From director Nick Hamm and inspired by true events, the indie drama Driven is a wild tale of the bromance gone wrong between John DeLorean (Lee Pace) and Jim Hoffman (Jason Sudeikis). Set in the early 1980s, the story follows how, out of a desire to save the financially troubled DeLorean Motor Company, the golden boy genius of the automotive industry got caught up with an ex-con pilot turned informant, who lured him into a cocaine trafficking ring set up by the FBI.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, actor Jason Sudeikis talked about what he thought of this real-life story, how he decided to portray Jim Hoffman without being able to meet or talk to him, the film’s tricky tone, working with this incredible cast, the odd couple bromance between Jim Hoffman and John DeLorean, and his experience shooting this in Puerto Rico just after Hurricane Maria. He also talked about being a part of Charlie Day’s feature directorial debut El Tonto, and shooting an Apple TV+ series in London.

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Image via Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Content Group

Collider: This is one of those stories that’s just so crazy that it seems like there’s no way it could be true. When this came your way and you read this script, what was your reaction to it?

JASON SUDEIKIS: I really only had a small understanding and knowledge of it. I’m 43, but I was chin deep in Back to the Future. That was a movie that I had memorized, for many years. My dad clued me in to what the DeLorean was and, even at 10 years old, he gave me a little bit of backstory there, so I had seen the video footage. But for me, I thought it was a fascinating way to tell an interesting story. This whole idea of an unreliable narrator, told from the point of view of this man that no one knows much about and has disappeared off the face of the planet. Whether he’s alive, or whether he’s dead, I don’t know. I have no inside scoop for you. He hasn’t slid into my DMs, at any time. I don’t even know how to access my DMs. Nevertheless, that’s what I loved about it. I thought it was a timely story, with the idea of self-promotion, and not just on the world geo-political scale, but in each of our own lives, with our social media presence, and how we can curate other people’s opinions about us. Sometimes, if you wanna keep up those avatars and those masks that we all wear, it can tear you apart. Hubris is a real son of a gun. So, I thought it was a fascinating way to explore those themes. It was really a very, very clever script that Nick Hamm, the director, explained to me.

Did you ever wish that you could have met or talked to this guy, or are you glad that wasn’t an actual possibility, so that you could develop what you wanted to do on your own?

SUDEIKIS: I would be happy to speak with him. I have not had the opportunity to with Howard Weitzman, who Justin Bartha plays, who was DeLorean’s lawyer, and I’d love to speak with him, someday, about it. I didn’t do much, in regards to research, as far as, how do I sound like this guy? What does he look like? What does he walk like? Because no one knew, it wasn’t important to the story, in my opinion. For me, it was about what was going on inside this guy’s mind, body, and soul versus his vocal chords and his face. So, I insinuated and referred a lot, but that’s a little bit of what the story was doing, anyway. It was a fun way to pick apart this man and this very open-ended story that is John DeLorean.

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Image via Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Content Group

We don’t get too many comedic crime thrillers. It seems to be a genre that doesn’t really exist much.

SUDEIKIS: Yeah, not anymore. I think it used to.

Because of that, was the tone of this tricky? Was that part of the fun of telling a story like this?

SUDEIKIS: I think that was part of the fun. For me, I don’t personally make too much of a distinction between comedy and drama because, even in comedy, it’s real to me. I’m trying to smuggle drugs across the border with a big family, or I’m trying to kill my boss. In this setting, Jim Hoffman puts himself in so many pickles, professionally and personally, that I find it inherently comedic for someone to be a good bad liar, or a bad good liar. As long as someone has the predilections to be that type of person, given too much power, then I’m all for it. It’s when they start occupying roles in society that they are maybe higher than where I think liars should be able to bark their falsehoods from, that’s where I get a little frustrated. Jim Hoffman used his gift of gab and his charm for a higher purpose – the war on drugs. It was fun. And then, the way you know you made a good choice is when the cast starts coming together and you’re like, “Oh, Lee Pace is gonna do it? That’s amazing. Judy Greer is gonna do it? Oh, that’s incredible. We got Corey [Stoll], too? We got Justin Bartha? Oh, boy, I gotta try to keep up with all of these guys.” That isn’t something I’m used to. I enjoyed trying to do that.

How was it to explore this odd couple bromance with Lee Pace?

SUDEIKIS: It was fantastic. I love that guy to pieces. He’s insanely talented, and he cares so much about the details of it. We’re both ruminaters. We both naturally can sit in a head space and mull things over. Maybe people closest to us might think that’s to our detriment, but we’ve barely scratched the surface with what that guy’s capable of, and he’s already done so much. The whole movie is just a bunch of two-person scenes, and each person that I was standing opposite of was someone that I already liked, and then grew to love, through the process. That’s no bullshit. I don’t say that lightly. As fun as the movie is to watch, it was easily as fun to make, even with the extenuating circumstances of being in Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria. It was a very fascinating, heartbreaking experience.

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Image via Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Content Group

You shot this in Puerto Rico, and then had to deal with a natural disaster while you were shooting, and I can’t imagine what that’s like. As a result, what did you learn about Puerto Rico and the people there, during this shoot?

SUDEIKIS: That our current president is dead wrong about them, simply put. Look, we wouldn’t have gone back there, unless they wanted us back. We filmed for a week, Maria struck, we were evacuated, and we came back a couple of weeks later. I can’t remember, at this point, exactly how long it was. We were watching CNN, every day, and going, “Is this the right idea? Should we go back? Should we go back knowing that some of those people don’t have roofs anymore?” But they also needed to build their roofs, and they needed money to do so. When we went back down there, we were there first. And then, about a week after us, FEMA showed up. It was a very odd time. They are an incredible, incredibly resilient, hard-working group of people. We were all on the same side of this thing, and just wanted to finish what we started. Driving around the city, a little bit before the hurricane, going form one location to another, and then seeing the destruction afterwards was heartbreaking. It truly was. But I never saw anybody without the spirit of perseverance. They were just like, “Hey, we’ve got work to do.” We met everyone from the lieutenant governor to the mayor of San Juan. It was the weirdest thing, showing up there and having people from Puerto Rico thank us. We were like, “No, thank you. Let’s go to work.” It’s hard to speak about because it’s still ongoing. They haven’t come back from it, and they still get shit from people in places of power that have never had to go through anything like that in their friggin’ lives. So, I applaud every single bit of their efforts, and I thank them for welcoming us, both the first time and the second time, with open arms and open hearts because that’s how we went down there. I don’t think I’ve totally dealt with it, but lord knows, my experience with it is nowhere near as intense as the experience of the people that live down there, and unfortunately don’t live down there because of that experience.

You also reunited with your Horrible Bosses co-star Charlie Day, for his future directorial debut, El Tonto. How was the experience of working with him in that capacity, and why did you want to be a part of telling that story?

SUDEIKIS: It was great. I think Charlie is one of the smartest, funniest, most talented people that I’ve worked with, and that says less about me and more about him because I’ve gotten to work with a whole bunch, by my count. I’m so excited for people to see that. It was a no-brainer. Anytime Charlie calls, whether it’s funny, or his film, or he and Mary Elizabeth [Ellis], his wife, are having a pool party, I’m there.

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Image via Universal Pictures Home Entertainment Content Group

Who do you play in that?

SUDEIKIS: I play a film director. He’s a very successful, maybe from another era with his energy kind of film director, probably of the Oliver Stone and Tony Scott variety. He’s a character who’s very, very taken with the talents of Charlie’s silent character.

What are you currently working on now? You’re shooting in London, but what are you shooting?

SUDEIKIS: Yeah, I’m currently working on a TV show. I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about it, but it’s for a premium streaming service. We’re working on a little television program, and I don’t know if it’s gonna be on television. Who knows, these days? You never know where it’s gonna show up. Maybe on a watch.

When you do something like that, for a service like Apple TV+, that we haven’t gotten to see anything from yet, is it just a leap of faith? Do you have to trust in the fact that they’ll know what they’re doing?

SUDEIKIS: With all things, it’s the journey not the destination. I’ve never had control. No one has control over whether people see stuff, or how they’ll respond to stuff. That’s been the same way, doing improv shows in Kansas City, when I first started out. For me, it’s just about working hard, every day, and trying to surround myself with people who are much better and smarter than myself. I’m just trying to keep up.

Driven is in theaters, on-demand and digital now.

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