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The applause thundering within the Sarajevo National Theater could be heard from a mile away on Tuesday afternoon. The reason? Woody Harrelson. The actor, who is at the festival as the recipient of an honorary Heart
of Sarajevo Award, delighted passionate fans in a 90-minute career talk bookended by two comedy shows: his breakout, “Cheers,” and his upcoming Apple TV series “Brothers.”
“Brothers” sees Harrelson reunite with “True Detective” co-star Matthew McConaughey to play fictionalized versions of themselves. In the show, created by “The Office” producer Lee Eisenberg, their friendship is put to the test once they uncover a decades-old secret: they might actually be brothers. The story is inspired by real-life events, coming to the screen a few years after Harrelson went public with the fact that his father met McConaughey’s mother just around the time the “Dallas Buyers Club” actor was conceived.
“If you like ‘True Detective’ and you want more of that, it’s not this,” Harrelson quipped with the audience while taking a sip of Irish whiskey. “I started ruminating on this and thought it would make a pretty cool show,” he added of the idea for the two-hander. “We are playing ourselves but fictional, like ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’”
Harrelson, who is a known activist and has previously been arrested for challenging state drug laws back in 1996, mostly avoided politics. The one comment he made about the current political state of his home country came when an audience member asked him if he felt the world of Suzanne Collins’ fictional dystopia “The Hunger Games” resembled reality today. The actor, who played Haymitch Abernathy on the screen adaptation, said a resounding “Fuck yes,” before adding he loved the latest book of the series and stating: “I think what’s going on in the world and the American government’s participation in that is shameful.”
The Oscar-nominated performer also briefly touched upon his admiration for Jesse Eisenberg, his most recurrent screen partner. The two have starred in five films together, including Ruben Fleischer’s “Zombieland” and Louis Leterrier’s “Now You See Me.” Harrelson said that he has been delighted to be met with “young talent coming up” throughout his career before gushing about Eisenberg’s upcoming film, “The Debut.” “It is phenomenal,” he said of the Julianne Moore-starring dramedy, which he managed to see in advance of its festival run later this year.
On top of receiving the Heart of Sarajevo Award, Harrelson is also at the Bosnian festival for a special screening of Michael Winterbottom’s “Welcome to Sarajevo.” The film, an adaptation of Michael Nicholson’s book “Natasha’s Story,” played at the festival in 1997. The story follows a group of journalists in Bosnia during the war, examining the role of journalism at times of great conflict. Asked about being back in Sarajevo three decades later, Harrelson said he has seen “quite a lot of changes.”
“It’s grown a lot,” he added. “Back then we had a curfew, and it was very sparse comparatively. Now you can barely walk down the street; there are so many people. It’s alive and bustling. It’s incredible the metamorphosis from back then.”
Recalling his time shooting the film, the actor said what struck him the most was how “warm and kind” people were. “And genuinely funny, which you wouldn’t think after everything that had happened. Humor was something that kept everybody going.”
Harrelson also briefly mentioned another one of his upcoming projects: Jason Bateman’s “The Cackling of the Dodos,” which reunites him with “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” star Sam Rockwell. Prodded about playing “over the top characters” during his career, the actor recalled how Bateman said he could smell Harrelson’s “SAG card burning” because he was “so over the top” on a key scene. “But you don’t have to do that,” he jokingly told budding actors in the audience. To yet more thunderous applause, naturally.
