TV is where the writing is, and with good writing comes better roles.
Making blockbusters or doing TV shows like The Newsroom: which is better? Though if I did go, I’d leave my cell phone at home and just take my guitar. It’s nice to know what’s out there, but it isn’t necessarily going to make my Friday any better, you know? I’d rather see the bits of Earth I haven’t been to yet – Scotland, say – than do flybys of Jupiter or whatever. It’s either gonna be harnesses, or you’re up in a plane spinning around at 40,000ft… I was very happy to be on the ground in Houston wearing a suit.ĭo you think it’s important we keep exploring space? I have no idea how they did the weightlessness thing, but it can’t be good. No way! Look at what they had to wear every day, those space suits. Did you ever wish you were up in the spaceship? It’s a movie partly set on Mars, but Teddy stays put. I just got the job then went straight to Budapest and relied on Ridley Scott, who is a good guy to rely on. Was that a requirement of this interview? Give me 20 minutes, I’ll speed-read it… No, I’ve never really taken to sci-fi. It’s pretty exciting stuff.ĭid you read the Andy Weir novel the movie is based on? Well, it makes heroes out of people who know maths! It’s a bit like Apollo 13, when they’re trying to get Hanks back safely by improvising maths and science on the fly. What makes The Martian different to other space action movies? He’s the bureaucrat at Nasa weighing up the risks of the mission, who decides it’s better to lose one life than several. We caught up with The Newsroom star about blockbusters, space travel and why he’s happy here on terra firma. Meanwhile, Jeff Daniels plays Teddy Sanders, the man trying to orchestrate the rescue mission back on little old Earth. “I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this,” as Watney somewhat cringingly puts it. In it, astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) travels to Mars with a crew made up of some of Hollywood’s hottest young things ( House of Cards’ Kate Mara, Interstellar’s Jessica Chastain), gets himself stranded, and is forced to survive using limited supplies and his own ingenuity.
It wouldn’t be blockbuster season without a gripping-if-slightly-silly space movie, and filling the slot this year is sci-fi veteran Ridley Scott’s The Martian.