Why ‘A House of Dynamite’ had its ensemble cast saying ‘Yes, please’

When Kathryn Bigelow calls, actors tend to answer.

So even though A House of Dynamite has no lead roles, the film’s cast is stacked with names that might otherwise be used to far more significant screen time. Witness Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Greta Lee, Gabriel Basso, Moses Ingram, Tracy Letts, Jared Harris, Anthony Ramos, Jason Clarke, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Kaitlyn Dever… among many others.

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Paging the SAG nominating committee.

“It’s always a team effort, but this is truly an ensemble piece,” says Ramos, who plays an army major in charge of a military base in Fort Greely, one of the first to realize a rogue nuclear missile is heading toward the U.S. “Every character is important, from the character with no lines to the character with the most lines. Every character is pivotal to the story.”

Take Elba, who plays as the otherwise unnamed POTUS. We only hear his voice (in an American accent, no less) for the film’s first two acts — he only gets revealed in the final act. He calls the role a “bucket list” moment, especially when Bigelow insisted no one could play the role but him.

As the script made the rounds, no one said no, casting director Susanne Scheel tells Gold Derby. As she pitched the film to potential actors, she told them, “There’s not maybe the amount of dialogue you’re used to having, but it’s incredibly impactful,” she recounts. “It’s such a large cast, but everyone really does have at least a moment or two.”

Indeed, while the film opens with Ramos’ team detecting the missile and launching a tactical response, the action then spreads to the White House situation room, to military strategic command, and to the President himself, over three intertwining, overlapping acts. Though the crisis itself plays out over just 18 minutes, we experience it through each character’s perspective as they come to terms with the impending doom — and their own potential role in averting disaster.

Ramos calls it “one of the greatest scripts” he’s ever read — a sentiment echoed by the rest of the cast.

“Another Kathryn Bigelow film, here we go,” Ferguson tells Gold Derby of her reaction to the script. Ferguson plays the Situation Room station chief faced with figuring out why the missile has been launched. “For me, the fact that I was offered be on a set with someone like Kathryn was the most incredible moment in my life, to be honest.”

“Yes, please,” says Harris, of his response when the offer came his way to play the Secretary of Defense.  “As soon as I knew Kathryn Bigelow was making a movie again and she was interested in finding out if I wanted to be a part of it, the answer was yes before I read the script.”

Echoes Letts, who plays the general in charge of the military’s strategic command (STRATCOM), “And then you read the script, and it was really good, really tight, really well-researched — and really terrifying.” Credit screenwriter Noah Oppenheim (Zero Day), whose years at the helm of NBC News informed the political thriller.

As Scheel promised, each role also offered something deeper: a chance to show some humanity below the surface. For while the characters are all at their professional best, doing what they’ve been trained to do, they’re also very human, dealing with real personal issues — a pending proposal, a sick child, a day off touring a Civil War reenactment.

“For me, I’ve never been offered a role that is as very natural, realistic to my own character,” says Ferguson. “I’m talking about her as a mother and the humanity that I could bring to her.”

For Letts, that’s what sets the film apart from the usual Hollywood fare. “The gig was to try to find just those little bits of human life around the edges of the procedures that we were performing,” he says. “It’s a very smart thing about this piece that not only does it give you as an audience the opportunity to step into the shoes of these people and ask yourself the question, what would I do? It also calls into question, is this the system we should have in place?”

Clarke, who plays Admiral Miller, who runs point between the Situation Room and the President, says while the characters all have very different roles to play in the crisis, “the common thread is what it is to be human, to be up against the wall, and we truly find out what we are and who we are.” And while they each react differently to the stress of the moment, “it opens it up to the audience so that they’re part of it as well.”

That’s not to say the work wasn’t without its challenges. For Clarke, the enormity of what Bigelow was undertaking was “hard to grasp,” especially given the overlapping three-part structure. “I just saw the technical issues for the editor to get the stories to intertwine,” he says. “But the film does take your breath away. You rarely get that in the cinema.”

And with filming wrapped, the cast is effusive with praise for their director.

“Kathryn is so creative and fluid,” says Ramos. “The ideas just come on the spot for her. If the shot behind the actor’s head is better because that wide shot captures what’s going on on those screens, she’ll use that.”

“When you’ve worked with a lot of people, you truly realize who brings out the best in you,” echoes Clarke. “And Kathryn’s as good as I’ve ever had. I’d put her up there with the best. I’d do the rest of my career with her.”

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