This movie has intense scenes, but the real story is even crazier. Yossi fell and got impaled by a stick in his rectum.
There were a couple of things like the moment where I cut something out of my [characterās] head. There was a worm in my head, and I cut it out, and thatās a horrendous moment. Thatās one of the things in real life, as it happened to Yossi, I think he had to cut about 18 of those out, not just one. And weāre going like, you canāt. Thereās a limit to what people will watch.
My concern whenever I see something that says based on a true story, Iām always very suspicious in a way. My guard goes up immediately, and Iām like, āOK, but how much of this is really true.ā And then after reading the script, I read Yossiās book, and I was like, āOh, wow! Actually, we had to cut a lot out just to make it more believable.ā I think when youāre watching a film and you see [something] that strikes you as, āThat wouldnāt happen,ā even if it did happen in real life, it takes you out of it. One of the things was the stick up the ass. We were like, āHow do we do that? How do we show that? How do we track that for the rest of the film without it becoming graphic?ā Thereās nothing funny about it. Itās horrendous, but we were worried it might slip into painful, gross-out, and it might get the reaction of pained laughter. You want to keep people in the story, and there were some moments that happened to Yossi that were so extreme. If I were an audience member, I would question that, even though now I know itās true.
I know you donāt want to talk about the difficulties you had to go through, but your transformation is pretty dramatic.
Iām not a method actor or anything, but I feel like I would be making my job much harder if I would go home and eat steak and potatoes every night ... so I just massively cut down on eating. I had, I think, two or three weeks before, leading up to that last scene, I was eating a serving of fish or a chicken breast and a protein bar every day. And then for two days before the actual scene, I just sort of stopped eating. It helps with the look, but ... thereās something about feeling that genuine kind of exhaustion, feeling it in your legs, feeling tired was very useful, and also that last scene, when the set got flooded was even more heartbreaking because I had a big stick of chocolate in the fridge ready for myself after we finished. My Tuesday night, Iām going home. Iām eating that whole thing. And then it got pushed back by a week, so I was like, āOK, I guess Iām doing this for another week.ā
If you were playing another real-life character, who would it be?
This is actually not really the answer to your question, but itās sort of half an answer to it [...] there are two true stories Iām blown away have never been made into amazing films that I know of. [...] Thereās a woman called Dr. James Barry, who lived the most extraordinary life. She pretended to be a man for her entire life and she became one of the most senior doctors in England, and she went out to the Crimean War, and Florence Nightingale described her as giving her the worst telling off she ever had, basically. Then, she also became the first doctor to ever perform a cesarean section, and she lived her whole life as a man. And it wasnāt discovered until after she died that she had actually been a woman. She left instructions on her desk for nobody to undress her corpse and for her to be buried in the clothes she died in so that people could help honor that. And they suddenly were like, āOh, you are not a man.ā So thatās an incredible story. And also, I just finished watching the Ken Burns āRooseveltsā series not long ago, and why there hasnāt been a good Eleanor Roosevelt movie is incredible. That movie needs to be made.
You expressed interest in āSharknadoā before. I talked to the writer, Thunder Levin, who said you had a scheduling conflict and couldnāt do one of the films. What was the reason?
I love those movies. I donāt think I would be good in them. I am and remain a huge fan of āSharknadoā movies. Iām not sure Iād actually ... I think some things for me I enjoy watching them more than I would enjoy being in it.
āJungleā is in select theaters and On Demand & Digital HD on Oct. 20.
This interview has been condensed and edited.