‘The Son’: a challenging performance that left Hugh Jackman a “hot mess”
Florian Zeller, the writer-director of The Son, offered Hugh Jackman the lead role in his film within seven minutes of meeting him. Since watching Zeller’s debut feature, The Father, back in 2020 – adapted from a play by Zeller of the same name – the Les Miserables star had been chasing the director for an opportunity to work together.
The Father received a whopping six Academy Award nominations, including ‘Best Picture’, and went on to win two for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ and ‘Best Actor’ for Anthony Hopkins. When Zeller’s intent to adapt another of his stage plays for the screen, The Son, came to light, Jackman quickly sought out a copy and immediately knew it was a project he wanted to participate in.
Within seven minutes of a Zoom call with the director, Jackman secured the role. A mix of his Aussie charm and genuine love for the material was surely the ticket. The film adaptation of the play that followed stars Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby alongside Jackman. It is a gripping drama about divorced parents struggling with their teenage son’s depression and their new lives independent from one another. It’s certainly quite the departure from Jackman’s usual movie musicals and his enduring performances as action hero Wolverine.
The film, without a doubt, deals with incredibly difficult subjects and, at times, can be challenging to watch, not because of the performances or direction but the sheer brutality with which Zeller launches viewers into the raw, unfiltered lives of his lost characters. Jackman’s Peter, although married to Kirby’s Beth and with a new infant, openly struggles to care for his vulnerable son from his first marriage, and the back-and-forth between Dern and Jackman is akin to an Olympic game of table tennis.
It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, when considering the film’s subject matter, filming The Son deeply haunted Jackman. Back in early 2023, in an interview with A.frame, the Oscars digital magazine, Jackman spoke of the mental toll: “I was a hot mess during it, I really was. I wasn’t sleeping,” he recalls, “I leant on my director, and I leant on the other actors and the crew. They had psychiatrists available for every single person on this because it was very traumatic and triggering.”
The actor added: “I kept a journal, which I still do, and it doesn’t feel like I’ve left it. I’m not playing the character or thinking about the character, but whatever was working within me through that part, I feel it still working through me. I’m still making sense of it. Particularly now, as we promote it and I get out and talk about it, things are clearer to me than they were at the time. But I don’t really know if I’m done with it yet.”
Jackman has openly criticised the lack of mental health support on film sets before, remarking to the BBC how returning the filming after the pandemic fuelled his ‘anxiety’, especially as during the production of The Son, Jackman’s father died. As the actor concluded when discussing the movie, “There is a real lack of knowledge and ignorance and shame around the subject [of mental health], and I think it’s something we need to confront, really, really quickly.”
