Ari Aster‘s new movie, Beau is Afraid, is described by its official synopsis as “ingeniously depraved,” with the titular Beau (played by Joker actor Joaquin Phoenix) described as a “paranoid man [who] embarks on an epic odyssey to get home to his mother.”
The recently-released trailer for the upcoming film gave us a taster of this odyssey, as we see Phoenix’s Beau seemingly battling the elements and all kinds of terrain in order to reach his mother, only to be hit by a car and then trapped in a strange man’s house, with a monitor tag attached to his ankle.
This strange man, played by Nathan Lane, is referred to as ‘Robert’ in the A24 movie, and in a new interview, he explained why Phoenix struggled to film their more intense scenes together.
“It’s funny. He and I, Joaquin, we really hit it off, although we have very different sensibilities. He’s very intense, and I am just tense,” the horror movie actor explained during The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
“But he thought I was funny, so every time we did a take he would say, ‘I can’t look you directly in the eyes, or I’ll break up.’ So just know that in every close-up and in a scene with me, he’s just looking directly at my nose,” he added.
The 2023 movie is set to for a UK release of May 19, 2023. To hear more about some of Phoenix’s other projects, check out our guide to the Joker 2 release date.