William Fichtner, featured recently in the new season of Netflix’s Beef and Apple TV’s Lucky, is one of the film industry’s most sought-after character actors. His latest turn is in the new Canadian sci-fi drama The Outer Threat.DUANE COLE/The Globe and Mail
William Fichtner is known for playing difficult men, sharp-edged tough guys who can all too convincingly occupy either side of the cops and robbers divide. Think of his dirty-money banker in Heat, his relentless FBI agent in Prison Break, or his shifty cop in Go. But one of Fichtner’s earliest and most affecting roles was in the 1997 Robert Zemeckis sci-fi drama Contact, in which he played a sensitive, blind astrophysicist who dedicated his life to searching the stars for extraterrestrial life.
It is tempting to draw a throughline from that performance in Contact straight to Fichtner’s latest turn in the new Canadian sci-fi drama The Outer Threat from first-time filmmaker William Woods – another movie about humans looking for proof that we are not alone in this universe.
This time around, the actor plays a widower and roadside restaurateur named Sam, who has a jarring encounter with a pair of married astrophysicists (played by Mark O’Brien and Constance Wu) who just might have discovered the existence of aliens. Yet it was not Contact and The Outer Threat’s twinned themes of interstellar existentialism that initially drew Fichtner’s interest.
Review: Compelling Canadian sci-fi thriller The Outer Threat offers a new kind of close encounter
“The connection wasn’t there in, you know, that cosmos sort of way, but more in the feeling of being alone,” Fichtner said during an interview in Toronto this week. “My big discovery working on Contact was my one hour a day with a blindfold in my apartment. You think you know a place until this feeling of being alone comes along – the power of being this smart and brilliant character who can’t take things for granted, and it’s a whole different thing to experience. And in this film, Sam’s at a moment in his life where you know, boy, he’s alone right now. He’s the adult in the room with his grandkids, and what call is he going to make?”
Over the past three decades, Fichtner has undoubtedly made one right call after another. After making a name for himself in New York City’s theatre scene, the Buffalo, N.Y., native made the leap to L.A. in the mid-nineties and quickly became one of the film industry’s most sought-after character actors. He has worked with Hollywood’s heaviest hitters – Steven Soderbergh, Ridley Scott, Kathryn Bigelow, Michael Mann, Christopher Nolan – while maintaining enough stamina to become a staple of the small-screen streaming era, too. (That was him terrorizing Oscar Isaac during the new season of Netflix’s Beef, just as he’s now involved in the heist shenanigans of Apple TV’s Lucky.)
Fichtner in The Outer Threat.VVS/Supplied
Partly, it is that workaholic drive that led him to North Bay, Ont., two summers ago to shoot a few days on The Outer Threat, which offers the actor a juicy role, though not a particularly large one. Sam’s appearance, while crucial to the film’s narrative and thematic elements, takes up just about 10 minutes of screen time. But Fichtner says that, above all, more important than the size of the role is the shape and depth of the screenplay. He turns down far more parts than he accepts, and if he doesn’t think the role is there “on the page, it ain’t on the stage.”
“It’s interesting when you get a character like Sam. I want to understand the bigger picture of everything that’s going on in the world around him, but maybe the bigger picture isn’t about that character’s journey. So I tend to lean in more to fine tune what he does know, in order to play the part,” Fichtner says. “It’s more important to think about the moment. That’s the emotional journey, which I need to believe more than anything.”
Writer-director Woods, who has a long history as a producer in the Canadian film landscape (from the 2016 thriller Mean Dreams to the 2020 comedy The Kid Detective to the 2023 gothic drama The King Tide), long had Fichtner on his wish list for casting. But he didn’t think it would come to fruition, given how relatively small the production was compared with the actor’s usual gigs.
Fichtner says that when selecting roles, it's more important for him to consider the shape and depth of the screenplay, rather than the size of the part.DUANE COLE/The Globe and Mail
“Being able to cast Bill was too good to even imagine. He can be warm and inviting but also intimidating and have that emotional heartbreak for what he needs to do in difficult situations,” says Woods, who connected with Fichtner through his long-time friend, the talent manager and producer Tom Spriggs. “It’s a small film and a role that only needs a couple of days, but Bill fought for the integrity of the scene and was a champion of making it all happen. I give him all the credit in the world for giving me the chance and reading it.”
“Will sent me a letter and it said, ‘Go Sabres!’ and I’m like, hell, I love this guy!” Fichtner adds with a laugh. “Let’s go ahead.”
In terms of Fichtner’s process, whether on the mega-set of a Michael Bay blockbuster or in the woods of Northern Ontario, there isn’t exactly one. “I don’t worry about the delivery part. It’s what’s written, what the character talks about. I really believe what Sam is saying for his own heart and soul, and having those words to say, that’s wonderful. That just helps you figure things out in real time,” he says.
“This is more than I’ve ever talked about it. I was a criminal justice major in college and took an improv class, and had a very influential teacher who encouraged me to do more of this. But I was always so intimidated by the language of it all. You know, ‘method’ and ‘technique.’… It always seemed way bigger than me.”
Fichtner says he turns down far more roles than he accepts, and if he doesn’t think the role is there 'on the page, it ain’t on the stage.'DUANE COLE/The Globe and Mail
Not that the actor shrinks from larger-than-life challenges. In 2017, Fichtner made his directorial debut with the drama Cold Brook, which he co-starred in alongside his best friend, the Canadian actor Kim Coates, the two having met nearly two decades earlier while making Black Hawk Down.
“A couple of years after that went to festivals, I started working on a new one that’s based on a true story, this coming-of-age story from the mid-’60s in a small town south of Buffalo. I got close to making it a couple years ago, but the floorboards fell out at the 11th hour,” Fichtner recalls. “My new target is next summer. As Will said, like 40 things needed to come together at the same time to make his movie. I need 43 things. So we’ll see, but it’s how I’d want to spend my summer vacation.”
One project Fichtner likely won’t be lining up is a role in Mann’s much-anticipated sequel to Heat, given that his character bit the dust in the first film. But that won’t stop the actor from happily strolling down memory lane.
“Michael was super kind, and that movie was like one of two big films I ever worked on that took a whole week to rehearse. It was with Robert on Contact, and Michael on Heat. You went into his office every day and you’d sit down with Jon Voight or De Niro, and you all had to come in because Michael was at his desk and he wants to hear the scene and is specific about every single thing,” he recalls, before jumping into just one more anecdote for the road.
“On the first day of photography, we had a 7 a.m. call time, so you think you’re going to wrap at seven, maybe eight o’clock. It’s now 11, and I went over to Michael and asked, ‘Mr. Mann, is there something else you’d like me to try with this scene – it’s take 26.’ He’s like, ‘Call me Michael. And no no no, we got it on the first few takes. But let’s go again.’”
The Outer Threat opens in theatres July 24.