James Lance On Battling Kiefer Sutherland In TINSEL TOWN And Trent Crimm In TED LASSO Season 4 (Exclusive)
In Tinsel Town, a washed-up Hollywood action star (Kiefer Sutherland) takes a role in a small English village’s Christmas pageant. With the help of the straight-talking choreographer and quirky cast, he embraces the holiday spirit to reconnect with his estranged daughter.
The movie, which also stars Rebel Wilson, Danny Dyer, Derek Jacobi, Alice Eve, and James Lance, is a lot of fun and a charming, hilarious Christmastime caper. Sutherland’s character finds himself in a classic British pantomime and butting heads with his ex-wife’s new husband, Spencer, played by Lance.
Earlier this week, we got to sit down with James to discuss his role in Tinsel Town and started by wondering what it was like to match wits with the 24 star.
“Yeah, we just had a lot of fun with it,” the actor says in the video below of a heated exchange between the two characters. “We just we were just mucking around and making each other chuckle, and he was very, very accommodating and up for it. [He was] playful and sweet. So it was cool. Yeah, it was really cool.”
“I was aware of [his being Jack Bauer]. Every time I opened the door, I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, there’s Kiefer Sutherland.'”
Talking about paying Eve’s husband in the movie, Lance added, “Well, I’d never met Alice, but I’ve really liked some of her work over the years, and I was aware of her. So, when I knew that I was playing her hubby, I was really pleased. And we had such a fun time together. She’s a great person. I loved her. We had a ball.”
Later in our conversation, he opened up on the parallels between Spencer and Ted Lasso‘s Trent Crimm:
“In both characters that I play in Ted and in this, they’re both very sort of self-assured, and they’ve got an opinion of who is in front of them. And in both instances, I think it becomes apparent that both characters, Spencer and Trent, their opinion or their judgment is not on point. And there’s always comedy in that. When Trent first sees Ted, it’s like it’s almost as if he’s looking at Ronald McDonald coming to manage a football team.”
“At the time, it was almost as bonkers as, say, something like somebody like Donald Trump walking into the White House. It was as outlandish an idea, which, of course, we’ve all got used to. I like to poke fun at the pomposity of English superiority. There’s always some good comedy to be had there. They always end up with a bit of egg on their face, although with Trent, he goes on quite an unusual journey for a character. We really get to see why he is the way he is.”
Of course, after Ted Lasso entered the chat, we had to ask if he’s set to return as Trent in the upcoming Season 4. “As you can imagine…you know what I’m gonna say, don’t you? I can’t say anything. I know nothing,” Lance replied with a smile, before being gracious enough to talk us through his approach to the character in the Apple TV series:
“I would say the reveal of the kind of man that Trent is and the sort of soft underside to him, the kind of vulnerability was a lovely thing to play because obviously, when we first meet him, he’s this really obnoxious superior…he’s horrible to begin with. I had quite a clear idea as to why he was the way he was. I had this idea that he had a very sort of alpha father. He wanted him to be like a Roy Kemt type character, and little Trent was not that. So, he spawned this intellect and persona basically to get through it.”
“There was a really lovely scene where Trent, in season 3, gets into the locker room, and the team is pretty mean to him. It was a bit of a triggering moment because he would have had that experience as a kid, not getting picked for the football team. It was really fun to play that kind of emotion in that scene and have him kind of steel himself and go, ‘No, I’m going to get on side with these guys,’ and he does. It was a very beautiful experience, playing a character that gets to open up and be more of who he is. That was cool.”
Distributed by Brainstorm Media, Tinsel Town arrives in Theaters and On Demand on November 28.
