Why Spiderhead star Chris Hemsworth wanted to play a villain on Netflix

Best known for playing Thor, Chris Hemsworth has revealed how he came to his new role as a sociopathic scientist who is anything but a superhero.

There’s a line in Chris Hemsworth’s new sci-fi thriller Spiderhead where his character observes that beautiful people get away with more with regular people.

When asked whether this is indeed the case, the undeniably handsome, supremely shredded Aussie A-lister shifts a little uncomfortably in his seat over Zoom call from Sydney ahead of the film’s world premiere, pointing out, not unreasonably, that there’s no way he can answer that question “without sounding like a dick”.

Hemsworth’s looks and physique have clearly been an asset over the course of his career, from his early shirtless days at Summer Bay for Home And Away, to landing the choice role of Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to playing a hot himbo in the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters. But they have also worked against him in the past, when pitching for more dramatic, relatable roles such as that of playboy Formula One driver James Hunt in Rush.

“We all get typecast to whatever it is we’re doing, and I certainly came out of Thor and then I was only getting sent those films,” Hemsworth says. “Then I worked really hard and sent auditions to Ron Howard for Rush and initially he was like ‘no, no, no – that’s the guy swinging the hammer, the big muscular guy’. So, different doors have been opened and closed for all sorts of reasons, but I couldn’t be more thankful and appreciative for the opportunities I’ve had for whatever reason.”

Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth in Thor: Love And Thunder. Photo: Jasin Boland/Marvel Studios

Thanks in no small part to the success of Thor – his fourth stand-alone film as the God of Thunder opens next month – Hemsworth is at a stage in his career where he writes his own rules and chooses his own projects that interest him. Certainly, that was the case for Spiderhead, in which he plays against type as a charming but sociopathic scientist running a prison and conducting experiments on its inmates using experimental drugs to control their moods and emotions.

“It was an opportunity to do something very different,” he says. “I’d come off the back of Thor and (Netflix action-thriller) Extraction, and a number of big fantasy-driven action films, and wanted something more contained and something that just focused on character, and this thing came along and I grabbed a hold of it.”

Hemsworth says that he and director Joseph Kosinski, who had just finished the much-delayed megahit Top Gun: Maverick, talked a lot about tech entrepreneurs, dictators and politicians who had amassed huge followings for his character of Steve Abnesti. Underneath Steve’s good looks and charm – which Hemsworth supplies in spades – is ruthlessness, narcissism and amorality, and a genuine belief that his drugs will save people from themselves by taking away their free will and prescribing their actions and emotions.

Hemsworth says he’s always been fascinated by psychology, thanks in part to his father Craig having studied the discipline for his work in child protection, and their discussions have been invaluable for his work as an actor, particularly for a “villainous” role.

Chris Hemsworth as Abnesti in Spiderhead. Picture: Netflix

“I think the mistake is playing a villain with all the tropes of how a villain behaves,” he says. “The villain doesn’t believe he’s evil, they believe they’re doing the right thing. They believe they’re saving the world obviously. So, as twisted as the individual may have been or may seem on screen, I had to understand ‘okay, well, can I empathise with him? Do I understand why he’s doing this? And do I believe it to be true’?”

As father to young children with his actor wife Elsa Pataky – daughter India and twin sons Sasha and Tristan – he was also drawn to the question of how much we are already unconsciously influenced by outside forces, whether they be chemical or technological.

“That is what scares us,” he says. “Especially myself having young kids … we’re now about to see what that generation looks like that were born with a smartphone and had it from day one.

“And this exponential growth of technology and massive information, and us receiving stimuli and information at such a rapid rate and beyond any extent that we’ve ever had throughout our existence – we’re now seeing that unfold and what is the by-product of that?”

As much as Hemsworth wanted to make Spiderhead – he’s a producer on the film – it was also the film he could make while Covid lockdowns continued to plague productions around the world early last year. The film relocated from its scheduled shoot in Atlanta at very short notice and the filmmakers repurposed the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre to create the few sets needed for the prison scenes, with the exteriors shot in the Whitsundays.

Hemsworth has been taking a more active role in the all the facets of his film career and was particularly proud of being able to bring the multimillion-dollar project to Australia at a time when the industry desperately needed the work. In fact, having also shot Extraction and the last two Thor films here, it’s one of his key criteria in picking his projects these days.

“The first few questions are the script, when it gets sent to me, and the second is ‘who’s the director and what’s the story?’ and then ‘can I shoot Australia?’,” he says. “We’re just spoiled here with the locations and the talented crews and casts. As much as I can do back home now, that is the intention, and particularly having young kids now it’s getting harder and harder to leave and pull them out of school. So I try to plant my feet here and stay here.”

Elsa Pataky and Chris Hemsworth at the premiere of Interceptor.

As an executive producer – and with a cameo as a dodgy TV salesman giving off Fat Thor vibes – Hemsworth also played a key role in Pataky’s recent action hit Interceptor landing with Netflix and filming in Australia, and he says he couldn’t be prouder of his wife. The pair acted together briefly in 12 Strong and he says he’d love to do more with her – and reveals that he’s also working on a Netflix project that will feature his two brothers, Liam and Luke.

“I was talking to my wife about it and said ‘I’ve done a lot of films that cost 20 times that budget, and they were half as well received’,” he says, adding that it got the thumbs up from his Furiosa director, George Miller.

“He came and saw it with us the other week – they had a screening out in Broken Hill – and he said ‘there’s only a handful of films I’ve seen in my life that really hold your attention and keep you engaged like that’.

“He was looking at it from many different angles but said, as a viewer, he was fully engaged the whole time, which I thought was a huge honour to hear.”

Hemsworth started shooting Miller’s Mad Max prequel in outback New South Wales this month and, for a someone who grew up on the original films, he is living the dream, with “plenty of pinch myself moments”. But even A-listers and Asgardian gods apparently still get nerves.

“I shot my first day a couple of weeks ago and Angus Sampson came up to me and grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me in the eye and he said ‘Chris, you’re in a bloody Mad Max movie’. And I was like, ‘You’re right, oh my God, I am!’.

“I was having first day nerves and I was like, ‘am I going to get recast, am I good enough, do I belong here?’” And it was great – George Miller is just a dream. The whole experience is incredible. We’ve had four weeks of rehearsals and endless discussions on character in more detailed and in depth than I’ve ever had before.”

Spiderhead is released on Netflix on Friday.

Originally published as Why Spiderhead star Chris Hemsworth wanted to play a villain on Netflix