Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Julia Roberts, and Michael Stuhlbarg star in Luca Guadagnino’s After The Hunt. The film will be released in New York and Los Angeles theaters on October 10 before expanding on October 17. I spoke with the actors about the biggest questions they had regarding their characters, our instinct to make a judgment before hearing the full story, and more.
AFTER THE HUNT is a gripping psychological drama about a college professor (Julia Roberts) who finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star student (Ayo Edebiri) levels an accusation against one of her colleagues (Andrew Garfield), and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come into the light.
“It’s definitely a challenge that I was really honored to be considered to tackle, and it’s interesting because I think Maggie is somebody who would really distance herself from a lot of those terms and ways of thinking, which is not how I, as Ayo, operate,” the actress explained of the deeper themes. “I think she has a very different way of wanting to be seen, of wanting to be considered, and of wanting to move through the world and I think she’s somebody who her relationship with her various parts of her identity, I mean, like as a Black woman, but as a transracial adoptee, as somebody who’s queer, like where she wants to use those things and where she wants to forget about them, honestly, I think was such a very interesting thing to have to tackle.”
“When I first saw it, I realized that all these people love each other quite deeply and that they’re actually longing for intimate connection with each other, but that they are being held apart by invisible, cultural, contextual forces,” Garfield, who plays Hank, expressed about the character dynamics. “That was quite harrowing and painful, actually. I found it quite tragic that they weren’t bad people, they’re all just trying to survive in a kind of viper pit.”
“I think in the final analysis of Alma, I kind of knew this throughout the filming, but I feel like in the end, knew certainly that Alma only exists, she’s only surviving because of Frederik,” Roberts told me. “I would say that if Michael wasn’t in the room. I wouldn’t say something incredible about Andrew if he was sitting here instead of Michael, and I just think that it’s that she knows that, really, he keeps her tethered to the planet.”
“I think it’s natural,” Stuhlbarg said of how the audience will jump to conclusions. “We make snap judgments all the time, and even though the old adage of not judging books by their cover is something we bring along with us to try to remember, it’s impossible not to have things affect you when you first are hit with them. It’s being patient, along the lines of bringing that initial knowledge with you and then continuing and seeing what develops. That’s, I think, something to aim for.”
Watch my interviews below:
