{"id":349968,"date":"2026-03-21T00:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T00:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/349968\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T00:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T00:07:09","slug":"lionel-boyce-talks-project-hail-mary-improvising-with-ryan-gosling-and-the-evolution-of-marcus-in-the-bear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/349968\/","title":{"rendered":"Lionel Boyce Talks ‘Project Hail Mary,’ Improvising with Ryan Gosling, and the Evolution of Marcus in ‘The Bear’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a breath of fresh air,\u201d says Lionel Boyce from a green room in Midtown Manhattan a few days ahead of the release of his new blockbuster movie. The actor has been in the spotlight for years thanks to his Emmy-nominated turn as Marcus in \u201cThe Bear,<\/a>\u201d but he\u2019s now on the promotion trail for one of the year\u2019s most anticipated movies<\/a>, \u201cProject Hail Mary,\u201d and it\u2019s giving him a moment to reflect on his path so far.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve had such an interesting career to me, where it started off in a place where I was making things that five people were watching, so you don\u2019t really talk about it,\u201d Boyce says. \u201cAnd then this show happens, \u2018The Bear,\u2019 and then you\u2019re talking about that, and it\u2019s been a few years. So it\u2019s cool to talk about something else that you love, that\u2019s completely different from the other two things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn \u201cProject Hail Mary,\u201d Boyce stars alongside Ryan Gosling<\/a>, Sandra H\u00fcller <\/a>and Ken Leung as security guard Officer Carl. Initially the role was quite small, but when Boyce learned from his team who was involved in the movie he was immediately interested, no matter the scale of the role.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was like, \u2018I\u2019m a huge fan of everyone. I\u2019m down.\u2019 To me, it\u2019s worth spending\u2026I think originally the role was like for a day or so, so it [would be] cool spending 12 to 14 hours with these people,\u201d he says. \u201cWorst-case scenario, I get to learn, see what a big movie\u2019s like and get the coolest general meeting of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Lionel<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLionel Boyce<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLexie Moreland\/WWD<\/p>\n

\n\tThe opportunity blossomed as directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller kept expanding Carl\u2019s place in the film, to the point where Boyce ended up being on set for nearly a month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen they found out I was on board, they were like, \u2018OK, we\u2019re going to write a few more scenes,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cAnd it was cool because his character did not necessarily exist in the book, so it was free rein of getting to develop it with Phil and Chris and just be like, \u2018OK, so this guy Carl, who is he? What does he do? Where does he fit exactly into this world?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt also opened the door to some improvisation with Gosling, which ended up making it into the movie.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRyan, I feel like his brain\u2019s just constantly going at all times,\u201d Boyce says. \u201cI had all these people around to support me, and it just took on a life of its own. [Carl] was this person where I feel that in the end, they found was a necessary ingredient in this soup that they were making.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Lionel<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLionel Boyce<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLexie Moreland\/WWD<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 34-year-old grew up in Inglewood, Calif., and first became known publicly as a member of the music collective Odd Future with Tyler, the Creator, whom he met senior year of high school in drama class. Growing up, Boyce had been focused on sports, but when he and the rest of Odd Future began making the sketch comedy series \u201cLoiter Squad,\u201d which ran from 2012 to 2014, he suddenly saw the magic of being part of something on screen.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not that I didn\u2019t want to do it, it just never crossed my mind to do it. It was nowhere in my vicinity,\u201d Boyce says. \u201cAnd we started making the show and I remember feeling like, \u2018Wow, this is cool.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fifth season of \u201cThe Bear\u201d will presumably return this summer, but any specifics are being kept from Boyce and the rest of the cast.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAt some point, I think they stopped telling us information. They literally were like, \u2018You know what? You guys don\u2019t know how to stop talking,\u2019\u201d he jokes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Lionel<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLionel Boyce<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLexie Moreland\/WWD<\/p>\n

\n\tHe has wrapped his work on the fifth season, and continues to love growing the character of Marcus over the years.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI always credit Chris [Storer], Joanna [Calo] and all the writers where they\u2019re writing these characters and they\u2019re itching to evolve these people. You\u2019re like not getting someone who\u2019s afraid to push a character in a different direction than they\u2019ve gone in the previous seasons, despite how people feel about the safety of like, \u2018Oh, we love this character,\u2019\u201d Boyce says. \u201cIt\u2019s a journey of the evolution of a person. And it just keeps adding different dimensions. They find different ways to reveal these characters every year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s a breath of fresh air,\u201d says Lionel Boyce from a green room in Midtown Manhattan a few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[146,79812,85,46,397,20672],"class_list":["post-349968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-eye-interview","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies","tag-ryan-gosling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}