Interview: Joe Anderson Talks ‘The Grey’, Rehearsing the Film and Acting in -20 Degree Weather

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In Joe Carnahan’s excellent film, The Grey, Joe Anderson plays Flannery, a loudmouth who constantly gets under the skin of his fellow oil-riggers. When their plane goes down, he and the rest of the survivors (Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, James Badge Dale, Ben Bray and Nonso Anozie) are forced to work together to fend of packs of wolves hungry for their blood.

Anderson is the son British theatre actors and he told me that even though he grew up surrounded by the profession, he didn’t think he’d ever actually be an actor. After backpacking around the world, he decided he wanted to become a director. But since he couldn’t afford coming to America and go to film school, he thought he’d go to drama school to learn about actors. And the rest is history.

Joe talked to me about the shoot and what it was like to work in freezing weather, working with Liam Neeson, and one particularly bad audition where he had to play an espresso machine.

For the full interview, click the audio link above or download it from iTunes 

I saw The Grey the other night. Freakin’ fantastic film.

Joe Anderson: It’s a fun one. It’s intense, right? But it’s got a lot of heart in there, a lot of heart.  It took me by surprise, the script.

Before I read it, I was thinking of kind of a dude’s movie with guys in the snow and fighting wolves and it is but it’s kind of a way more than that. I was kind of really surprised by that.   Read more