How Justin Long Sank His Teeth Into Another Ambitious Horror Story
With Night Patrol, Long adds another sympathetic baddie to his resume.
It was a shock to see Justin Long, resident Nice Guy in offbeat indie comedies, break bad so brilliantly in 2022’s Barbarian. The eerie horror film used our collective trust in Long against us, reintroducing him as a narcissist so clueless that you can’t help but root — just a little — for his downfall. Like so many actors who’ve embraced the dark side, Long doesn’t see AJ as an outright villain. He worked hard to find an inner humanity, however suppressed, to make his performance and his character feel real.
“Labeling somebody ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is an interesting thing to me,” Long tells Inverse. “It’s all perception. Even somebody as bad as a murderer, I’m so curious about what they really believe of themselves, how they feel about their behavior, and how they justify it.”
That curiosity also gave him an in to his character in Night Patrol, a horror film just as bonkers and bloody as Zach Cregger’s Airbnb thriller. In an alternate-universe Los Angeles, where vampires moonlight (or daylight?) as trigger-happy cops, and rival gangs have to team up to challenge their power, Long’s Ethan finds himself caught in the middle of the melee. After unwittingly joining the vampire cult embedded in the LAPD, Ethan is forced to confront a much more fantastical form of police brutality.
“It’s all perception.”
Fighting the power’s not so easy when your dearly departed dad (played by Dermot Mulroney) has been resurrected as the head of Night Patrol and real-life wrestlers like Phil Brooks (aka CM Punk) are his most trusted lieutenants. Still, that’s one of the struggles that attracted Long to the project, even if the differences between himself and Ethan forced him to get creative otherwise.
Ahead of Night Patrol’s theatrical premiere, Long sat down with Inverse to discuss his acting cheat codes, the best villain advice he’s ever received, and what separates Barbarian’s AJ from his latest role.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Long joined Night Patrol at the last minute, forcing him to find clever ways to get into character quickly.
I’m curious if you are a wrestling fan; either way, I’m sure getting to fight CM Punk in this was pretty insane.
[Laughs.] I’m not, but I think it’s an incredible thing that they do. I really appreciate the performance aspect of it, especially after getting to know Phil a little bit. I got to know him as an actor and just as a person before I ever looked at any of his wrestling stuff. Which wrestling, that’s probably sacrilegious to say to wrestling fans out there, but I know a whole different side of him... I was very surprised to see his wrestling persona, because it’s a real performance. He really is a mild-mannered, really nice, funny, kind of normal Chicago guy. He’s great in the movie and was very authentic. And it was both good and challenging for me, because he obviously looks and feels the part. He’s got a commanding presence; he doesn’t have to do much to really command attention and authority.
I was really struggling with being that kind of guy myself. I was eager to take the role, because it was so different than anything I’d done. And I was scared of it. It felt like one of those challenges that I just didn’t know physically if I’m that guy. I just didn’t know that I’d be believable in that part…
As a corrupt vampire-cop, CM Punk “obviously looks and feels the part.”
A lot of it was the physicality of this guy who had been on Navy Seal stuff. But after talking to some of the people who were working on the movie, and just seeing interviews with guys that really do this stuff, a lot of them, they’re not necessarily big guys physically. A lot of it is just in the way they carry themselves. So I thought, “If you can suspend your disbelief for big Marvel movies, and people flying around, and shooting lasers out of their eyes, maybe people might accept that I’m…”
That you’re chewing tobacco and spitting it.
Yeah. The tobacco was my idea. I was like, “How do I make myself look hard?” I was looking for a crutch, and the shaved head... And I worked out, seriously... I only had two weeks, but I had the type of body where, because I’m little, if I worked out enough, it makes a noticeable difference. I was cheating, really.
“I was like, ‘How do I make myself look hard?’”
It all works, though. You’re well known for playing these “nice guy” characters. Barbarian subverted that, and, like you said, this subverts that even more. Your character here is really interesting in that he’s almost convinced that he’s “one of the good ones,” but you see him struggling to believe that and to actually be that throughout.
Yeah. I think that just labeling somebody “good” or “bad” is an interesting thing to me. It’s all perception. Even somebody as bad as a murderer, I’m so curious about what they really believe of themselves, how they feel about their behavior, and how they justify it. Narcissists have a way of justifying really bad behavior, and I thought that was an interesting thing with AJ in Barbarian, that he was [a narcissist]. But, somewhere deep down — I thought that was the interesting thing — there was an internal struggle... With AJ, there’s a hint that it’s his parents who just have validated him and enable his bad behavior... It’s always interesting where the seeds of narcissism come from.
Barbarian’s AJ is tough to root for, but Long had to dive into his psyche all the same.
With AJ, I just tried to be truthful about his struggle and not play him like he’s a bad guy. This advice was passed to me through Sam Rockwell, who gives me most of my good acting advice. Sam was telling me about his own experience playing a bad guy for the first time in Charlie’s Angels. He had asked Alan Rickman for advice. Sam had all these ideas: “I want to be flashy with it. I want this transition to be really noticeable.” And Alan said — I’m paraphrasing — a real evil person, they don’t show you that they’re bad. They don’t advertise it... If anything, they’re often very charming, and funny, and charismatic, and that’s what enables them to do a lot of these things. He said, “For example, in Die Hard, I shot someone and then ate a sandwich.” That really stuck with me, [the idea] that you are so warped that you can do something so immoral and then carry on with your day and you can just carry on and eat a sandwich.
“I always try to find some truthful way in.”
They don’t really believe that they’re bad. What’s interesting about playing a person like that, is that they have ways of justifying it. And this character, he’s done a lot of bad things. So, a lot of killing and all that is very normalized. But, I don’t think he’s as bad as a person on that scale as AJ. I think for this guy, it was more about his father. There’s a tough scene [with] Dermot Mulroney [who] plays my father: Ethan thinks he’s dead, [so] I thought, “How do I see my father come back from that?” I had gone through some stuff with family, like everyone does — so I just used what I could. I always try to find some truthful way in.
