John Slattery on The Adjustment Bureau, and His Takeaway from Bridesmaids

John Slattery's Emmy-nominated performance as the pompous Roger Sterling on Mad Men has led to a number of film roles for the 48-year-old actor: He's turned up in Reservation Road, Charlie Wilson's War, and -- more recently -- in The Adjustment Bureau (out on DVD next week), playing a supernatural, crisply-suited agent named Richardson who's responsible for breaking up two fate-defying romantics (Matt Damon and Emily Blunt). Movieline caught up with Slattery to discuss filming The Adjustment Bureau, wariness about Roger Sterling knockoff roles, and the breakneck pace of directing Mad Men.

The story of The Adjustment Bureau is difficult to summarize without getting into its abstract implications about fate. Did it sound confusing when you first heard about the project?

No, [director/writer] George Nolfi sent me the script, and first he actually said he wanted to ask me a favor. He said, "I'm going to direct this movie, and I've not directed before. I want to see what it's like to do a couple more dialogue-heavy scenes." It was a more of an intention of his to direct than it was a setup. So we did these scenes, and so I kind of snuck up on it. The simple reality with which this lofty reality was executed was what made it interesting to me. They're a bunch of guys, like bureaucrats, in suits. There's a bureaucracy up wherever they are, just like there is down here -- red tape and a lot of frustration. These guys aren't all-powerful and they are fallible. For lack of a better word, it made it more human -- these non-human characters. So that was what drew me to it, that sort of simple tone with which it was written.

Was it ever confusing to film?

It wasn't confusing to film, I don't think, but like a lot of films you have an intention when you start and then think, "Maybe this won't be as clear as it is to me, having read this thing 50 times." It's clear to George that he knows the story, but you make adjustments during filming: You shoot something else, add a tail to the end of a scene, you make adjustments to certain scenes. Adjustments happen all the time. Then they re-shot the ending a couple of times because it wasn't what they wanted when they shot it. So it was really more of an issue of establishing tone, filming. No one was really sure. Is it better light? Is it better heavy? We would do a bunch of different takes with different intentions.

[Some Spoilers]

In one of those discarded endings, your character's boss is revealed, and it's a woman. Would that ending have shed a different light on your character?

It was the same for my character; he's got this red-letter case thinking this is going to move him up a peg on the food chain, and it just doesn't go the way he wants it to go. Then it moved up the line and to some degree, Terence Stamp was that impressive as Thompson -- I mean, who are you going to get to play God atop Terence Stamp? -- he's a very powerful presence. Maybe that was a contributing factor to them trying to reorganize the end.

[End spoilers]

How weary are you of roles that are party defined by jaunty, old-fashioned suits?

Pretty weary! That's a red flag at this point. I just got offered a job, a politician, in a really well-written project, but that's the first thing I think: It's as much a blessing as it is a curse. You don't want to be pigeonholed as one thing or another. But those are high-class problems to have. It's good to have a job where people even care to compare the fact that you're wearing a suit in one thing and a suit in another thing. But that is the fact, so yeah, I try to mix it up.

Do you think you're perceived as a 'throwback' actor? Are you anachronistic in any real way?

Oh, people project onto you all kinds of stuff. You put something out there and it happens all the time, especially in the media. They cook up something the author and the actors had no intention of getting across. That's what it is! People project their own lives and live vicariously through your characters one way or another. It's really out of my hands.

Do you have dreams of utterly weird roles that are out of step with what you usually get?

I just did a role in a movie called Return where I play an Oxycontin addict, a snorter who lives in the woods in a house he built himself! [Laughs.] I kept referring to him as the Unabomber, but he's not the Unabomber. He's very different from the stuff I've done lately. I mean, it just happens to be the stuff where I'm wearing a suit and tie that gets attention. It isn't me! I hope I can do other things, and I hope I get the chance.

I notice you play characters whose arrogance and pettiness lead to their undoing. Do you ever wonder why it's fun to watch you endure tragic downfalls?

[Laughs.] Maybe it's schadenfreude. I don't know. It's certainly more interesting to play a character who unravels. You try to find characters who change, who start in one place and end in another, and that isn't to do either. Television is a good arena for that. I know people that try to stay away from TV because it is ongoing, and you are playing the same character over a period of time, and it scares actors. And I don't want to play the same character all the time! But this schedule was short enough and so well-written that you think, "I'm so glad to have this opportunity." I've still had the year to do other things. I guess if you do one thing in this business, that's the way people see you. Anyone will tell you, if you have any success playing a cop, people send you cop parts. That's what this business does. You do have to make an effort to be conscious about that.

On screen in The Adjustment Bureau, you interact quite a bit with Matt Damon, though often you're just chasing him. You hardly communicate at all with Emily Blunt. Was this at all like a voice-acting role where you don't meet your castmates until the actual premiere?

I saw a lot of Matt, and I didn't see very much of Emily. Emily's someone who's easy to hang around with. She's delightful in every way. I've seen her a few times since, but no, we didn't see each other much. Of course I chased Matt around for days and weeks while he rode around in a cab flipping me the bird and I ran around in badly chosen street shoes. Still suffering from that, I think. I got some horrible -- I got something horrible from that.

That was filmed kind of awhile ago now!

I know, I know. That's why cops wear rubber-soled shoes.

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