Movieline

The Verge: Ryan O'Nan

How does a relatively unknown actor get cast opposite America Ferrera, Wilmer Valderrama, and Melissa Leo as the lead in Ryan Piers Williams' drama The Dry Land? As Ryan O'Nan told Movieline, it's all thanks to one very fortuitous poker game.

To play James, a returning soldier whose traumatic war experience causes him to lash out in ways he can't control, O'Nan put in the sort of research you'd usually expect from a filmmaker, not an actor. Fitting, then, that O'Nan is about to go behind the camera himself.

Tell me how you got cast in this film.

[Laughs] The story on that is that I was on the set of this film that was my first lead in a film, called Watching TV with the Red Chinese. The camera was broken or something and there was a lot of downtime, and I noticed this PA who was a real quiet guy who I hadn't talked to, and I was like, "This is my opportunity. I'm gonna talk to that PA." And it turned out that he was a vet who had come back from three tours in iraq, and we just had this amazing conversation. I had never met anybody who had actually come back from Iraq, never had a single conversation with a veteran coming back. It just opened my eyes in so many ways, since I'm the same age as a lot of these guys that are over there.

So later that night, I came from set and I was actually late for this poker game that a mutual friend of me, Ryan, and America was throwing, this wonderful theater director in New York. The only seat available when I walked in was right next to America, and I was like, "Oh God. What am I going to say to America?" All those things were going through my mind when I sat down, and she instantly started talking to me and she knew everything about me, which was so weird. I was like, "How can you possibly know all this?" But it turns out that Ryan and America are really good friends with Jeanne McCarthy, who cast the film, and I guess she recommended me for this role months and months before. They hadn't approached me.

So you had no idea about it.

No, no idea, I hadn't heard about the project or anything. I ended up having this amazing conversation with Ryan over poker -- both of us lost, unfortunately.

I was going to say, maybe you should have let him win.

I would never! [Laughs] But yeah, me and Ryan continued to have a conversation the next day, and he offered me the role. First off, I was blown away by the script -- I loved it so much, there was so much integrity and it didn't have a political agenda of any kind. It was really the story of one guy and his journey, not trying to be some universal soldier's experience. Also, I'm really attracted to strong characters that are attempting to do the right thing but fragmented in some way, and that's James.

It feels in some ways like a companion piece to The Hurt Locker.

No, it definitely is. Part two! So from there, a little while later, America decided that she would play the role of Sarah.

So you were actually the first person cast?

I was. Ryan and I worked on this together for a while, speaking to soldiers and going around and doing a huge amount of research for a year prior to shooting. One of my closest friends in the world is in Afghanistan right now, he's a Green Beret, but he hadn't gone there prior to that. So once I got this film and we were doing all this research, I had so many different conversations with him about his expectations and how he felt. The fact that I was seeing and meeting and talking to a lot of guys who had come back with some serious issues when he hadn't even gone yet...I mean, there were guys hiding out from the Army and didn't want to go back and had changed their names, there were guys who really believed in it, there was a huge spectrum of points of view. That was great for me, because I could come into the film with no slant and just figure out who James is.

At the same time, the story it presents isn't a pretty one. How do you solicit the help of the Army when you're showing things that don't necessarily paint a tour of duty in the most flattering light?

We actually just came back from a USO tour in Iraq -- myself, Ryan, America, and Jason Ritter -- and we all sat down and had lunch with people like General Odierno and General Anderson, and everybody seemed very concerned and wanted this conversation [about PTSD] to be had. They want these guys to feel like they can talk about PTSD and get help for it -- nobody supports their soldiers more than they do.

Mental health in the Army is a stigma. If you got shot in the leg, people would look at it and everybody would know what it meant, but the thing about invisible wounds is that nobody knows about it. You can attempt to hide it by not getting help and not admitting it, but it's like if you got shot in the leg and didn't do anything to it: It would get infected and worse and worse without treatment. These soldiers don't want to talk about it because they don't want to let their friends down or they want to get promoted. They don't tell anybody and they don't talk about it, and it comes out in various ways they don't intend.

And they're so young when this happens to them.

Completely. We're taught at a young age that you don't point guns at people -- you don't even point a squirt gun at somebody because it's rude. So you get taught all these things at an early age that become the norm for you, and then all of a sudden you have to reject all of that. You're put in a place where not only do you have a gun, but you might have to use it to protect you and your friends and all the people around you. You might do something you're not proud of, and you don't feel like you can tell anybody about it, or that anybody would even understand it!

Was it hard for these soldiers to talk to you about it, then?

I think there was a real outpouring of experience with us. They would share stories with us that they hadn't shared with anybody because they really wanted it to be as authentic as possible. They wanted us to get it right. I mean, all these soldiers watch anything that has to do with their experience, and the second you say you're making a movie about this, they instantly are looking for a political agenda, or they want to know if you'll make soldiers look like victims or f***ed up. They want it to be done with integrity, so because of that, I feel like they told the truth in a lot of ways. I heard some of the most awe-inspiring, harrowing stories I've ever heard in my life... You know, we've been doing a lot of screenings all over the place. We just had a screening at Fort Carson in front of 500 active duty servicemembers and their families. It was intense, man.

Active duty! And this isn't exactly a rah-rah movie.

Some of these guys have come back from five tours, and their families had been with them for all of that. A soldier came up to me, this woman whose brother had committed suicide the day before she enlisted, and her parents didn't tell her because they knew it was what she wanted to do. I mean, you hear so many humbling stories that remind you, "You're just a actor. Step it up." Something needs to change, because the fact that the suicide rate for this war is higher than the casualty rate? I mean, more people have come back and committed suicide than have actually died in the war. That's f***ing staggering, man. But I think there is a huge movement -- within the armed services, as well -- to change that.

What's your next project?

I'm actually directing my first feature. It starts shooting in October, and I'm so excited about it. It's called The Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best, and it's kind of a late-term coming-of-age comedy about these two misfit musicians -- one guy plays acoustic guitar, and the other guy plays reprogrammed children's instruments.

Who's in it?

It's me and Joe Lo Truglio in the two lead roles, and Arielle Kebbel plays the lead girl. Wilmer's in it, Melissa's doing a cameo in it, Sebastian Stan's in it...

That's a good cast.

I'm absolutely thrilled. I've written all the music for it with a friend of mine. I can't wait.