Murray Bartlett has a lovely smile which transforms his face and when you see it, even if it’s on Zoom, you can’t help but be reminded of his turn as resort manager Armond in the first season of The White Lotus, who, despite all his mounting issues, could really turn on some winning personal charm.
So it is when I mention that he receives a lap-dance from John Malkovich in his new film Opus. “Yeah, I mean extraordinary,” he shines, eyes wide, “. The lack of boundaries in some of those scenes is fun as an actor.”
Well indeed. And as a film, Opus lacks many boundaries. I wasn’t making it up, Malkovic does give him, and various other actors a lap dance in one scene, but that is arguably one of the lower key moments in a film that combines Midsommer with Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, adds in The Substance and then shakes it all up in glitterball and pours out a musical.
Here’s how Bartlett describes the film: “It’s a wild ride. When I read it, it was unexpected. I didn't see it going where it was going. What I love about it is I think it's a really fun ride, but it's got like some weighty themes about celebrity and power. You don’t know if it’s funny or horrific, and sometimes it’s both.”
Basically it’s about a magazine journalist and her boss heading to the remote New Mexico compound of a legendary pop star called Moretti – played by Malkovich – who is finally releasing some new music and invites some selected guests to a listening party. Of course, this quickly turns nightmarish since he seems to not just have a cult following but an actual cult.
It’s a real love-it or hate-it film, a bonkers debut from former journalist Mark Anthony Green but this writer found it a good laugh, mostly thanks to the cast, and chiefly Bartlett’s work with Ayo Edebiri, who of course has won every award going for her role as Sydney in TV mega-hit The Bear.
Edebiri is the visiting journalist, Bartlett her editor who comes along for the chance to meet Moretti and undermine his younger colleague at every turn.
“I play a top dog at a music magazine, not based on Rolling Stone’s Jann Wenner but that kind of archetype,” says Bartlett, “A white man at the top of the music industry world who feels ownership and a lot of entitlement over that. He’s patronising and misogynistic but in that way that’s hard to call someone out. But there’s something gross there.”
Bartlett wryly says, “Funnily enough, I’ve had a lot of first hand experiences with such people in the entertainment industry, they’re not hard to find.”
Such an old school entrenched male works brilliantly against Ayo who basically has to deal with nightmare males as much as she does in The Bear.
“Ayo has got an incredible timing and intelligence as an actor,” says Bartlett, “With all the success that she's had, it hasn't chipped away at any of her authenticity. We had a lot of fun with those scenes.”
Working with her talent wasn’t the only good thing about his co-star though. Her Bear skills meant she cooked them all Thanksgiving dinner on set. Even better was the experience of going out for dinner with her:
“When she walks into a restaurant you see the kitchens just losing their minds. She's a great person to go to dinner with because you get all this free shit. We went to this one great restaurant up in Santa Fe and this person from the kitchen ran out and said, ‘you really inspired me to be doing what I'm doing and you really capture the sort of the world I’ m in’. It's really beautiful to see.”
The whole shoot sounds like a ball out in New Mexico. Opus is an independent film, so filming was “fast and furious,” and Bartlett was able to work with Juliette Lewis again, with whom he starred in Welcome to Chippendales. And Malkovich was very fun: “John Malkovich is an extraordinary actor and a wonderful human. It was a delight for us all to see him do his stuff. I remember the first day he was on set, he had this huge speech where he tells this joke, and it's very long. We’re on his ranch and everyone's gathered around. He comes up on this stage and first take just nailed it and had us laughing. Everyone was just mesmerised, it makes you feel very lucky to be there to witness that.”
The more grisly and horrific aspects of the film is not something Bartlett is a fan of as a viewer – “I’m quite sensitive, Martin.” – but the themes of power and celebrity he did love. Moretti is someone whose holds power of people and whose celebrity eccentricities extend to a bit of the old human sacrifice.
“We deify and lift up celebrities and people in power in a way that is fascinating and scary,” he says, “The things that we let celebrities and people in power get away with because they're in that position. We justify it or see it as a quirk of being in that position.
I think it's something we really need to look at because there's people in power in the world who are getting away with all sorts of shit that they shouldn't be. Why do we we allow that to happen? What makes us want to kind of deify people? I find that fascinating.
And then the other side of that, what's it like to be a celebrity or a person in power and have that coming at you or what, what does it do to you? How does it make you feel?
How does it swell your ego? What does it do to your feeling of how powerful you feel and how do you wield that? But also, it can be fickle, one you can be king of the world, and the next day people are trashing you.”
Bartlett is at a stage as an actor now where he has clout and flexibility as an actor, without having to deal with the uncomfortable glare of superstardom. He’s from Australia, was born in Sydney, raised in Perth, and had no interest in becoming an actor until he started getting his teeth knocked out.
He explains: “My brother accidentally knocked my baby teeth out with a hammer when I was a kid. He was trying to kill a spider on a rock, and I was standing behind him and he knocked my teeth out.
Then a few weeks later I was spinning around in our basement, spinning around in a blanket to music, and I knocked out another two teeth on the concrete floor.
So for a couple of years, I couldn't say S and when my adult teeth grew in, my mum sent me to a speech therapist, to learn to say S. The speech therapist was this extraordinary woman who I loved, who had me doing monologues and poems. I worked with her for years, doing speech and drama kind, and I just loved it.
I guess I have to give thanks to my brother and a certain hammer.”
Fast forward quite a few years, and we had Bartlett arrive as the manager of The White Lotus motel in Maui for the role that won him an Emmy and would send his career into orbit. As Armond he was hilarious, a Basil Fawlty for the modern era, by turns charming and utterly outrageous. It marked Bartlett out as a gifted comic, a loveable screen presence and an actor who could really go out there.
He's watching the new season of White Lotus and is enjoying life as a fan now: “Mike White is a genius, and I love the concept of the show, and the way that he sees the world. How he observes human nature and the way that he puts it into characters is thrilling. And having been in the show, I have a love affair with it anyway.
It was such a great experience for me that changed things in such a big way in my life.”
Did it noticeably change hit immediately then?
Yeah, it did shift things pretty quickly. It was an unexpected and significant shift, where suddenly I had choices and interest in me. I'd never had that experience before. Part of it is overwhelming and another part is super exciting and wonderful. Suddenly attention swings towards you and it's an amazing thing.
Recently season 3 star Aimee Lou Wood said that, after season 1 was filmed during Covid, Mike White still films the show as if they were in isolation from the rest of the world, where all the cast and crew move into the resort and there’s no contact with the outside world.
“I didn't know that,” says Bartlett, “For us it was so unique, it was a global pandemic and we were all whisked away at the very beginning of that, within the first few months. We were taken to Hawaii to this five-star resort that wasn't operating, it was just us in there for most of the time.
It was like a secret summer camp, we couldn’t believe we've been led out of lockdown to come to Hawaii, stay in this place, and do this incredibly insane, fun script. We were so full of joy and excitement, to be on a beach and doing this thing. We were staying in rooms in the hotel next to each other, have dinner together, a lot of the days we'd all go down to the beach at sunset and swim together. We bonded very strongly, as you do when you're in an intense creative thing together but also just because of what was going on in the world.
And there was no expectation on the show, and we had no idea what it was going to do. They were brilliant scripts but we thought it might be a small, nice thing.”
That was not the case with The White Lotus and not the case with Murray Bartlett, who is now an in-demand star with a serious cult following. Not unlike Moretti in Opus in fact. Although next up for him are not human sacrifices, but a new Robin Hood film which he’s currently filming in England. “It’ called The Death of Robin Hood and it’s a dark retelling of his life. We’re out in the countryside a lot. It’s beautiful.”
And he lights up again, with that post-hammer smile.
