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Yorgos Lathimos’ Poor Things is a movie that’s getting a lot of critic buzz right now. The performances of Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, and Mark Ruffalo are all in the Oscar conversation right now, but it turns out Ruffalo was far from sure about his performance, leading to Dafoe deciding to mess with his co-star by telling him he was going to get replaced by Oscar Isaac.
Speaking with Esquire, Willem Dafoe praises Ruffalo in Poor Things, but explains that Ruffalo himself wasn’t sure he was doing a great job. He looked to, and got, reassurance from his castmates, but Dafoe ultimately decided to play on the insecurities by playing a joke on Ruffalo…
You know, Mark he’s brilliant in this movie, and when we were rehearsing he kept on belly-aching like ‘Oh, I don’t know how I feel, is it too much? Maybe I’m not right for this.’ He was I think just reaching for reassurance, and we were happy to give it to him, to a degree. But I thought ‘Oh man, let’s give this guy a good little scare.’
It’s maybe not that surprising that Mark Ruffalo would be less than sure about his performance in Poor Things, as it’s a weird movie. Ruffalo’s character is unlike anything we’ve seen him play in quite some time, and he goes intentionally over the top with it, which fits perfectly with the tone of the film, but might not feel that way when performing it on set.
It turns out that another star, Oscar Issac, was in Budapest at the same time filming a movie at the same studio where Poor Things was in production. When Mark Ruffalo happened to see Isaac, he worried the actor might have been there to replace him. Dafoe, who had been in The Card Counter cast with Isaac, went to his former co-star and got him to play the part in a joke to make Ruffalo think his worst fears had come true. Dafoe continued…
Oscar Isaac was shooting at another part of the studio where we were in Budapest. And Mark one day said ‘I saw Oscar Isaac is here. Is he, he, he, he, he here to replace me?’ I said ‘Oh no, no, don’t be silly.’ And the next day, since I knew Oscar because I’d worked with him I said ‘come over.’ And he came over at lunch, and we staged this little scene like he’d come to tell Mark that it was over and he was taking over. But, that lasted for about a second, but it was a good joke, yeah? A good practical joke.
Mark Ruffalo is great in Poor Things, at least according to many critics and the people who hand out awards. Our own Poor Things review said Ruffalo nearly stole the show. He’s received nominations for Best Supporting Actor by several different critics organizations, and he made the list of 2024 Golden Globes nominees, alongside his co-star who played the joke on him. The film is likely to garner more than a couple of Oscar nominations, and Ruffalo may very well be one of them.