Ethan Hawke on the quiet pleasures of Raymond And Ray—and acting opposite Ewan McGregor
After going big with Moon Knight, Ethan Hawke talks about tackling a more subdued project, and the possibility of working with his daughter Maya Hawke
And now for something completely different: Ethan Hawke and Ewan McGregor starring in a movie about two guys who spend most of the running time … talking. Between them, Hawke and McGregor have top-lined dozens of low-key movies, from Reality Bites and the Before trilogy (Sunrise, Sunset, and Midnight) to Beginners and Salmon Fishing In The Yemen. But neither has made anything quite like Raymond And Ray, and they’d never done anything together—until now.
Written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia (who guided McGregor in Last Days In The Desert), Raymond And Ray casts Hawke as Ray and McGregor as Raymond, estranged half-brothers who reunite after their father’s death for a sentimental and darkly funny road trip, discovering that pretty much everyone else in their father’s orbit—including his caregiver (Sophie Okonedo) and his last ex (Maribel Verdu)—loved the guy and found him interesting, charming, expressive, and eager to learn more about life and its mysteries.
Raymond And Ray is in theaters now, playing in limited release, and will begin streaming on Apple TV+ on October 21. The A.V. Club caught up with Hawke via Zoom for an early morning interview from his Brooklyn home. As the sun shone brightly on his face, and his dogs popped up on screen every few minutes, Hawke discussed collaborating with McGregor on Raymond And Ray, talked about his unpredictable project choices, and shared his excitement about the success of Maya Hawke, the oldest of his four children.
The A.V. Club: Let’s start with Raymond And Ray. You and Ewan met years ago. You were familiar with each other’s work. What took so long for you guys to connect on a project, and how did it go?
Ethan Hawke: I don’t know why it took so long. We were supposed to do a movie together, I want to say sometime right around 2000. It was an Andrew Niccol film we were both attached to, that didn’t end up happening. I thought it would happen many times over, but once it did happen, it was absolutely effortless. He’s a consummate pro, Ewan. He’s a classy person. He knows what he wants to do. He’s easy and funny. It extremely benefited the whole film that Ewan and Rodrigo had worked together before, and they had a shorthand. Oddly, Rodrigo was the cameraman on Reality Bites and Great Expectations, so I’d known him pretty well when I was younger, and we’d followed each other over the years. We’d been on the jury together at Sundance. We each had these different relationships, and then we formed a pretty easy working relationship.
AVC: The movie is a drama and a dark comedy. How tricky was it to thread that needle so the humor didn’t detract from the emotional beats?
EH: That was one of our biggest jobs, just finding the right tone. Like, “What’s the tone of this movie?” It sounds a little pretentious to say, but I can’t help it. When I first read the script, I thought, “Oh, this is like a Chekhov short story or something.” What I mean by that is the strange humanness and darkness, combined with eccentricity that is so funny, but rooted in normal human behavior. We are funny, even when we don’t mean to be.
AVC: You’ve done several big projects lately, including The Northman and Moon Knight. How refreshing was it to shoot something modest like Raymond And Ray, which primarily consists of two-hander scenes in a car, in a house, or at a cemetery?
EH: It was wonderful. There’s a simplicity to the movie that is the kind of filmmaking that is most generous towards the actor. It’s fun to get dressed up as a Viking king and ride horses in the snow. With Marvel, and having that big budget, it was fun, but a lot of things matter beyond the simplicity of acting. Raymond And Ray is such a gentle film, and such a human piece. Ewan was just coming off of Obi-Wan, so the two of us really enjoyed spending 10 minutes in hair and makeup, having no big production value, and just letting it be about real relationships.