How Aussie Abbey Lee and maverick Kevin Costner formed a mutual admiration society
Oscar-winner Kevin Costner and Australian actor Abbey Lee have former a mutual admiration society, praising each other for their work on Horizon: An American Saga.
Entertainment
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“America was like a frontier that no one had ever even seen,” says Kevin Costner, waxing lyrical about one of his favourite subjects: the Wild West.
“It was like no place on Earth. There was 90 million buffalo. Wagon trains would wait for eight days for a herd to pass in front of them. Eight days! You wouldn’t even wait for a traffic light. But they would wait eight days for fear of what might happen. It was an unbelievable place really.”
From directing the Oscar-winning Dances With Wolves to starring in hit series Yellowstone, Costner has almost single-handedly kept the western’s home fires burning. Now he’s back in the director’s chair for the first time in more than two decades, since making 2003’s Open Range, with the most ambitious movie project of his career. Horizon: An American Saga is an intended four-film extravaganza, set at the time of the American Civil War.
Chapter 1 alone is three hours long, a slow-burn look at the inhabitants of a town named Horizon who face off against indigenous raiders affronted that their land is being conquered. Costner not only co-writes, directs and stars (as the lone wolf cowboy Hayes Ellison), but also put up the majority of the money.
“I have final cut. I decide what’s going on,” he explains, simply. “I don’t want to have to answer to anybody.”
This maverick attitude impressed his cast.
“Kevin is making up the rules,” says Australian actor Abbey Lee (Mad Max: Fury Road), who stars alongside Costner.
“He’s going ‘F--k the system. I make up the rules’. And I think he’s deserved that. At this point in his career he should be able to make up the rules himself. And that’s exactly what he’s doing. And there are a lot of people trying to tell him ‘no’.
“There are a lot of people trying to push him down and stop giving him money, stop giving him support, telling him how it should be.”
Sadly, this passion didn’t quite translate into ticket sales in America. Grossing just $34m, the film flopped at the box office, with many blaming the leisurely three-hour running time.
As a result Chapter 2 was pulled from its August release and instead premiered at the Venice Film Festivals earlier this month.
Nevertheless, that hasn’t dented Costner’s enthusiasm; he’s already shot several days on Chapter 3 as he continues to search for investors.
“It would have been a really a lot easier if he made this a TV show,” says Lee, who plays Marigold, a feisty woman who hooks up with Costner’s character.
“But I think he was really adamant that this was a cinematic experience. And he wanted people to sit in that damn chair [in the cinema] and hear the sounds in their full capacity and see the visuals. There’s no point going out into the middle of Utah, into the wilderness, and shooting these epic scenes if someone’s gonna be watching it from their iPhone in bed.”
When we meet in May during the Cannes Film Festival, Lee reveals that she hasn’t shot her segments for Chapter 2 yet.
“He just keeps adding things,” she says.
“I wish Abbey wouldn’t tell you s--t like that!” chuckles Costner, later.
“I wanted to continue her story a little bit and I couldn’t sleep at night, which also drove people crazy. Kevin, you’re done with [Chapter] 2. No, I’m not. I want to do something with Abbey too. I can’t help it. She’s so fabulous in the movie. I mean, she’s one of the most inventive actresses I’ve met.”
With a sublime cast, including Jena Malone, Sam Worthington and Luke Wilson, Costner clearly understands this American phenomenon of the Old West in much the way he examined baseball in Field of Dreams.
“It’s always [about] behaviour. It’s all the details, the little things. They’re very American. No one’s ever confused me with anything other than being an American. I get it. I happen to have a world view of things. But I am American. I wasn’t that cultured, I didn’t know that much about things.”
The modest-sounding Costner even cast his son Hayes as Nathaniel, a young man whose family – including mother Frances played by Sienna Miller – are caught up in a fight that’s Chapter 1’s most jaw-dropping scene.
“I try not to put my children in parts where I know that there are serious actors that want these parts. Because I know how much that means. I know these are coveted things.
“But when I have a chance to put them in something, it’s mostly because I want to have them close to me. I miss them. So I find a way to trap them.
“So I’ve given them small little things to do.”
Talk about circling the wagons.
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