Danny Huston is “Delightfully Twisted” in Magic City
Danny Huston is a great talent both in front of and behind the camera and it should be no surprise because he comes from a family with a legacy all its own. His father– legendary director John Huston, his sister– the brilliant actress Angelica Huston, and his grandfather — Walter Huston, an Academy Award winning actor. Not that he needs to promote their achievements, he has a long list of his own. He’s probably best known for his performances in the films “The Aviator”, “The Constant Gardner”, and “The Proposition”, but there’s a long list to choose from. Recently he stopped by the SiriusXM studios to sit down with Ron Bennington and talk about his newest project, “Magic City”. Excerpts of that interview appear below.
Ron Bennington: He’s got the world on a string. Ben Diamond is the new character in Magic City. Here’s my prediction right away Danny. This starts as the character that we love to hate, but ends up, knowing the way I know the American public, this is going to be the guy that we love to love. There’s something about us and these dark characters.
Danny Huston: Yes. I take a certain pride in trying to find where these villainous characters feel. I like to prod them like a scalpel and see where they have some emotion and where the evilness derives from. But in this particular case, I thought I’d just give that all that up.
Ron Bennington: Just give it away.
Danny Huston: His sort of Roman emperor kind of quality that he has. And enjoy his joy of his evil qualities. And most of my scenes are with a character called Ike Evans played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan. And I’m not really pulling the wool over his eyes. I’m not stealing candy from a kid. He’s making a little Faustian deal with me, but he knows what he’s doing.
Ron Bennington: And I love the fact that you said that I’m just going to embrace this from the beginning. I’m not going to sit around and wonder what motivates him. And you give that away in the first episode. There’s a speech that you explain to him that this is your nature and you’re going to stay that way.
Danny Huston: Yes. There’s that sort of parable of the scorpion and the frog. And he enjoys pontificating it. Telling these rather long stories while poor Ike Evans is standing in the blinding sunlight. And these things are beautifully written by Mitch Glazer who wrote the show and is the showrunner. The only thing that required, that I was tenuous about and required a certain amount of courage, was wearing these sort of Speedo like trunks. (laughs) And I think I really should be commended for my great courage.
Ron Bennington: That’s more courageous than anything else for you. Well, you’re surrounded of course by beautiful things, beautiful women, money, but at the root of it all there’s still this darkness. Like is he able to get pleasure because there’s so much darkness in him? Because he wants more.
Danny Huston: He wants more and yes that’s it exactly. He knows. I think he knows his failings. But he’s surrendered to them entirely. And yeah, I think he enjoys it. But there’s also a sort of depth to him and a sort of sadness as well, but it’s kind of wonderfully perversed and twisted. And we don’t really know whether he’s murdered his wife or not, but when he talks about her, he talks about her with great fondness. “Remember the time that you and me and Doe went out to that quarry?” (laughs) The guy just killed her.
Ron Bennington: Do you like being connected to a character now that you’re going to be playing for some time?
Danny Huston: I do. You know what’s really exciting is there’s long forms, kind of a slow burn. You’re not constricted with the first, second, third act thing. And you can play things out. Also having Starz and Chris Albrecht. He’s kind of like an old studio boss. He calls the shots. And we got greenlit for a second season without it even airing which is kind of unusual.
Ron Bennington: Was that so surprising to everybody to hear that?
Danny Huston: Yes. And excited to have somebody who believes in the show in that way. Who was willing to take the gamble in an old-fashioned kind of way. Yes, it’s great. And Mitch Glazer who was also a friend is just writing such interesting exquisite stuff. So I really relish reading the episodes when they come in. Usually we get 4 or 5 episodes prior to starting so we get a good sense of what’s going on. But it’s also exciting as in life I suppose where you don’t really know what’s around the corner awaiting you. Episode 8 is just so delightfully twisted and kind of ghastly in a truly horrifying way that I just can’t believe how twisted a mind Mitch Glazer has to come up with this stuff.
Ron Bennington: Well this is where he grew up. I was talking to Kelly Lynch about that. And I think the perfect thing is this is his hometown and just to be able to say to people this is the way it was.
Danny Huston: Yeah. His father was in charge of lighting. So a lot of these chandeliers in these hotels, his father was actually in charge of setting all these things up and in a way Mitch Glazer is now shedding light on his past.
Ron Bennington: Well you didn’t even really grow up in America, right?
Danny Huston: No, I grew up in Rome and England. I went to school in England and Ireland and Mexico. Lucky to have a father called John Huston and traveled the world. One of my great childhood memories was being in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco while he was making The Man Who Would Be King and hanging out with Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Plummer, my father, a Kipling novel, I mean I could not have been happier.
Ron Bennington: And I guess that helps because you’re playing a bigger than life character here, but you grew up with a bigger than life guy. You’re father is that stuff of legends.
Danny Huston: Yes. Yes. And his friends. I’d hang out with Robert Mitchum and like I said with “The Man Who Would Be King”, but also like Mr. Fuller, an interesting character enough. Of course I fell in love with Ava Gardner the moment I met her.
Ron Bennington: I can’t even imagine. I can’t imagine.
Danny Huston: I remember my mother slapping me on the back of the head saying “Of course you love her. It’s Ava Gardner, for Christ’s sake”. And I suspected that these people were remarkable people, but I didn’t really know. They were dad’s friends.
Ron Bennington: Was there a certain age where you finally, it dawned on you, like oh no this was pretty extraordinary?
Danny Huston: Well, yes. It was kind of confusing in a way. I remember when I first saw a rough cut of The Bible. And he was doing the voice-over for God and then he was also Noah. I knew that something was awry.
Ron Bennington: I can’t imagine being in trouble with this guy when you were a kid. ( Huston laughs)
Danny Huston: I mean everybody’s father I suppose is a god, but this was thoroughly confusing.
Ron Bennington: Yeah. It was scary enough for me to hear when my father would get upset, but I can’t imagine John Huston yelling get up to your room. (both laugh) So you have known extraordinary people. You keep doing extraordinary things. And this thing of being able to do the show of show business, but also the art of show business, I think you share that with your father.
Danny Huston: Yes. I’m very lucky. I got into acting late. And I was just trying to get my films going as a director. And it was taking time. I was sort of stuck in L.A. in a kind of seasonless lapse of time. And other director’s friends out of the kindness of their hearts really offered me small roles. And the roles got bigger. But the reason I accepted these roles was really to observe them work. People that I respected, to observe them work. And I always felt comfortable observing my father, so this was kind of the same deal. And working with Scorsese and working with people like this was just such a joy for me. But I really wasn’t doing it to act and then suddenly the acting took off.
Ron Bennington: At what point did you decide I guess I’m an actor first now?
Danny Huston: I’m still struggling with that a little. Yeah, I’m still struggling with that. I think finally it’s about telling stories. And in a way, it’s the same gig. I remember my father when he’d be observing an actor, sometimes he’d make the same gestures. So as a director, you’re kind of acting as well.
Ron Bennington: So he would just adapt to whoever he was around? He would somehow connect.
Danny Huston: Yeah, if somebody had a scowl on his face, you could see him kind of scowling, going along with them. I remember, I had directed him in a film for BBC called Mister Corbett’s Ghost. And he was The Collector. He was the collector of souls in this kind of Christmas ghost story. And he flubbed a line and he said “cut”. And I said “Dad”, I was kind of a young buck at the time, I said “Dad, you can’t do that. You can’t say cut. I’m the director”. (impersonating his father) “Oh, I’m ever so sorry. I’ll never do it again”. And of course, he could say “cut” if he wanted to, but it was just so generous and supportive of him to be that way with me.
Ron Bennington: Just you doing that impression, you’d be the perfect person to play your father in a film. Which honestly, he lived the life of a film. He was so much bigger than life.
Danny Huston: He certainly was.
Ron Bennington: You’ve done one of the greatest westerns of all time and it didn’t even take place in the United States and it’s that Nick Cave piece that you did called The Proposition. What a strange and fantastic film that is.
Danny Huston: Yes. And Nick Cave said this really irritating thing. He said it took him 3 weeks to write the script, one week to figure out the script writing program. Thoroughly infuriating. But it was such a solid script and great to be in the middle of Australia in the middle of nowhere in a town called Winton. An opal mining town. And the heat and the flies and we just got into it and it was a nice and kind of grungy, gritty experience for all the boys. I think I can call them boys because that’s what we were being. And Emily Watson looking porcelain in contrast to us. I think she said the experience was like spending time with a whole bunch of silver-backed gorillas. But it was a great great experience.
Ron Bennington: But isn’t interesting too you bringing up Cave being able to write like that because he came from a songwriting background an here’s Mitch Glazer who comes from like a journalistic background. Sometimes I think the worst thing people can do is just start writing fiction like writing screenplays at a very early age. Get out and maybe live life a little bit before you get there.
Danny Huston: Absolutely. I remember my father giving a lecture at a film school and one of the keen students stood up and said “Mr. Huston, would it be write to say the first act is to establish the character, the second act you tell the story and the third act you resolve it, would that be correct structure?” And my father looked at him utterly perplexed and said “Kid you should go down to Mexico, check into a whore house and fuck a whore”. (laughs) And the poor guy looked at him completely dumbfounded and you could hear a pin drop. There was no laughter. But of course what he was saying was live. Live. Don’t worry about those kind of constraints.
Ron Bennington: Directing is also still in your future right?
Danny Huston: I’m itching to get back in the saddle. I must say yes.
Ron Bennington: Is there a story that you’ve got in the back of your or are you just waiting for it?
Danny Huston: I do. I have one called Day of the Dead, as you probably imagine, a bunch of seedy characters south of the border, kind of what I’m attracted to and also another story which takes place in a boarding school in England which is actually quite a terrifying story about a teacher.
Ron Bennington: Well most of the boarding school life is so foreign to us here in the United States, but in England that’s just par for the course right?
Danny Huston: Yes, well it’s kind of class thing as well.
Ron Bennington: Right, if you’re upper class, you’re 8, it’s time for you to grow up and move away from home.
Danny Huston: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s kind of horrific how these kids at such an early age are just shipped off and kind of never seen again. And the parents can’t really enjoy, the kids can’t enjoy the parents, the parents can’t enjoy the kids. What’s the point? But also kind of scary that they’re in the hands of strangers. And that’s what this film is about. About a character called Mr. Coles.
Ron Bennington: Not that different from a prison film.
Danny Huston: Absolutely. It’s kind of a Victorian setting, isn’t it? And in a way, back to Ben Diamond. In a way, Ben Diamond’s kind of had a Dickensian childhood. So there even though I say I just play him for pure evil actually there is a history to Ben Diamond. And there is a depth to him. And he enjoys a sort of Roman imperial behavior.
Ron Bennington: His wife in this too, obviously a trophy wife but in the same time I also think that he uses her as bait to bring more of this drama into his life. To dare people.
Danny Huston: Yes and I mean I can’t tell you how shocking it is the way this story unfolds. By episode 8, it’s so twisted that Mitch Glazer, dear friend of mine, but I’ve never been able to look at him again the same way or his wife for that matter. Quite how he came up with this stuff is unbelievable. But yes, she becomes almost like a Lady MacBeth in a way. She’s quite powerful. She’s not what seems.
Ron Bennington: So since you and Mitch go back a long way, this is something that he wrote from the beginning with you in mind.
Danny Huston: I don’t think, nope because I think he originally wrote it like 10 or 15 years ago.
Ron Bennington: Really?
Danny Huston: But recently he brought it to Chris Albrecht at Starz. And Chris gave him the green light. And I believe or so he tells me, I was his first choice.
Ron Bennington: That’s terrific. I’ve seen the first 3 episodes and I think it’s just fantastic and I also think this is going to become one of those water cooler shows that we’ve had like The Wire, The Sopranos where people are going to be cheering for different characters as it goes along. And I’m not going to be surprised to see Ben Diamond become bigger than life. I really won’t. Thank you so much for coming in today Danny. I appreciate it.
Danny Huston: Thank you. Thank you for having me. And thank you for talking about “The Proposition”, it’s one of my favorite films.
Ron Bennington: And I hope I see you next time coming through.
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Visit the official Magic City website here.
