This Friday sees the long-awaited release of Everybody Wants Some!! [read our ★★★★★ review here] the new film from acclaimed writer/director Richard Linklater (Boyhood, Before trilogy). Promoted as the “spiritual sequel” to Linklater’s 1993 cult classic Dazed and Confused, the new film charts the lives of a group of college baseball players navigate their way through the freedoms and responsibilities of unsupervised adulthood.
To celebrate the release of the film, Scott J. Davis sat down for a roundtable interview with one of the film’s stars Tyler Hoechlin. The actor, who shot to fame in 2002’s Road To Perdition, spoke about his experiences on working with Linklater and the huge ensemble cast, as well as his favourite things from the 1980’s and a little tease for his next projects, the eagerly anticipated sequels to Fifty Shades of Grey entitled Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed.
The film involves a huge ensemble cast and on working with his co-stars, Hoechlin spoke of his admiration for them:
“I haven’t found group of people that you can relate to in the same way as with say old team-mates as I do with these guys. And being isolated and away with them for three weeks preparing was the best thing that could have happened because you’re thrown into that environment in the same way you do when you go to university and you immediately have to make them your family and it was similar what happened with this.”
He also spoke of his admiration for director Linklater, who was very meticulous about creating the right experience both for the actors and the audience as you are welcomed into their world of booze, baseball and girls:
“We had three weeks of rehearsal with him before we shot anything so things that were on the page were developed and evolved on-screen and off-screen and we would find things to play with.”
While many know Hoechlin from his role in hit television series Teen Wolf, his big break came in 2002 when he was cast as Michael Sullivan Jnr in Sam Mendes’ Road to Perdition, alongside Tom Hanks, Jude Law, Daniel Craig and the late Paul Newman, He reminisced on the experience:
“Luckily for me I was young enough and naive enough and ignorant enough to not feel too much of the pressure! I was 13 and I knew who (Tom) Hanks was and was a huge Big and Splash fan so meeting him was really incredible. But it was that ignorant is bliss thing as a kid but also so much fun.”
Next up for Hoechlin is a role in both of the upcoming sequels to last year’s mega-hit Fifty Shades of Grey, filmed back to back. But the actor is keeping his role and details about the films very close to his chest:
“I can’t really say too much about it! The character (Boyce Fox) is not familiar with them until he is introduced in the film…. I’m a huge Glengarry Glen Ross fan (director James Foley is taking over the two sequels) so I’ve enjoyed working with him and hope we can work together in future.”
Everybody Wants Some!! opens in UK cinemas on Friday, May 13th.
Originally published May 12, 2016. Updated October 29, 2022.
