Four decades into navigating Hollywood, Nicolas Cage continues to find new ways to reinvent himself. A longtime comic-book enthusiast, Cage is no stranger to the superhero world, from Tim Burton’s famously shelved Superman Lives to leading the Ghost Rider franchise and crusading as a vigilante in Kick-Ass. Now, Cage takes on his first leading television role in Prime Video’s Spider-Noir. Set in Depression-era New York City, the series follows an older Spider-Man, Ben Reilly, now working as a private investigator after leaving his masked past behind. But when old traumas resurface, he’s forced to face the life he thought he’d escaped.
DEADLINE: You voice Spider-Noir in the Spider-Verse films already. How did you approach him in the live-action series?
NICOLAS CAGE: Acting is just different kinds of styles and storytelling. I wanted to go back to those old ’30s and ’40s movies and watch some Howard Hawks and pick up the speed of delivery from those actors. I also thought of Double Indemnity with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck and tried to embody that essence, mannerisms and vocalization to collide it with Stan Lee’s masterpiece of Spider-Man and see what spark I could generate. Kind of like a Roy Lichtenstein painting, I wanted to do something that would be both new for me and hopefully for the viewer.
DEADLINE: While watching, I thought of Robert Mitchum and James Cagney.
CAGE: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, this character is interesting for me because as we were shooting the series, we came up with the idea that Ben Reilly was contending with this arachnid DNA that was informing his psyche, the way he thinks, the way he moves, and he’s trying to get more human again. And what we developed was this idea that he would go to the cinema and study actors to reprogram his body by copying them. So that’s why he talks the way he does.
DEADLINE: This iteration of Ben Reilly has a lot of traumas. How did you understand him as a character?
CAGE: He’s a broken man because he feels that he failed the love of his life, Ruby [Amanda Schull]. He was getting drunk while she was in a situation and he couldn’t save her. So, he has great remorse, and he also doesn’t want to wear the moniker of superhero or be the Spider anymore, he’s done with it. He’s depressed and money is hard to come by in his profession and everyone’s struggling. What separates this Spider-Man from the others is that he’s contending with what’s happening inside of him, his body, not only emotionally, but also physically the arachnid DNA is making him move in a different way and he’s trying to be more human. So, all those little levers were very rich for me to perform.
DEADLINE: Was there a scene that you initially thought wasn’t going to work, but then turned out better than you thought?
CAGE: I was very happy with the scene that I thought was, on the page, kind of flat and expository. It was a scene I did with Karen Rodriguez in the diner, explaining to her that there might be a beach in my future and that I’m going on a diet. I thought that scene was really funny, but I didn’t know it was going to be funny, and I didn’t know what to do with it to make it entertaining. Then when Karen and I got on set together and started playing with it, we found something. I’m very happy with the results on that scene. The other scene that I really love is with Li Jun Li when I’m explaining what the Spider DNA is doing to my thoughts, my feelings, my impulses, and the idea that he went to the movies to become more human. All that just sort of happened on the day, and I thought both scenes were elevated by thinking about them and rehearsing them a little bit.
DEADLINE: Speaking of Li Jun Li, both of you play off each other so well as femme fatale and hardboiled detective. It’s a cat and mouse romance that ends with Ben hilariously telling her that he’ll save a seat for her in hell. Talk about building that relationship arc together.
CAGE: Li Jun Li is an actor that is compelling to watch, she really stops the camera. There’s an enigmatic aura and unpredictable quality to her where you wonder what she’s thinking. But she can also be playful and all of that works in the Cat Hardy character. And then my character channels a little of that Bogart sensibility from The Big Sleep. Bogart always found it amusing when he could see someone being naughty, particularly the femme fatales. I wanted to give some of that to the scenes with Li Jun Li and myself where Ben is laughing at her Machiavellian tactics, because he enjoys the nuances and the human condition. But Li Jun Li for me was perfect in the role and her voice as a singer was just marvelous. I was lucky to work with her.
At the end, I would say Ben knows that she really doesn’t love him. And he’s not going to forget what she did to him because it was really bad [laughs]. He went through torture because she ratted him out to the crazy doctor. So, Ben did that gesture at the end like, “Well, I’ve already been to hell and I’m going to save you a seat. I’ll keep it warm for you.” So, he’s not going to let her go entirely.
DEADLINE: Ben Reilly has this struggle in trying to reconcile with the perfect superhero that New York wants him to be versus the imperfect person that he is. For you, as an actor in this business for four decades, what has kept you afloat when times have gotten hard?
CAGE: When I met David Bowie, I asked him, “How do you do it? How do you keep reinventing yourself? All these different characters, Ziggy Stardust, etc.” And he just said, “I never got comfortable with anything I was doing.” And that meant something to me. That meant he was taking chances, and they were risky. If you have the mindset that you’re not a maestro but a student, then you’ll stay interested and hopefully look and go towards the places where you might learn something. And if you face your fears within reason, as long as you’re not hurting someone else or yourself, within reason, and you do that thing that challenges you, in this case, long format, a season of television, maybe you’ll learn something and you’ll grow from it and become more confident.
DEADLINE: This is your first major TV role. Do you want to explore more roles in the future?
CAGE: That’s a good question because it parlays into your previous question because navigating the industry, so to speak, is not something I normally do. But I have thought more about it because the wells are drying up. And really, I was friendly to streaming a long time ago before it was cool. [The media would say], “Oh, he’s doing straight-to-streaming movies,” like it was unheard of, like, shame on me. But now, everything is going that way. It’s like when Halston went to make dresses for JCPenney, and they dumped him, and the snobs dialed him out. Now everybody does it.
It’s like I know that I discovered that if I make a movie that streams it will become part of a collection and someone who enjoys downloading movies will be able to view it and re-view it. And I like to do that. I always like watching things multiple times and learning something new from a movie, mainly Stanley Kubrick movies. But anyway, I knew streaming would ultimately keep actors working and keep the work viewable. So, I navigated that, but it wasn’t cool when I started doing it.
DEADLINE: You’re a man of many faces. I’m curious as to what role people approach you about on the street these days.
CAGE: I was in New Orleans and they’re all so poetic over there with their verbiage. And this guy said to me, “Oh, I just loved you in Gone in 60 Seconds. You touched the will of Eleanor.” And I just said it back to myself [and thought], that’s good. I’m going to have to write that in a play, like Tennessee Williams [laughs]. Other than that, people talk to me most about Face/Off and National Treasure. Sometimes I get some interesting ones, like Mandy.
DEADLINE: What ever happened to the Pig fanboys?
CAGE: They’re always following me around [laughs].
DEADLINE: Next, you’re starring in the Madden biopic. Were their challenges transitioning between the close production schedules?
CAGE: Excellent question. It was a bit of a learning curve and a fast cut. When you do a season of television, it’s equivalent to making four movies back-to-back. It’s a lot. So, I was talking like an old-world film noir actor for a long time and then suddenly David O. Russell is inviting me to play this famous football coach, who was also a TV personality, who had a very specific way of talking, nothing like a film noir actor. And frankly, nothing like me. I have nothing in common with John Madden, and that was the challenge. But when we rehearsed, David tried to help me find the voice and I said to him, “It may not be anatomically possible, OK?” [Laughs]. So, I figured that maybe we’d just make a cocktail of the John Madden sound with a little of this and that and we’ll reintroduce something of my version of his voice.
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