The two roles that left Taylor Kitsch “scared shitless”
There was a time when Taylor Kitsch was the name on everybody’s lips. After coming to attention in Friday Night Lights, the Canadian continued to build his profile with movies like The Covenant and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Unfortunately, the good times weren’t to last. In 2012, two movies that were supposed to solidify his star power ended up costing him everything. One of them was Battleship which, to be honest, was always doomed to be a disaster. The other was Disney’s John Carter, which went on to become one of the biggest box office bombs in history. Just like that, this rising star plummeted down to Earth.
While he often tarred with the brush of a Hollywood blowout, Kitsch’s CV actually contains more interesting entries than you might expect. Lone Survivor, Savages, the second season of True Detective: he’s done some really interesting work that has taken him to some very unique places. In an interview with The Guardian in 2012, he spoke about one particularly bold role that had him fearing for his life.
“I was scared shitless with [The] Bang Bang Club,” he admitted, “Kevin Carter was a South African, drug-addicted, suicidal war photographer, and it was a true story that his family and best friend would see. Doing that justice is way more pressure.”
Released in 2010, The Bang Bang Club is a biographical film from director Steven Silver. It follows a group of photographers chronicling life in South Africa during the final years of apartheid. Kitsch plays Kevin Carter (no relation to John), a South African journalist best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning picture The Vulture and the Little Girl, which depicted a famine in Sudan. Carter took his own life just a few months later.
In a separate conversation with Backstage, 13 years later, Kitsch used a very similar phrase to describe working on a new project. “Even this next movie that I’m doing, Eleven Days, I’m scared shitless,” he said, “Now’s not the fucking time to be safe. I think everyone wants to wake up with purpose. It’s this endless question of, ‘Why am I here? What am I serving?’ So when I get to these moments of taking these roles, I’m like, ‘Fuck, you’re going to be super uncomfortable, you’re probably going to try and get out of the movie a month before’, which has happened.”
At the time of writing, Eleven Days hasn’t been released yet. When it does come out, it will tell the story of a crisis at a Texas prison after a convict’s failed escape attempt turns into a hostage situation. Kitsch will play Jim Estelle, the warden at the prison, while the part of the hostage taker will be filled by Diego Luna. The White Lotus‘ Jason Isaacs and Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn are also signed on. There’s currently no scheduled release date, so keep an eye out for this one over the next few months.
He might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but Kitsch has more up his sleeve than most give him credit for. The Bang Bang Club and Eleven Days might have terrified him, but they were both valuable experiences in dispelling the myths surrounding his dull reputation.
