From filmmaker Steven Spielberg and adapted from the book by Ernest Cline, the sci-fi action adventure epic Ready Player One is set in the year 2045 and follows Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), as he escapes real life inside of the OASIS, an immersive virtual universe where most of humanity spends their days, living as any avatar they so choose and with only your own imagination as a limitation. When the OASIS was created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance), he embedded a three-part contest into it to find a worthy heir for his immense fortune and total control of this virtual world, and as Wade and his friends, called the High Five, take on the challenge, they put themselves directly into the path of danger.

At the film’s Los Angeles press day, Collider got the opportunity to sit down with actor Tye Sheridan (who plays High Five member Parzival, aka Wade Watts) to chat 1-on-1 about what he would want his own avatar to look like, when he finally saw the avatar for his Ready Player One character, what he thought about getting to see himself in action in the OASIS, why every day was the most fun day on set, the messages in the story, and what his family thought of the film. He also talked about the tone and approach to X-Men: Dark Phoenix, in which he plays Cyclops, and why he’s so excited about it.

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Image via Warner Bros.

Collider: This movie is so much fun! It must be really cool to get to do a movie where you’re doing pretty much every genre in one movie.

TYE SHERIDAN: Totally! I think this movie had the potential of being something that felt all over the place. Honestly, that was probably one of the greatest challenges that Steven [Spielberg] and Zak [Penn] and Ernie [Cline] had. Putting those guys together and figuring out how to deliver this story and navigate it in such a way that it doesn’t feel like that is so amazing to me. What they’ve accomplished in this film is just beyond anything I could’ve ever imagined that it would be. It’s everything I hoped it would be, and more.

We get to see what your character creates for his avatar, but if you had the opportunity to create any avatar for yourself that you wanted, what would it look like?

SHERIDAN: It’s hard to say what I would want to be. I think I would definitely want to be something different.

Would you want to be something not human?

SHERIDAN: Yeah, for sure! Why not? At least for a bit, until you want to change up your avatar. I don’t know. If I could be any avatar and go into a social virtual space, I think I would try to be my avatar from Ready Player One ‘cause why not? He’s already got the windy hair.

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Image via Warner Bros.

When did you first get to see what your avatar looked like, and does it ever not get surreal to look at it?

SHERIDAN: That’s a good question. Even when we were shooting, there was a version of Aech, Sho, Daito and Art3mis, even though that changed slightly. All of those avatars were not totally finalized, but were very, very close to what they are in the film, when we were shooting the movie. In real time, when we were shooting the motion capture and we were inside the Volume and they had us synced up to our avatars, we could see ourselves driving our avatars on a 2D screen. We could see them walking around in the environments that they would be walking around in, in the film, except for my avatar. I had the Parzival outfit and the hair, but my face was very human. It was basically my face. My avatar was the last to be finalized, and I didn’t see him until in December. I actually saw him the first time everybody else saw him, in the second trailer that came out. I was in Brazil, when we were shown the second trailer, and I was looking up at a screen like, “Oh, that’s the avatar. I can’t really see what he looks like from here, but I guess he’s cool.” It was challenging because they were trying to find the balance between human and something else. I think the idea was to have him be the most human, out of all of them, but they didn’t want him to be associated as human.

A lot of actors say that it’s hard to watch themselves on a big screen. Is it easier when you’re watching your avatar instead?

SHERIDAN: Since I was a kid, I’ve always been obsessed with animation. Animation is really one of the only genres, where I feel like I can watch a movie and think about it, mindlessly, or not watch it as someone who works in film. I can watch it, objectively. This film has that element. As an actor, I always wondered what it would be like to watch an animated character with your voice behind it, and see if it seems seamless or if it seems like your voice is isolated from the animation. With this, the first time watching it, I was like, “Wow, that’s interesting.” It took me a second, and then I just completely forgot that this character was animated and it was my voice. It was much easier for me to watch it, objectively, because it has elements of me, but he doesn’t look like me. That was very cool, and super exciting.

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Image via Warner Bros.

You get to do a lot of crazy, wild stuff in this movie. Did you have a most fun day on set, where you were like, “This is totally like what I would expect a Spielberg movie to be”?

SHERIDAN: Every day was like that, literally. I was so excited to go to work and I was so excited to work with our crew and the rest of our cast, and work alongside Steven and ask him questions. Every day was a new challenge, and with challenges, you learn and you grow. On this movie, I grew a lot, as an actor and as a person, and I grew a lot with my knowledge of filmmaking, in general. This movie gave me so much, and in return, I hope it gives everyone else as much as it did for me.

There are really, really beautiful messages in this film. I hope that for people who are reading this interview right now, when you look at this movie, it’s so large in scale and scope, and it’s a crazy adventure movie, but it’s also a very human story and it has something that everybody can relate to. This movie is for everyone, and that’s really beautiful to me. At Comic-Con, Steven said, “When I read this book, it was the coolest flash-forward ‘cause it’s set in a future that feels not far off from reality, and it was the coolest flashback because of all the ‘80s culture embedded into the film.”

The way I feel about it is that, not only do you have the flash-forward and flashback, but it’s also relative now. I think the OASIS, which is a virtual world that is limitless and that is digital, symbolizes and stands as a metaphor to social media and some of the digital platforms that we all have and we all are tied to, in 2018. In the OASIS, one challenge that everybody faces is, “How do you balance your digital self, or your virtual profile or image, and your real world self?” It’s a real a balancing act. I think with social media, and the rise of social media and these digital platforms, and with everything being so new and there being no rules set in place, it’s something that we’re all trying to figure out, like these characters in this movie.

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Image via Warner Bros.

I have a 17 year-old sister, so I’m very sensitive to this stuff because she has social media and I’m watching her go through it. Although it’s beautiful and I love the idea that we can all be connected anywhere in the world, and you can send someone a message and reach someone from wherever you are, and that is amazing, there’s a lot of danger that comes along with that. I think that there can be a lot of pollution there. People can get very sucked into a digital world and how people perceive them, on their social media, versus how they perceive them, in real life. Sometimes people sacrifice one for the other, and that’s just strange. My sister was at the screening at SXSW, and she came up to me after the movie and gave me the biggest hug. My sister is hard on me. She’s not easy to please, and she said, “I love this movie, so much, because it speaks to me and who I am.” I had that feeling as well, and so did my parents and my grandparents. When it strikes people, at that level, emotionally, from various different generations, that’s how I know this movie is universally and will be globally impactful.

One of the main take-aways and major themes for me, in this film, is accepting yourself, as you are, because it’s who you are. Everyone should feel comfortable in their own skin. Whether there are social standards set in place that act against that, it doesn’t matter because the people that love you for who you are, are going to love you, always, and you should love yourself, always. That’s something that humans constantly struggle with because you’re comparing yourself to people. We all do that. This movie speaks to me, in that way, and I think it will speak to everyone else, in that way, as well. Underneath the surface, this is an adventure film, but that element makes it so complex and beautiful.

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Image via Warner Bros.

You also have X-Men: Dark Phoenix coming out. How would you describe the tone of that, as that’s expected to be something pretty different than what we’ve seen before?

SHERIDAN: I think so. Everyone was on the same page with the idea that we were approaching it as much more of a grounded drama versus a superhero movie. Something that’s getting old with those universes and all the Marvel movies is that they all look the same and they’re all doing the same thing. We really wanted to shake it up, in that sense, and take a different approach to this. Simon Kinberg, who wrote the past three X-Men, directed Dark Phoenix, and I’m super, super excited about it. I think it will turn out well and that it will be a different X-Men than we’ve ever seen before, so that’s exciting.

Ready Player One is now playing in theaters.

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