Juliette Lewis grew up on the set of her father’s westerns, and now she’s following in his footsteps.
The Yellowjackets alum portrays Cut Throat Bill in The Thicket, her new film based on the 2013 Joe R. Lansdale novel by the same name. Lewis’ late father, Geoffrey Lewis, made his name portraying villains in Westerns alongside the likes of Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood.
“I have pictures of when I was, like, 8 years old, and I was playing with a rubber knife,” she exclusively told Us Weekly at the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Wednesday, September 4. “It was on sand, on a beach, where my dad shot a Western, and my sister and myself, we’d come and visit him.”
Lewis’ eyes glistened as she took a moment to reflect on what her father, who died in 2015, would think of her role as a villain in the historical thriller.
“I was just thinking about him today. He would have loved it,” the actress shared with Us. “He would be really proud, and we would have more to talk about. That’s what sucks when they’re not here. Because it was just wild. I thought about him every day [on set].”
The Thicket, set in the early 1900s, centers around Jack (Levon Hawke), a boy in search of his sister (Esmé Creed-Miles), kidnapped by Lewis’ Cut Throat Bill. He hires a bounty hunter (Peter Dinklage) to lead a rag-tag group to search for the notorious killer and missing girl in the Elliott Lester-directed movie.
An evil gang leader is not a role Lewis is used to playing, but it’s one that, at least in part, came naturally.
“It’s weird, because it’s a lot of intuition, but I did want to play somebody that’s embodying pain, calloused pain,” she explained. “The voice came to me, but through a description that the writer said about having a mangled speaking voice. And so I just tried it, and I couldn’t believe I could stay low in this register for a long time.”
Though playing Cut Throat Bill required Lewis to completely transform herself (not only her voice but “the walk, the clothes, everything”), she has found working in movies after two seasons on Showtime’s Yellowjackets to be a return to her comfort zone.
“After coming from Yellowjackets and doing television, it feels like coming home,” Lewis explained to Us. “Honestly, I’ve done three movies since then, and it’s a way of working that I understand with a single director, with a beginning, middle end, with a short schedule compared to six months. So it’s just a return to form for me.”
The Thicket will hit theaters on Friday, September 6.
Reporting by Mariel Turner
