Read below an interview Boyd Holbrook gave to British GQ on his portrayal of Johnny Cash in A Complete Unknown:
A Complete Unknown is a film about Bob Dylan. But there’s another (admittedly less prominent) man sucking up the limelight in just about every scene he’s in. That man is Johnny Cash, and he’s played by Boyd Holbrook.
Even when drunkenly failing to manoeuvre his car out of a parking space, he drips with an assurance, a winking cocksureness, that anyone would kill for. GQ sat down with Holbrook to ask just how it was that he went about conveying the confidence and charisma of The Man in Black.
GQ: For how little screen time Johnny Cash gets in this film, it feels like he’s extremely present. A big part of that is this quasi-fatherly relationship he seems to have with Bob Dylan – is that how you thought of the role?
Boyd Holbrook: Well Jim [director James Mangold] obviously did so much with Johnny Cash’s life before in Walk the Line, and Joaquin [Phoenix]’s is great performance, but it wasn’t until he started researching with Bob [Dylan] that he found Bob had kept all these letters that Johnny and Bob had written back and forth, that he didn’t know about when he made Walk the Line because Johnny Cash didn’t keep those letters. So they really tell you the difference between the two personalities, and I think Johnny just had had so much experience at that point. He’d been in the traveling circus for a long time and you got this young, brilliant performer, artist, and he just pointed the flashlight in his direction.
So did your idea of the relationship between the two characters and their companionship come mainly from those letters?
Yeah, ‘cus I think Johnny was around 30, 31 at the time of the movie, and Bob was around 20, and that’s like me reaching out to some 24-year-old kid being like, “God, man, I love your work”, – you have to leave your ego out the back door, it’s just admiration. I think there was just a real grace and humility and admiration towards what Bob was making, and all those songs. Those are timeless songs. There’s no other songwriter today that could even hold a candle to the lyricism of Bob Dylan.
Did you study Joaquin’s performance, and maybe use it as a template or a starting point for your own, or did you just want to ignore it and do your own thing?
I immediately watched it. Joaquin’s was a very intimate performance, a fantastic performance. It’s a love story. And what’s happening now in A Complete Unknown is we’re getting a snapshot of the man’s life, and also what it is to live on the road. I’ve been on the road myself ten months a year for about twelve years now, and you’re a road dog. You callous up a bit. So what’s that like, doing 200 shows a year? What do you have to do? And what kind of battles was he fighting personally at that time? All of that bottlenecked into the essence of him that I was trying to give an impression of.
So what was your source material for that essence of Johnny Cash in that moment?
There were two interviews that I would just listen to over and over and over again – one from Pete Seeger’s TV show, and another one from 1965. They’re basically just two monologues, and I did that because Johnny Cash’s voice is so distinct, and I knew that I had to do that so much that I could just talk normally, but in the voice of the character. I love that kind of craftsmanship.
And what about his singing?
Well I had four or five months to be able to sing and play guitar at the same time. I’d spent 20 years fiddling around with guitars and playing chords, but I couldn’t count music, couldn’t keep time, and I couldn’t sing and play at the same time. So that was another piece of the puzzle – so I’d have a singing lesson for an hour, and then two hours of guitar every day, and about a week before it just worked out. I could finally play at the speed of the song, and hit the notes. It all just came together. There’s a certain pressure to that that, as a performer, that’s really exciting. Because I have bombed before, and this was like bombing every day before I get it right, and I’m cool with that, because that’s just how it works.
Were there any specific techniques for getting his voice right, both for talking and for singing?
Yeah, he’s a lot lower and also he talks a little bit slower, so I had a process every day. I would wake up and do a 30 minute voice warm-up, a lot of humming, a lot of breathwork where I’d be trying to hollow myself out, because that’s how you make your voice deeper, you get more air in. Then I’d stretch, start humming, get into that register, pick the guitar up, work on that, then read the script, work on the accent, and do all that so much that I don’t even think about it. It’s like a fighter – if you have to think to put your hand up, you’re gonna get punched in the head all the time. You have to do so many reps that it just stays in there.
Do you feel any differently about Johnny Cash on the other side of this experience?
Yeah. I realise how unique and precious the figure of Johnny Cash was in shaping culture. When a movie or a song is really good, it changes culture. People talk about it, and the ideas in it, and it influences their life. That’s the importance of art. And there’s a spectrum of that – there are artists that do a little bit of work, have a couple of hits, and then there’s people like Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, who have just made so many songs that resonate in culture and change it significantly. I’m more aware of the magnitude of that importance now. I thought he was a cool guy, thought he was great, but how important a figure he is has changed for me now.
Being a cool guy is a big part of his thing as well, though – you demonstrate that charisma and easy charm of his so well in the film. Did that come naturally to you or did it take some learning?
I think I had to remind myself about that. I had a lot more of it in my twenties.
Is it a confidence thing?
I think it’s about the art of not giving a fuck. It’s a little bit of that, and to quote the movie Super Troopers, desperation is a stinky cologne. And I’d definitely say just life and struggle and surviving and where we’re at in our history, and the stress of COVID – you tighten up. Life tightens you up, because it’s hard. So I had to be conscious of that, and loosen back up.
So Johnny Cash helped you loosen up a little?
Oh yeah, definitely.
It seems like there’s a pretty good chance this film could act as a pretty big springboard for you – so what’s next? What direction would you like it to spring you in?
I’ve made a living doing small roles and character work, a lot of supporting stuff. So now I want to take everything I’ve learned and do it in a bigger role, a leading role. I want the Bob Dylan role. I want bigger and better performances. I want to make the work that inspired me to be an actor.
I like the honesty.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, right?