‘Grateful for my anxiety': Actor Lewis Pullman related to Thunderbolts* character's struggles
NEW YORK – Lewis Pullman is still not sure if he is playing a hero or a villain in the latest Marvel movie Thunderbolts*.
'He's very malleable and easily influenced because he hasn't had a real, strong, reliable source of love in his life,' the American actor said of his character, a dark Superman-like figure known as Sentry/The Void – although his civilian name, Bob, is how you might remember him best.
Think what would happen if Superman were super-depressed. Also, Bob appears capable of vapourising people with a flick of his hand.
'There's a contrast between being this all-powerful being and then having your greatest weakness and your main Achilles' heel be your own self,' Pullman, 32, said in video call from his apartment in Los Angeles.
He had just returned to the city, where he was born and raised, after a shoot in Vancouver, British Columbia, for the Netflix movie Remarkably Bright Creatures, based on American author Shelby Van Pelt's enormously popular 2022 novel. That was followed by a whirlwind press tour that had taken him from London and New York to Los Angeles and Miami to back to Los Angeles, just in time for his brother's wedding.
Pullman – the son of 71-year-old American actor Bill Pullman (While You Were Sleeping, 1995; Independence Day, 1996) – is the breakout star of Thunderbolts*, which has attracted praise for its candid depiction of mental health.
'What I love about this film is that it is so adamantly trying to rid our society' of the stigma around mental health, Lewis Pullman said. Like his character, he has an introspective bent, turning over every question in his mind before answering.
Although he had never read the comics featuring Sentry – also known as Robert Reynolds , shortened to Bob in Thunderbolts* – he was drawn to the profound sadness and isolation of the character, whose Mr Hyde-like alter ego is the Void, the darkness that lives inside Bob.
Struck by bouts of melancholy, Bob forges an unlikely friendship with Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova, who was trained as a child to be a Black Widow assassin.
'She sees something of herself in him,' Pullman said. 'She sees that they are both at the end of their lines.'
The role is a breakout turn for Pullman, who earned a supporting actor Emmy nomination in 2024 for his portrayal of a brilliant scientist in the Apple TV+ period series Lessons In Chemistry (2023). Before that, he played a pilot – also named Bob – in the 2022 hit Top Gun: Maverick.
'I should probably take a breather from playing Bobs,' he said with a laugh.
Lewis Pullman at the Thunderbolts* screening on April 30 in New York.
PHOTO: AFP
How did you first get involved in Thunderbolts*?
I got a phone call that was very vague and cryptic, and I was like: 'I should meet Jake (Schreier, the director) and see what this is all about.'
He couldn't give me the script, so he told me the story old-fashioned style, word by word. It was great to have that experience. You don't get it very often.
I had only three days to prepare for the screen test and audition, which wasn't as much time as I'd like. So, I tried to go as broad as possible, and then shrink it down and go as specific as possible in finding and discovering where it was that I, as Lewis, could relate to this character.
What did you pull from for the role?
What was so exciting and terrifying was how much I related to this character. In terms of the mental health parts of it, the anxiety and the depression, I have a dose of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) , self-doubt and the negative self-talk that can paralyse you.
I'm lucky to have come from a great family that was very proactive and resourceful about helping me figure it all out. So, to try to inhabit somebody who didn't have that – I was close enough to those alleyways to be able to see what it would have looked like had I not had those.
Have you had candid conversations with people in your own life about mental health?
I was a social work major in college in North Carolina, so I have had many conversations about these topics. Coming into this project, it was obvious that it was a major theme. But it was never our goal to make this a PSA (public service announcement). This is still an incredibly fun, large-scale blockbuster film. But by shining a flashlight on it, it becomes more real.
In many ways, my anxiety is something I'm grateful for. It's there as a protective mechanism. You don't just make a movie about it and then the conversation's over. I'll be talking about it until I circle the drain. And that's something I've come to be okay with and embrace.
Do you have personal experience with depression?
That's something that's less of a consistent force in my life. It comes in waves. But it's something that's deep in my marrow because, when you feel that, it's very hard to forget. I was able to tap into that in a way that was safe, with therapy, and then friends and support.
I go about therapy in the same way that I go about acting. I assume that I never know anything, that there's always something to learn. I did a lot of cognitive behavioural therapy in high school and now I'm in talk therapy.
I've realised that the times when you should stick with therapy the most is when you think you're doing the best without it. That's a mind game that I've fallen for a couple of times.
What would you say to people who feel like Bob?
It's okay to not smile, it's okay to cry, it's okay to let all those feelings out, and to not bottle them up. You'll find that, more often than not, there will be somebody there to catch you, if you're vulnerable enough to let them. NYTIMES
Thunderbolts* is showing in Singapore cinemas.
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Courtesy of Pangdemonium Has the play evolved since you first started writing it in 2020? C: For sure. Writers will often say that playwriting itself is a very lonely endeavour, but the exciting part of the experience is when the play meets other people. Having conversations with the Pangdemonium team, receiving feedback from a wider audience at the developmental platform at SIFA, and now having the actors in the room—I get to learn new things about the play and expand it beyond what was a very personal piece that I had written for myself. Incorporating all these different experiences and perspectives of home really enriches the dramatic potential of the piece. So a lot has evolved, not just from when the play first met Pangdemonium, but from when I first wrote it five years ago by myself in a college basement classroom in Chicago. Has writing this play helped you to find some of the answers to the questions you were asking? C: For me, rather than answers, it's more about finding other people who feel similar, and discovering community and companionship through the power of art. That was a conversation I had with Tim as well—about having a more open-ended exploration of the play, and being okay to sit in the ambiguity of it. 'In Singapore, oftentimes, there's this almost ritualistic invocation of the idea of home' Timothy, as a director, what draws you to the plays that you choose to work on—and why this play in particular? T: I've been quite known in the scene for doing classic or classic-adjacent work. That is a big part of my desire to work in theatre, and that will always be there, but what I've also been pushing for in the last couple years is new plays and new young playwrights, because there is nothing more thrilling than being able to create something entirely new. That said, I think that there is a very strong through line in all the plays I choose to do, which is that they all concern intelligent, articulate characters who are faced with very difficult decisions. I like exploring the psychological aspect of characters, and I think this is true both for my classic work and for new plays. But with this piece, I was certainly drawn to it because the characters are so richly drawn and so complex that we learn new things about them every day, and I think that's what makes it fun. Was there an aspect of the play that you were most excited to tackle in the rehearsal room? T: It's no secret that there is snow in this play, and that's something I've been quite excited to play with. Obviously, we're not getting real snow on stage, but when you come see the show, you'll see how we tackled it. This show has some fun sets and scenic moments that we employ, so I'm very excited to tech it because I think that would be the final piece to the puzzle that we've been working on. C: I agree that the snow is very exciting. Winter is my favourite weather, and when I first started writing the script, I always knew this play was going to be set in the winter, because the dissonance of Singapore in the winter is very interesting. But this is such a personal piece for me, so the most exciting thing is really just having these characters and words and emotions that have lived within me for five years at this point come to life on stage. Singapore, Michigan was developed as a part of Pangdemonium's New Works Lab. Courtesy of Pangdemonium Have there been any challenges along the way? C: I have a day job—I'm a civil servant—so it's been a bit of a challenge for me to balance the rehearsal and script revision demands, plus my own personal life as well. T: I'm lucky that this is my day job [laughs]. Every piece presents different kinds of struggles, but weirdly enough, I actually think this has been going quite smoothly. Nothing particular comes to mind. C: I do think there was a degree of trepidation before coming into the rehearsal room, right? There were moments right before and right after we had the actors come in that I personally felt a bit without a safety net. And then afterwards, it was like, 'Oh, this is good. There's a lot to explore here. We're ready for the actors to attack it'. What has that been like—seeing the actors bring your words to life? C: It's really surreal. Words fail to describe that kind of feeling. What I will say is, as a playwright, the ideal is always to be able to create something that is flexible enough to fit different interpretations. That was something that I wanted the text to have. I wanted room for the actors to play and discover, so it's very heartening to see that validated. There is space for other collaborators to come in and offer their own additions, which is the magic thing that you always want in the theatre. T: And we have such intelligent performers in Ching Shu Yi, Shrey Bhargava and Zane Haney. Sometimes I feel the actors might know the characters in more intimate ways than we do, because they offer up interpretations of texts that we don't think about, and we're like, 'Whoa, okay, yeah, that makes so much sense'. I think that is the most enlightening part about the rehearsal process. 'As a playwright, the ideal is always to be able to create something that is flexible enough to fit different interpretations' Lastly, what are you most excited for audiences to see with this play? T: I'm excited for the audience to be challenged. I really like theatre that challenges audiences to think more deeply about situations or people or issues in a way that perhaps they have not thought of before. I would consider this play successful if it raises difficult questions for audiences, while still offering a fun and enjoyable theatrical experience. But I think at the heart of it, I really want the audiences to investigate what home means. What does it mean to belong, and how do you think about home when you're not there? C: When I wrote this play, I included a lot of twists and turns—kind of like the Alfred Hitchcock theory of drama being such that there is a bomb under the table. The audience knows it's there, but they don't know when it's going to go off. We've really amped up those twists and turns in the rehearsal room. Yes, I think it's important that the play explores important themes and provokes important reflections, but I'm also excited to see the audience react to the roller coaster ride that I hope we're creating for them. I feel like it would be very gratifying to see the different energy that each new audience will bring every night. Singapore, Michigan runs from 26 June to 11 July 2025.
