Josh O’Connor joined the Variety Studio presented by Audible at Sundance to discuss his new movie “Rebuilding.” He was joined by writer-director Max Walker-Silverman and his co-stars Meghann Fahy, Lily LaTorre and Kali Reis. The drama stars the “Challengers” favorite as a cowboy relocated to a FEMA camp after a wildfire burns down his Colorado ranch. O’Connor first met Walker-Silverman on Zoom and immediately started work on developing his midwestern accent.
“I spent a bit of time out there before we started filming, not much time but a little bit,” O’Connor told Variety’s Brent Lang. “That was just to hear some of the voices.”
“We also spent some time going through YouTube and I was looking for people from the right part of Colorado,” added Max Walker-Silverman. “For a long time I didn’t hear it. I assumed it would be good. And I remember the first WhatsApp voice message he sent me and that was a beautiful great feeling.”
“One of the most beautiful things about Max’s film is there are obviously brilliant and incredible actors, but there’s also non-professional actors that were local to where we shot,” O’Connor said. “There’s friends of Max’s from home. There are all sorts of people who came together and it lives in the community of the making of the movie as well as the story of the film.”
“I was picking up on an accent that had nothing to do with my character,” he added about embedding himself with the local cast. “Inevitably, we were in each other’s pockets the whole time and feeding off each other. That environment of being with each other helps [the accent] to settle in.”
Watch more from the interview with the “Rebuilding” team in the video above.