Alessandro Nivola Talks Backstory, Kraven the Hunter

In the span of two December weeks, Alessandro Nivola made three memorable impressions on the big screen.

Beginning with Brady Corbet’s Oscar-contending The Brutalist, Nivola signed on to play Attila Miller just days into 2020’s pandemic. At the time, production was still expected to begin three weeks later, but as we can all attest, those best-laid plans quickly turned into three years. Thus, Nivola became one of only a few holdovers from Corbet’s 2020 cast, as Adrien Brody then took over the lead role of Attila’s cousin, László Toth. The latter is a celebrated Hungarian-Jewish architect who, having narrowly survived the Holocaust, emigrates to the States where Attila provides him with a bed and a job on behalf of his modest Philadelphia-based furniture store.

While there’s a great deal of love between the two cousins, Nivola is now shedding light on some of the unspoken elements that inform their eventual conflict. For starters, Attila has always lived in the shadow of László’s talent, resulting in a permanent chip on his shoulder. 

“Attila has this need to impress László from the minute he arrives in America. He needs to prove to László that he’s somehow made it in America and that he’s figured out the system and that he’s made it work for himself. But it’s total bullshit,” Nivola tells The Hollywood Reporter. “László sees right through it, and that’s infuriating to Attila. On top of all of that, the biggest factor that looms over their relationship is that Attila had escaped the Holocaust camps. So Attila longs to provide some kind of safe harbor for [his Holocaust-surviving cousin], but there’s almost a humiliation at the fact that he did not have to endure it himself.”

The Brutalist is often regarded as 2024’s Oppenheimer, as they’re both decades-spanning historical dramas that offer grand cinematic presentations in VistaVision and IMAX, respectively. Additionally, the two stories center on a genius whose life’s work causes them great pain, but the biggest difference between the two is that Corbet produced his independent film for a staggeringly low $10 million. (That said, Oppenheimer’s $100 million budget was a paltry sum when compared to other recent period epics.) Nivola chalks up Corbet’s economical filmmaking to a carefully planned shot list and minimal locations. 

“With indie movies, you either have a director who is panicked because they don’t have enough time to get the coverage they need for each scene, or you have someone like Brady. He planned his shot selection to capture each scene with less coverage,” Nivola shares. “So I guess money goes a little further in Budapest, but the keys were shot selection and deceptively few locations.”

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Nivola’s big swings as Aleksei Sytsevich/Rhino in J.C. Chandor’s Kraven the Hunter are, per consensus, the few highlights of the poorly received film. On paper, Sony’s latest (and final?) Spider-Man universe film had all the right ingredients: a respected filmmaker, a great cast with two Oscar winners and the resources to shoot mostly on location. However, even with all the proper pieces in place, every film is a roll of the dice, and every good film is widely considered to be a miracle.

“I really don’t know what happened behind the scenes. On these kinds of movies, you hear about all the wranglings at the studio, and maybe there were too many chefs. I don’t know,” Nivola says. “I don’t know enough about what the process was beyond just my experience of being on set, which was really joyful. So I didn’t have any sense of there being problems behind the scenes. But a lot of that probably starts to play out in the edit with all the different opinions about it, so I really couldn’t tell you.”

During post-production, the veteran actor did follow up with Chandor on the preservation of a now fan-favorite choice he made when Rhino receives bad news. He proceeded to react with an unforgettable bird-like cry, and said moment is bound to become a beloved Internet meme when the film eventually hits digital. The bold decision aligns with Nivola’s career of being unafraid to take risks, something Pollux Troy’s pinkie wave proved in John Woo’s Face/Off. But much to Nivola’s surprise, this particular performance beat was slightly modified in post.

“The way I performed it was totally silent. It was a silent scream. When I did it, everybody laughed on set. It was so weird, but they all loved it. We kept referring to it as the ‘silent scream moment,’” Nivola reveals. “So I kept asking J.C. [Chandor] during the edit if the silent scream was still in the cut, and he said, ‘Yeah, of course. We would never lose the silent scream.’ But when I saw the movie, it had that guttural voice catch, which I don’t think was as effective as it would’ve been otherwise.”

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, Nivola also discusses his climactic scene in Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, co-starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. Then, he proudly addresses the fast-rising acting career of his son, Sam Nivola.

It’s not a stretch to say that The Brutalist is this year’s Oppenheimer. Could you fully sense the ambition that Brady and co. were going for when the film was in its embryonic state?

Well, I sensed Brady’s ambition in general when he first offered me the job a week into the Covid lockdown. I had just stashed my cannellini beans in the cupboard for the long hibernation, and he told me we’d be shooting three weeks later in Poland. It was all set up and ready to go. Of course, we didn’t end up shooting for another three years, but just the fact that he was pushing to make it happen at that time when everybody else was standing like deer in headlights should give you some indication of the way that he thinks overall. 

What tipped me off that the look and feel of the movie might have that kind of scope and scale was the 30-second teaser that he had shot at the Venice Film Festival. He shot [a proof of concept] while going through the canals; he must’ve been on some kind of gondola or boat. It also had some scoring that was probably done by [composer] Daniel Blumberg. But there was something about the way that he framed it and the movement of the camera and the deliberateness of it, as well as the music and the slow menace of it all, that introduced you to the world. It was designed to help him raise money, but it definitely made your heart flutter a little bit. It felt like there were waters running deep under it. 

So I got a little taste from that, and once we got on set, it was clear that he had such a specific design on every shot that he was making. His film language was just so extensive, and you can’t make a movie like this on the budget that he did unless your shot selection is intentional and doesn’t require eight setups for every scene. In general, the big difference between indie movies and Hollywood movies is that Hollywood movies will have so many more setups for every scene, meaning camera angles. Most of them end up on the [cutting room] floor, or there’s too much cutting within scenes, but both outcomes are depressing. With indie movies, you either have a director who is panicked because they don’t have enough time to get the coverage they need for each scene, or you have someone like Brady. He planned his shot selection to capture each scene with less coverage, but it’s done so in a more deliberate way that we could feel in every scene. 

Hollywood is home to the world’s most creative minds, as well as the most creative accountants, but it’s still hard to believe that The Brutalist was produced for a reported $10 million. Did it feel like a $10 million film? 

I’ve made movies for a lot less, so, to me, a $10 million movie implies a normal-sized trailer and a decent lunch, both of which it definitely had. It didn’t have as big a crew as Kraven the Hunter did, but it didn’t feel poor. Part of it comes from there being deceptively few locations. So much of it was shot in and around the Van Burens’ big mansion, and they found that great house in suburban Budapest. So we were able to inhabit that place for a long period of time, and Brady found interesting ways to shoot the house and the grounds all around it.  

So many productions shoot in Budapest now; it’s almost like another Atlanta. There are so many experienced, well-functioning crews there, and it didn’t feel rushed. Of course, there were days where he was under the cosh, but that happens on any movie where the director really cares and isn’t willing to pull the plug until they get the shots they need. But it was civilized. Every day, a guy picked me up in a nice car from my hotel in Budapest. So I guess money goes a little further in Budapest, but the keys were shot selection and deceptively few locations.

Did you have any ties to Brady before this? Or did he see your performance in Disobedience and work off of that?

I’d like to think it was the latter. I didn’t really know anyone associated with the movie, but after we started working together, it turned out that we did have friends in common. Chris Abbott actually lived at Brady and Mona’s [Fastvold] house through Covid. They were in lockdown together, and Chris had become a really close friend of mine from Kraven. Raffey Cassidy also played the third sibling in White Noise. Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig’s characters’ other daughter and son in that movie were played by my two kids, Sam and May [Nivola]. Raffey’s mother, because of some Covid restrictions, hadn’t been allowed into the country for quite a long time. So Raffey, who was still pretty young then, was adopted into our family that summer. She was living with us, and so I already knew her. But I had been offered this job before any of the [2023] cast, except for Raffey and maybe Stacy [Martin], who had both worked with Brady before on Vox Lux. The other actors cast [in 2020] were all different. So I was one of the first people in, and I’d have to ask Brady what inspired him to want to work with me. I’d like to think it was Disobedience.

[The following answer contains light spoilers for The Brutalist.]

You play the most welcoming and unwelcoming character imaginable in Attila. To go from the warmest embrace to the coldest rejection, did that upset you as a reader?

Yeah, the first 45 minutes of the movie is a complete story unto itself between László and Attila. It serves as a prologue to the movie and establishes all the themes that then reverberate throughout it. On the page and in the movie, it’s a very affecting and complicated relationship. But I didn’t think of it, intellectually, as upsetting. I instinctively understood all the different emotional currents that were running through it, and Attila really loves László. They basically grew up as brothers. Their two families were probably incredibly close in Budapest, and they spent so much time together as kids and adolescents. Attila is awestruck and amazed by László’s talent and genius and self-confidence, which I’m sure he had as an adolescent as well. He’s also really jealous of it and jealous of him, sexually, because it’s said that László stole or fucked one of his girlfriends when they were younger. So there’s a feeling of resentment and inadequacy in Laszlo’s presence, and his strength as a character makes Attila feel impotent.

So Attila has this need to impress László from the minute he arrives in America. He needs to prove to László that he’s somehow made it in America and that he’s figured out the system and that he’s made it work for himself. But it’s total bullshit. László sees right through it, and that’s infuriating to Attila. On top of all of that, the biggest factor that looms over their relationship is that Attila had escaped the Holocaust camps. He’d been in the U.S. for 10 years already, and when László arrives off that bus, he’s just come out of hell. So Attila longs to provide some kind of safe harbor for him, but there’s almost a humiliation at the fact that he did not have to endure it himself.

So that is present in their final scene when Attila sends him away, and it’s really devastating to Attila. I was crying in that scene, but you can’t see my goddamn face because Brady was doing his arty-farty thing by having me completely in darkness. (Laughs.) So it’s emotionally painful for Attila to send him away, but as far as he knows, László, in his arrogance, just shat on this commission that Attila had brought them. He then tried to screw Attila’s wife [as far as he knows], and he just seemed to have complete disregard for Attila’s generosity. So he just couldn’t live with that, and at the same time, Attila says, “I know what you’ve been through.” That’s what I said in tears, but interestingly, with me being shot in darkness, it creates a real menace. I think Brady was trying to encourage that, and it works, but there is another dimension to it.

Before my mom goes to bed, she puts a TPN bag in a backpack and connects it to herself through a line. It provides her with the nutrients that she can no longer absorb through food. So I never thought Rhino from Kraven the Hunter would remind me of my mother’s medical condition. He, too, sports a backpack with a similar-looking “feed bag” that connects through a port, only it’s to stave off his Rhino form. 

(Laughs.) God, that was a segue for the ages. 

Do you know what inspired that specific character detail?

I am not really sure where that came from or if there was something in one of the comics. [Writer’s Note: THR’s resident comic book guru, Richard Newby, confirms that there is no comic book precedent for Rhino’s origin in Kraven.] I loved the device because Aleksei had gone to the ends of the earth to undergo some kind of physical biochemical change in order to address the humiliation that he’d felt all his life at being sickly and wheezing and weak. That was mirrored when he’s never shown any respect. And to whatever degree that biochemical transformation was successful, that invincibility ended up being so physically painful that he spends his day to day medicating himself in order to keep himself in a weakened natural state. It’s such a great metaphor that he’s now having to treat himself in order to prevent himself from taking on that strength and power that he always wanted. It has that much of a cost.

When Rhino’s right hand lets him know that a hit fails, you made this incredible choice in the form of a bird-like cry. It was kind of on the level of Pollux Troy’s pinkie wave in Face/Off.

(Laughs.) Actually, the way I performed it was totally silent. It was a silent scream. When I did it, everybody laughed on set. It was so weird, but they all loved it. We kept referring to it as the “silent scream moment.” So I kept asking J.C. [Chandor] during the edit if the silent scream was still in the cut, and he said, “Yeah, of course. We would never lose the silent scream.” But when I saw the movie, it had that guttural voice catch, which I don’t think was as effective as it would’ve been otherwise. Everybody thought that it was a bird-like reference, but the silent scream was just an idea that popped into my head as we were in the middle of the scene. I then tried it and it worked.

It’s well-established that J.C. is a talented filmmaker (Margin Call, A Most Violent Year), but these superhero movies are incredibly hard to make at any studio. There’s no shortage of opinions, notes and tests. Given the negative reception, do you think J.C.’s movie got swallowed up by that system?

I really don’t know what happened behind the scenes. On these kinds of movies, you hear about all the wranglings at the studio, and maybe there were too many chefs. I don’t know. I don’t know enough about what the process was beyond just my experience of being on set, which was really joyful. J.C., Chris Abbott and I had worked together before on A Most Violent Year, and we all knew each other, so J.C. and [producer] Matt Tolmach trusted us to run wild.

I based my character on a Russian poet named Philip Nikolayev, who’s a good friend of mine and my wife, Emily [Mortimer]. He’s a wonderful writer who’d been visiting us a lot in conjunction with a movie that Emily is writing about an experience she had when she was living in Moscow around the time of glasnost and perestroika. He jogged her memory about that time because they knew each other then, and he is just a totally brilliant guy. He has a really particular-sounding voice, manner and look about him. So he was my initial inspiration for the role, and J.C. and Matt were encouraging of it. Kraven was as creatively playful and fulfilling a time for me as a lot of other movies have been, and so I didn’t have any sense of there being problems behind the scenes. But a lot of that probably starts to play out in the edit with all the different opinions about it, so I really couldn’t tell you. All I know is that I had a great time filming it. 

I haven’t read much of the reviews, but my agents sent me all the trades’ reviews, which were some of the best reviews I’ve ever had for anything. In fact, IndieWire wrote three pages about my performance, and so that’s nice. But I don’t really pay too much attention to critical and fan response because it can be a black hole. I went through all of that before with Many Saints of Newark. It was another situation where my performance was praised, but the movie was not.

When Pedro Almodóvar and Julianne Moore dangle a key scene in The Room Next Door, is that the most automatic of yeses? 

Yeah, they asked me if I would do a cameo in the movie, and I said yes without even reading it. So it was easy to say yes, but the filming of it was a little bit tricky just because the character is somebody who’s from a very specific place and time, and cultural and socioeconomic background. I grew up outside Burlington, Vermont, which is across Lake Champlain from where this guy might have lived, so I was familiar with what his accent and whole world might have been like. I approach any role by getting as detailed and specific about all those elements, but at the same time, Pedro’s movies have such a surreal look and feel to them that I wasn’t sure if grounding this character and performance in the real details of an upstate New York cop would live comfortably in the world of his film. And when you’re coming in to do a cameo scene at the end of a story, it’s especially hard to gauge the tone of what everybody else has been doing the rest of the time.

So a month before we shot the scene, he brought me over to Madrid for costume fittings and a day or two of rehearsal with him and Julie [Julianne Moore]. The costume they had prepared for me was this impeccably tailored designer suit with a pink silk tie. It really was an Almodóvar cop of some kind. After that week in Madrid, I came home and really started to seriously prepare to go back and shoot it. Of course, my Upstate New York detective’s interrogation scene was shot in Madrid. (Laughs.) But in the weeks that I was getting ready to go back, I was looking at all this YouTube footage of detective interrogations in Upstate New York, and they all wore the same black polo and khaki pants. I then took screen grabs and sent them to Pedro, saying, “Hey, for what it’s worth, I don’t know if this fits into the world of the movie, but this is what the real guys wear. I’m not trying to suggest that I have to wear this to play the part; I just thought you’d be interested.” And he wrote back saying, “Thank you. Let me think about that.” And then I never heard from him again until I flew back to Madrid. 

Arriving there, I still didn’t know if the detailed approach that I had prepared would chafe against the way he wanted the scene to be played. But then I walked into my dressing room, and the exact polo and khakis that I’d sent him, down to every tiny stitch, were hanging inside my closet. So that was the green light to play it in the way that I had prepared it. I was still ready to pivot in the moment, but that was basically Pedro’s way of saying, “Go for it.” And then, after all the meticulous rehearsals and going through the script word by word and talking through all the intentions, we shot the scene with three setups. One was the two-shot from the side, one was over my shoulder and onto Julie’s, and the other one was over her shoulder onto me. We did one take for each one of those setups, and Pedro didn’t say anything until we wrapped the scene. So the closeup that plays for most of the scene was one take, and in my 30 year career, I’ve never done any setup in one take.

As mentioned, you’re not the only Nivola who’s booked and busy these days. Sam Nivola keeps landing high-profile jobs. How expected or unexpected is his career path?

He’d wanted to be an actor since he was pretty young, but he had a very diverse set of interests. He was really into ancient history and Latin, and he ended up doing a term at Columbia with that being his main focus. But he had always wanted to be not just an actor, but a filmmaker as well. He was more of a cinephile than I had been as a kid. He’s a Criterion Channel buff, and he knows everything about Czech New Wave, such as Milos Forman’s Czech films.

But Emily and I had nothing to do with what launched his acting career. Noah Baumbach was looking for the children in White Noise, and he called up Saint Ann’s where both my kids went at the time. So he asked the school if they had any talented kids there who wanted to audition, and they put forward ten kids from the school. It wasn’t until Sam had already been asked to audition for Noah’s movie that we were asked, “Hey, is this okay?” And Em and I said sure, thinking he’ll never get it. (Laughs.) 

He then did his first audition, and he had prepared the performance without asking for my help. I just set up the camera to tape it for him, and he was right on from the very first take. I said, “I think that’s it.” And he was like, “Really?” And I was like, “Yeah, I think that’s it.” So he sent it off, and sure enough, they suddenly got very excited about him. That began a six-month audition process where he had to audition about seven times. Over the course of that time, they involved our daughter, May, because they heard that Sam had a sister and they were looking to cast the siblings. So the same thing happened with May, and when they cast them both, we thought, “Well, it’ll be a family affair. We’ll all be together in Cleveland. It’ll be a fun summer together.” And it was. The movie ended up opening the Venice Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, so it was a big eye-opening ride for the two of them.

Sam is six-and-a–half years older than May is, and he had just finished high school when that happened. So he literally walked off the red carpet in Venice and went straight to his first day of classes at Columbia. And, understandably, that was tough, whereas our daughter went back to grade school. We didn’t want her to do any more film work for a while. We didn’t want her to become a child star and have to contend with all the stuff that could screw up her childhood and prevent a normal school experience. So we’ve kept her out of it, but she did do a role in Noah’s more recent movie [Jay Kelly] this past summer with Clooney. 

But Sam’s career was out of our hands, and he immediately started getting snatched up. Bradley Cooper cast him in Maestro, and Will Oldroyd cast him in Eileen. He then left Columbia to do The Perfect Couple, and he was still possibly going to go back that fall, but then Mike White offered him White Lotus 3. So it was obvious that he was on a different trajectory, and now he’s starring in this Hulu series [Phony] where he’s really the main lead role. It’s all happening really, really fast, and he seems incredibly happy. He has a great place to live in the East Village. So he’s an adult now, and the minute I stopped wringing my hands about him leaving Columbia and stopped trying to control his life, our relationship just got great.

Where will we see you next? 

Downton Abbey 3 with Paul Giamatti. We realized on set that we both played the Rhino.

***The Brutalist expands nationwide in late January.