Coming off a roaring premiere at Sundance, Alex Russell celebrated the Los Angeles premiere of his directorial debut “Lurker” on Wednesday, August 20, just a couple days before the whirlwind thriller releases in theaters. The film takes a close look at the twisted, and often deranged, nature of celebrity in Los Angeles. Théodore Pellerin plays Matthew, a socially-obsessed videographer who becomes entangled with a rising pop star, Oliver (Archie Madekwe).
Russell, who comes from the TV world as a writer and producer on “The Bear,” as well as a producer on “Beef,” says he had a lot to learn coming over to the film side. “Well, the indie film world is like the Wild West,” he told IndieWire.
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“Years go by, you don’t know if it’s going to get made, it falls apart, comes back together, you have a different cast, you have a different crew, you have a different script, and you go to a festival raw — it’s a huge gamble. Everyone spent all this money. You don’t know if anyone cares about this movie or if it’s terrible, and then maybe you’ll leave with distribution.” MUBI ended up purchasing the film out of the festival in a reported mid-seven-figure deal.
The film features original music, produced with help from the likes of Kenny Beats, Dijon, and Rex Orange County. Though the latter was rumored to be an inspiration for the film’s chart-topper, Russell prefers to keep any direct real-life inspiration mysterious. “It’s anyone you think that would be on the playlist.”
“Dominic Fike was an inspiration, [but] not as a person, really, just as a figure,” Russell continued. “We really had to beat the allegations of this being about one person in particular, because that would have, I think, really shrunk the scope of it all. The more we worked on it with Archie, the more it just became well disguised, like an amalgam of all these different artists. It also made it unique enough where he could just be his own thing, but it took some time. In the script he was [originally] written as an American.”
Pellerin and Madekwe reunited here following both of them appearing in Ari Aster’s “Beau Is Afraid” in 2023. However, they never met while filming that project. “We didn’t, I’m there for one second,” Pellerin joked. Both actors jumped at the chance to work with Russell, praising the joys of being able to work with a first-time director. “The way that he directed us was very, very surprising, especially for a first-time director,” Pellerin said.
“I was very, very surprised by him,” he continued. “I loved how he directed us. He was never making us feel like we had to achieve one thing in particular. I know it kind of is a trope, a little bit, for actors to talk about freedom in acting, but it’s really true that he was directing us in a way that felt like, ‘Now try this and now try that.’ I think it was testament to how great of a writer he is, because I think he was rewriting the scenes as new elements [evolved], which is the reality of fiction coming into play, and I just loved it.”
“The biggest lesson I’ve learned from Alex is that you really have to go into something trusting your filmmaker, trusting your director,” Madekwe recalled. “Alex had never made a film before and this film could have been so many different things. It could have not worked in so many different ways, but I just had full faith in Alex as a filmmaker, as a person, as a human, as an artist, and I knew what he wanted to make. It paid off.”
Zack Fox, long-time friend of Russell, plays Swett, a close friend in Oliver’s entourage who often makes fun of Matthew. While the director was writing the film during the pandemic, he tapped Fox to see if he had an interest in playing a role in the feature. “The way he brought me into it was just like, ‘Hey, I’m writing this movie about the past 10 years of my life, in and around music and entertainment people, and I have this character that I think you would be perfect to play.’ When he initially sent me the script, I felt attacked, because I was like, ‘Swett is a bully. ls this how you see me?’ And he was just like, ‘No, but I trust you as an actor to bring this forth, because I had seen some of the real-life references.”
Earlier this year, Fox made a cameo in Doechii’s music video for “Denial Is a River” as “the old dude from 2019.”
“I have to give credit where credit is due,” he said about being pulled into that. “It was 100% made possible by Cam Hicks and Justin Grant, AKA Sushiboy Mexico, they brought me into the fold. My job as an actor is just to pull up and shoot the ball where you tell me to shoot it, so hopefully I knocked it out of the park.”
MUBI will release “Lurker” in theaters August 22. Check out the trailer here.
