TORONTO (AP) — The morning after Rian Johnson premiered his latest whodunit “Wake Up, Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” he and one of his stars, Glenn Close, were debating billing.
Not among the main cast, which considering all the stars in “Wake Up, Dead Man” — Daniel Craig, Josh O’Connor, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, to name a few — would be a headache for any filmmaker to sort. But for an uncredited one: Close’s dog, Pip, who very briefly appears in the movie.
“And he’s got a pain in the butt for an
agent,” chuckles Johnson.
In each “Knives Out” movie, Johnson has assembled some of his favorite actors and managed to give nearly all of them a moment to shine. “Wake Up, Dead Man” is no different; there are numerous standout performances. But one of them, most definitely, is Close’s, whose connections to Johnson’s film run deeper than her Havanese's cameo.
“When Rian called, it was so thrilling,” Close says. “I had heard about what a good guy he was before I talked to him. And to be on set with him was really something. It’s such a delicate chemistry when you’re putting a cast together.”
In “Wake Up, Dead Man,” Johnson, drawing on G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries, shifts from the Greek isles of “Glass Onion” to an upstate New York church. A young priest named Jud Duplenticy (O’Connor) has been sent to aid a flagging church led by Brolin’s monsignor, a charismatic but tyrannical figure. Much of the cast make up his loyal flock, with Close’s Martha Delacroix as his most devout follower.
“Knives Out” has forged its own community. When “Wake Up, Dead Man” premiered over the weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, it was the third of the three movies to launch here, and the most eagerly anticipated film of the festival. The movie, which Netflix will release in theaters Nov. 26 before it streams two weeks later, has plenty of the comic elements of the first two “Knives Out” films. But it’s less satirical when it comes to questions of faith and belief.
“For me, that’s where this whole thing came from,” Johnson says. “I grew up Protestant and what we’d now term evangelical. I was very Christian growing up and not just my parents dragging me to church. Through my early 20s, I really was entirely in it and framed the world around through my relationship with Christ. It was a big, big part of my life. And it's not anymore. But anyone who is a lapsed Christian, you still carry so much with you.”
And it’s this backdrop of sincere reckoning with religion that makes “Wake Up, Dead Man” more than a simple part for the 78-year-old Close. When Close was 7, her parents moved from Greenwich, Connecticut, to join with Moral Re-Armament, a religious movement Close has called a cult. For years, it dictated much of her life, including what she wore and said. Close later joined with an outgrowth of that movement, the conservative performance troupe Up With People, before quitting at age 22. Acting, she has said, saved her.
“I just think religion has been responsible for most of the horrible things human beings have done to each other,” Close says. “It’s very hard for me not to look at religion as a way of controlling people. It’s more political for me. I do think there’s something in the human psyche that we don’t know who we are, where we came from and where we’re going. I think we’re tribal creatures and the comfort you can get from a community, whether religious or not, is palpable.”
When Johnson decided to reach out to Close for the role, he was aware of her history. But his reasons were simpler. He hoped to cast Close, he says, because “she’s one of the best actors of our generation.”
“The truth is, it’s a part that calls for somebody who can both have fun with a certain degree of archness with it but ultimately can land the real emotional truth,” says Johnson. “And that’s a very, very tall order.”
The less said, the better is generally the case with the narratives of the “Knives Out” movies. But it’s fair to say that Close, after making an impeccably timed entrance, fills Martha with an uncommon amount of depth in a performance ranging from comic to tragic.
“I love characters that have this crazy belief that others can look from the outside and say, ‘Whoa, that’s over the top.’ But it's real,” says Close, whose celebrated career has included films like “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Fatal Attraction.”
From the first “Knives Out,” Johnson set out to draw Agatha Christie-style mysteries — usually quaint period pieces — into the present day. Though “Wake Up, Dead Man” doesn’t sharpen its knives for Christianity quite the way the previous films did for MAGA hat-wearers in “Knives Out” or tech bros in “Glass Onion,” it doesn’t ignore political connections, either. There’s a DOGE mention, among other references.
“When you talk about Christianity in America today, it’s hard not to talk about politics,” says Johnson. “For me, growing up in the evangelical church, right into the rise of Reaganism, it was kind of the crucible of the Christian right. I obviously have a lot of thoughts about that, but I also grew up with a very personal relationship with Christ. I also have a deep feeling about the stuff I took from Christianity that’s positive, which is largely just the stuff Jesus actually said, is exactly what the world most needs right now. And that’s the irony of it.”
Johnson adds: “You’re trying to thread the needle in terms of having an actual conversation about this, instead of just wagging your finger and saying ‘How could you think this, or how can you think that?’ on both sides.”
Murder mysteries ultimately deal in justice and meting out moral determinations. But “Wake Up, Dead Man” makes room, also, for understanding and grace in a way that, in many ways, goes against whodunit conventions.
“I really believe the hardest thing for a human being to do is to forgive,” Close says. “And I’m not even talking in a religious context. Especially now. It goes so against our basest instincts. When you forgive, you stop the circle.”
Now that “Knives Out” has become a trilogy, or, rather, a trinity, it’s natural to wonder if “Wake Up, Dead Man” is also closing a loop for Johnson. The writer-director has begun writing something original outside of the series, but, he says, that doesn’t mean he’s moving on.
“Three is the smallest number where you can establish and then break a pattern. For me, it was largely about showing how these movies can be anything,” Johnson says. “It’s not so much the closing of a chapter, so much as the promise, hopefully, that as long as Daniel and I can keep getting ourselves excited about these things, we can keep making them.”
“Wake Up, Dead Man,” of course, also brings some parts of Close’s life full circle. When Martha’s big moment comes in a dramatic scene inside the church, Close says, “the thing that was kind of a surprise was how real it became.”
“To go into new territory, that’s what it’s all about for me,” says Close. “And Martha is certainly new territory. New old territory.”
