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After every acting job, Scoot McNairy likes to get a haircut, head to the store to buy some new t-shirts, and wash off whatever portrayal he’s just come out of as he prepares for the next. With The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd, after the actor took on the most intense leading role of his career, the impulse was stronger than ever: “I do remember adamantly wanting to get a haircut after this job,” he says with a laugh in his first conversation about the film, which sources confirm to The Hollywood Reporter will premiere later this year. “It hit me for a while — and still hits me now when we talk about it.”
It tracks that Wilson Shedd is directed by a great actor in Tim Blake Nelson, who’s also helmed features like The Grey Zone and Leaves of Grass over his decades in the business. The movie is a major showcase for its stars — McNairy, known for supporting turns in films like Argo and A Complete Unknown, doing transformative work as the title character, and Amanda Seyfried, going from the wildness of The Testament of Ann Lee and The Housemaid to one of the most emotionally bare roles of her career. The ensemble is stacked with actors’ actors like Wunmi Mosaku, Elizabeth Marvel, Missi Pyle and more.
“I want every actor that I respect or love in my life to work with Tim Blake Nelson because it is far beyond any experience I’ve ever had with a director,” Seyfried says. “I trust him more than I trusted any director I’ve ever worked with hands down. It’s almost holy to be on set with him.”
Wilson Shedd examines the complex relationship between Karen (Seyfried), the new English teacher in an Oklahoma prison, and the incarcerated student who’s drawn to her (McNairy). The project has been in development for over a decade, with Nelson first inspired to write it following the national obsession around the prison escape at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. Ben Stiller later made his own miniseries based on those events, Escape at Dannemora, just as Nelson’s own idea had evolved anyway — fictionalizing the story and expanding its scope.
“This movie is meant to be dealing with, on every level, the things that we as humans are capable of doing to one another,” Nelson says. The movie progresses nonlinearly between three timelines, anchored by the evolving, complex, ultimately tragic relationship between Karen and Wilson. Both are desperate characters seeking their own escapes; Karen, trapped in a physically abusive marriage to the drunken Kenneth (Grant Harvey), finds both genuine connection and dangerous opportunity in Wilson.
Indeed, their growing bond fuels the film like a thriller — even though we barely see them alone together. “This kind of approach, that involves a story told out of sequence and demands a level of confidence in the audience’s ability to put stuff together without it being handed to them, really necessitates an equilibrium with the two characters and their trajectories,” Nelson says. “It really interested me to try and make a film in which the two main characters have only one scene alone together.”
For the most part, Karen and Wilson get to know each other in the classroom, sharing glances and written notes and coded comments. Remarkably, all told, Seyfried and McNairy only overlapped for three or four days, despite Wilson Shedd hinging entirely on their dynamic. “It was a bummer, but there was something kind of great about it because I really didn’t know him,” Seyfried says. “We had to work that much harder.” Their one scene alone together, the Oscar nominee continues, was “the most electrifying experience in a scene I’ve ever had in my career…. The script is so full of tension and excitement, but also danger. And in the moment, all of it was there.”
“You come across an individual that is one of the scariest people in the world — somebody who’s got nothing to lose,” McNairy says. “When he meets Karen in that prison for the first time, does he really love her? Maybe, but thinking about his idea of a relationship — what’s the delusion with his psychology, since he’s so damaged at the end of the day?”
Nelson, a published novelist, also imbues Wilson Shedd with his deep love of literature. Ernest Hemingway and Emily Dickinson’s works both literally and dramatically inform the plot, while Flannery O’Connor’s work shaped the script — most directly, the short story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” which inspired a key, harrowing interlude centered on a family (whose parents are portrayed by William Jackson Harper and Devyn A. Tyler) that collide with the main story.
“She was definitely in my psyche,” Nelson says. “Those references are essential to me.”
As a protagonist, Wilson poses a unique challenge to the audience; Nelson and McNairy do not shy away from why he’s been convicted, nor his history of violence. “It doesn’t rely on the character’s innocence or him repenting — and that puts a lot of pressure on the lead actor because you need both to revile him and to empathize with him,” the director says. “I can think of few actors who can pull off that balance in the way that Scoot does. The fact that he is something of an unknown in the lead-actor space is incredibly beneficial to the movie.”
“Here’s a guy that’s done some really horrible things…. He’s incredibly damaged, but doesn’t even know how to ask for redemption,” McNairy explains. “I’ll be honest with you, I don’t really get opportunities to play guys like this.”
Nelson has repeatedly collaborated as an actor with the likes of Steven Spielberg and the Coen Brothers; his history on screen indicates an interest in complex characters and visceral filmmaking. This proves increasingly clear in Wilson Shedd, particular when it comes to its depiction of violence — unsparing, if never gratuitous.
“Without the violence responsibly depicted, but also jarringly depicted, this particular movie wouldn’t have its power,” Nelson argues. “There’s a thriller element to the movie, and through that engagement, I believe that the movie captures the audience in a way that it’s able to examine some deeper themes.” And Seyfried says of her most physically brutal scenes, “I hate filming them. I know that I’m not capable of holding back when I’m acting…. Grant and I definitely damaged each other’s genitals on the day accidentally,” she says. “But Tim is also incredibly protective of us from all angles.”
Wilson Shedd evolves into a stark meditation on forgiveness, with Nelson pulling from his literary references while ultimately letting his flawed, fascinating antiheroes lead the way: “If the characters are surprising me with their actions, then it’s likely they’ll surprise the audience as well if I can situate them in the right ways,” he says. The final act confronts the carceral system and its most controversial, discomfiting elements, Nelson plunging viewers into these scenes with unflinching verisimilitude.
“I wanted to take the harder, more treacherous path,” he says.
The material wore on Seyfried, who’s no stranger to dark material. “It was just so hard to get that excited, that upset — and to be that weakened. It was emotionally way too hard,” she says. “There’s always a bunch of things in every movie where I’m like, ‘I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.’ Those are the scenes that you end up trying to forget about, then the ones that will haunt your dreams. This still haunts me. So I’ll see how I feel about it when I see it.”
She then makes sure to add, “Listen — I’m glad I did it.”
English (US) ·