interracial marriage, I said to her, like, I think there will be a whole
06:41lot of other stuff we'd be dealing with.
06:42That's a fact.
06:43Like my character's insecurities and your issues and all these.
06:46I don't want to give stuff away.
06:47Yes.
06:48And so I said, like, there's no rules.
06:50We've got to talk about this.
06:51It's got to be real.
06:52Keep it real.
06:52It's got to be part of it.
06:53We're not.
06:53It's not lecturing people.
06:55Right.
06:55It's not a kind of.
06:56No, it was done well.
06:57And Ben, I can't wait for people to see it.
07:00I can't wait for people to see it.
07:01Listen, we're all big Ben fans, and I'm not talking about Roethlisberger or the clock
07:05in London, with all due respect.
07:07So we love getting you how we can, whether it's a big screen or on stream.
07:11What I felt like when I was watching this, I felt like I was in a theater.
07:14I felt like I felt like it brought me into the film.
07:17I felt like I was taking this ride along with you from the beginning to the very end.
07:22How intentional were you about that when making this film?
07:25I think there's this idea that you've got to either make a sort of a commercial movie
07:29that's just an action movie or whatever genre, romantic comedy, whatever it may be, or you
07:34make a movie that has thoughtful, serious stuff.
07:37And to me, I've always tried to do both.
07:39You have to have this genre elements.
07:42You have to have it feel urgent and got to know what happens next and be tense and be
07:47gripping to an audience.
07:49But that doesn't mean that you can't have really thoughtful, provoking.
07:53You've got to surprise the audience.
07:54You've got to create, you've got to have them go, well, I didn't, you did it in this.
07:58I know we have less than 45 seconds, but I do want you to talk about Ben and Batman.
08:01He's been talking about you all morning about this.
08:03No, I just interviewed Frank Miller and we talked about the Dark Knight Returns and
08:08we agree that you are the greatest Batman that's ever been put on film.
08:11Wow.
08:12I wanted to ask you about that.
08:13I'll ask you for social media about how you mine the Dark Knight Returns to interpret
08:16Batman.
08:17We'll do that on social.
08:18That's very nice of you, Seth.
08:19There's certainly a lot of great actors, including obviously, you know, Rob Pattinson to Tim
08:23and Keith, uh, uh, Michael Keane and everybody.
08:26So yeah, Ben, I agree.
08:28But you know what we like?
08:28We like you in Animals.
08:29We definitely do.
08:30What would Gail King like to work with?
08:32Was she difficult?
08:33Gail King's the best actor I ever worked with.
08:33Thank you so much.
08:34Animals.
08:35We're starting the Oscar to campaign right now.
08:37We'll be on Netflix tomorrow.
08:37We'll be on Netflix tomorrow.
