{"id":607159,"date":"2026-05-27T19:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T19:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/607159\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T19:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T19:34:10","slug":"nicolas-cage-on-spider-noir-watching-breaking-bad-true-detective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/607159\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicolas Cage on ‘Spider-Noir,’ Watching ‘Breaking Bad,’ ‘True Detective’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNicolas Cage<\/a>\u2019s superhero journey\u2019s been packed with more twists and turns than Howard Hawks\u2019 \u201cThe Big Sleep.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tIt began in the late-\u201890s, when the enigmatic actor was all set to play the Last Son of Krypton for director Tim Burton in \u201cSuperman Lives,\u201d<\/a> only to have the plug pulled weeks before filming. Then, Sam Raimi offered him the part of supervillain Norman Osborn\/Green Goblin in \u201cSpider-Man,\u201d<\/a> but Cage was otherwise engaged (more on that later). The aughts saw Cage approached for the role of Bloodnofsky, a murderous Russian crime lord, in \u201cThe Green Hornet,\u201d<\/a> only to have his vision for the character clash with Seth Rogen\u2019s. There\u2019s also the saga of Cage\u2019s rare copy of the comic book \u201cAction Comics #1,\u201d featuring the first appearance of Superman, which was stolen from him, retrieved and subsequently sold at auction for millions to help cover his rising debts. Oh, and the fact that his stage name was inspired by none other than Luke Cage, a decision he\u2019d made to avoid charges of nepotism as the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola.<\/p>\n

\n\tSure, Cage did play Ghost Rider in a pair of messy flicks<\/a>, Big Daddy in the underrated actioner \u201cKick-Ass\u201d<\/a> and voiced some animated superheroes, but embodying a superhero character that fully aligns with his vision had thus far eluded him \u2014 until now.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSpider-Noir<\/a>,\u201d a new series premiering in a binge on May 27 on Prime Video<\/a> \u2014 while\u00a0also airing on MGM+ \u2014 is the tale of Ben Reilly (Cage), a private investigator in Depression-era New York City whose grief over the death of his wife (Diane Kruger, in a \u201cNational Treasure\u201d reunion) has compelled him to retire his crime-fighting Spider-Man<\/a> alter ego. However, an enchanting nightclub singer, Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li), and a case involving World War I veterans imbued with strange powers, pulls him back into action. Created by Oren Uziel and adapted from the Marvel Comics\u2019 character Spider-Man Noir, who Cage voiced in \u201cSpider-Man: Into the Spiderverse,\u201d it\u2019s a visually stunning spectacle \u2014 available in black-and-white and color (I\u2019d opt for the former) \u2014 that deftly merges the film noir and superhero genres. <\/p>\n

\n\tAt the center of it all is Cage, whose outr\u00e9 approach keeps you engaged throughout. The Oscar-winning actor sat down with Variety to discuss \u201cSpider-Noir,\u201d his unique acting philosophy, and so much more.<\/p>\n

\t\tI assume you\u2019re a big fan of film noir, right? What are some of your favorites?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tOh yeah. Richard Basehart in a film called \u201cHe Walked by Night\u201d was quite wonderful. I saw it when I was very young. The movies that informed \u201cSpider-Noir\u201d were certainly \u201cThe Big Sleep\u201d by Howard Hawks, with its rhythm and fast-paced dialogue; \u201cThe Maltese Falcon\u201d and \u201cIn a Lonely Place.\u201d A lot of Bogart. I wanted to try to create an essence of some of my favorite old world actors because I wanted to embody that style \u2014 Bogart, Cagney, Edward G. Robinson \u2014 and designed my performance to fit within the black-and-white format, just as Darran Tiernan was doing with the photography and Trayce Field was doing with the wardrobe. I wanted all of that to coalesce so when you watch the black-and-white format of \u201cSpider-Noir,\u201d you really feel like you\u2019re being transported to another time.<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tNicolas Cage in \u201cSpider-Noir.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPrime Video<\/p>\n

\t\tYour character in \u201cSpider-Noir\u201d reminded me a bit of Elliot Gould\u2019s Marlowe in \u201cThe Long Goodbye\u201d with how chatty and sarcastic he is, and how much he enjoys needling people.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI get that. I think the thing that I kept looking at with the Bogart element was that he seems so bemused, like in \u201cThe Big Sleep,\u201d when the femme fatale is doing anything wicked he finds it amusing \u2014 he enjoys seeing the danger in other people \u2014 and I wanted to play a little more of that. As you go deeper into the different episodes, you\u2019ll see other influences emanating. One of the things that we managed to sprinkle in, which is a luxury of doing episodic television, is you have the time to plant these little seeds and watch them blossom. Oren Uziel, the showrunner, and I got to the point of explaining why he is the way he is, and how he\u2019s trying to reprogram his humanity because the DNA of the arachnid is in his body, so he\u2019s trying to figure out how to be human again.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhat kind of preparation did you do for this? Did you study spiders?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s no secret that people know that I like old-style German expressionism, and I remember Max Schreck in \u201cNosferatu\u201d at the end before he gets hit by the light and turns into a puff of smoke, he just goes like that [tilts hand down]. That, to me, is indicative of German expressionism, the choreography. It seemed to me that a move like that would be arachnid, so I worked with my body to create that feeling of an animality in the character. Did I study spiders? No. But I do know a little bit about them, and one of the most interesting things I find with spiders is that they have no muscles \u2014 their appendages are like straws, and they shoot fluid to move \u2014 and so that informed this idea of the movements.<\/p>\n

\t\tWere you the one that coined \u201cnouveau shamanic\u201d as your acting style? And what is that?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe imagination is an actor\u2019s greatest tool. If you don\u2019t have the imagination to want and believe you\u2019re in this situation so it\u2019s believable to the audience, it\u2019s not going to work; and if you don\u2019t have the imagination to create something that\u2019s outside the box, magic, and different, it\u2019s going to be boring. It actually came from Brian Bates, who\u2019s a professor who wrote a few books on acting, and he put forth the notion that all shamans were actors thousands of years ago going into flights of the imagination and trying to come up with answers to help the village. And the notion is that actors in movies or television are doing the same thing \u2014 they\u2019re using their imagination to tell a story that somebody may or may not find helpful in their own lives. We see a character in a movie, and it puts a little spring in our step, or you play an alcoholic in \u201cLeaving Las Vegas\u201d and someone who has struggled with that sees it and they get some sort of answer. The idea is that we\u2019re all like these thousand-year-old shamans going into the imagination. So, what is nouveau shamanism? How you augment your imagination so it becomes more accessible to you.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\tDo you still go to extremes when getting into character? There are so many amazing stories, like you pulling your own teeth out for \u201cBirdy\u201d or, as Mike Figgis recently recounted, you downing a whole bottle of vodka before a scene in \u201cLeaving Las Vegas\u201d and destroying a casino.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tLet\u2019s remember: I started acting when I was 15, and that makes me a child actor of sorts. I had to learn as I went along, and at that time, you had all the stories about De Niro and we all thought we had to live the part and do these wild things to believe we were the character. But I\u2019ve been doing this for 45 years, so I don\u2019t have to do that anymore. And anytime Mike brings up that story, I just want to say: It was in the script, OK? <\/p>\n

\n\tThat [\u201cLeaving Las Vegas\u201d] character, Ben Sanderson, has a total meltdown in a casino \u2014 that was in the script \u2014 and I did say to him, \u201cI\u2019m not going to drink on this movie, but I want one or two scenes where he\u2019s really drunk,\u201d and he knew I was going to do that, so I think he\u2019s just trying to get more media for his movie 30-something years later by making it a tabloid story.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhat made you decide to come to television? The line between cinema and TV has blurred a bit in recent years.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI was adamant about not doing television, because I didn\u2019t want to do anything that was too homogenized or that was like everybody else. And my son sat me down during COVID, and he showed me \u201cBreaking Bad.\u201d I began to see that the actors in that show were afforded the luxury of time to tell their story. I saw Bryan Cranston staring at a suitcase for what seemed like minutes. I couldn\u2019t take my eyes off him, and all he was doing was staring at a suitcase, and it occurred to me that you can\u2019t do that in movies: You don\u2019t have the time. I thought, maybe with an eight-hour narrative I can start planting seeds for a character that can bloom into something that I don\u2019t have the luxury of time to do in a movie. That was the main attraction.<\/p>\n

\n\tI waited for something that I thought would be special, and I can tell you that with \u201cSpider-Noir,\u201d the vision that I had in my imagination manifested in the exact way that I\u2019d hoped. And it was scary, and it was risky. I was constantly worried that I was going to get fired, because I was doing this thing of channeling old actors and colliding it with Stan Lee\u2019s masterpiece that is \u201cSpider-Man\u201d to create this Roy Lichtenstein pop-art sensation of sorts. I didn\u2019t know until I finally saw the eight episodes whether it was going to work. <\/p>\n

\n\tI was very nervous to do television, I\u2019ll tell ya. One of the producers said, \u201cWe\u2019re going to do this read-through because we haven\u2019t hit yet with Amazon, and you gotta make sure that during the read-through you don\u2019t mumble.\u201d I was so nervous that I called my good friend Charlie Sheen, who\u2019s done a lot of television, and asked him for advice. He said, \u201cWell, that\u2019s the hardest part, Nic \u2014 the read-through. So, what is it that you\u2019re nervous about?\u201d And I said, \u201cOne of the producers said, \u2018Don\u2019t mumble.\u2019\u201d He said, \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u2026 who told you not to mumble? Is his last name \u2018Sony?\u2019\u201d And I said, \u201cNo.\u201d And he said, \u201cWell, tell him to fuck off!\u201d So, I had a big laugh, went in, and did the read-through.<\/p>\n

\t\tYou mentioned Charlie Sheen. What\u2019s it like to grow up with this group of young, up-and-coming actors who were your pals \u2014 Sean Penn, Chris Penn, Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Johnny Depp, yourself \u2014 who are now household names? And weren\u2019t you the one who convinced Johnny to act?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s true. We were dating the same girl, and he came to L.A. not wanting to like me. He was a guitar player. I liked him right away, and he said, \u201cI like Nic\u2026 I can\u2019t not like him.\u201d We became very good friends, and we were playing Monopoly one day. He was having a very hard time financially \u2014 he was selling pens, I believe, and I let him live in my apartment, but then he started stealing my money to buy drinks \u2014 and I said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just try acting?\u201d And he said, \u201cI can\u2019t act.\u201d And I said, \u201cYeah, you can. Why don\u2019t you just go meet with my agent?\u201d And he met with my agent, and the rest is history. He was an \u201covernight sensation,\u201d as they say.<\/p>\n

\t\tGiving yourself the name of a superhero \u2014 \u201cCage,\u201d after Luke Cage \u2014 is interesting. How has that name affected you? Is it strange to still be known as \u201cNicolas Cage?\u201d\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNo. I am Nic Cage. I changed my name legally last year. I\u2019m Nic Cage in life, and I\u2019m Nic Cage on camera. \u2018Tis better to be the patriarch of my own little family than the clown cousin on the margins of someone else\u2019s, so I decided I\u2019m going to bring it on and be \u201cCage.\u201d \u201cCage\u201d is a name that I liked coming across in the comics \u2014 I just thought he had a cool name \u2014 and I grew up in a very avant-garde, artsy family and there was talk about John Cage and the experimental compositions that he did. I was looking for something like \u201cJames Dean\u201d; I was looking for something short and sweet. I thought, well, I\u2019ll keep the name \u201cNicolas\u201d because my father named me Nicolas \u2014 with French spelling, which has always frustrated me, because everyone adds an \u201ch.\u201d I don\u2019t know why he gave me the French spelling! But he did.<\/p>\n

\t\tIt does sound like a superhero.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNic Cage or Nicolas Cage?<\/p>\n

\t\tNic Cage.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI think so. You think I should\u2019ve shaved it off and just made it \u201cNic?\u201d I\u2019m both! I think people know me as both.<\/p>\n

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

\t\t\t\t\tNicolas Cage.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGetty Images<\/p>\n

\t\tWhy have you never worked with Quentin Tarantino? I think that\u2019s something the people want.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI have no idea. I would consider Quentin a friend of sorts. He\u2019s someone I occasionally email with, and we talk about movies, and I liked his book about movies and enjoyed looking at the movies through his eyes. It just never happened. I think there\u2019s a mutual admiration. I\u2019ve always thought he was an acrobat with filmmaking. His movies move in a way that are absolutely dazzling.<\/p>\n

\t\tYou have delivered his lines, though \u2014 in \u201cThe Rock,\u201d since he punched up the script.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI want you to tell me what lines you think he wrote.<\/p>\n

\t\t\u201cLosers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.\u201d\t<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah. But I\u2019m the one that added, \u201cCarla was the prom queen.\u201d And I added, \u201cI\u2019m sensing a lot of prepubescent volatility, a lot of \u201816, I\u2019m angry at my father\u2019 syndrome.\u2019\u201d That\u2019s all me. In that regard, yes \u2014 we wrote together in collaboration on dialogue.<\/p>\n

\t\tI\u2019m 41, and I feel like you have such a stranglehold on elder millennials, because when I was 11, \u201cThe Rock\u201d hit theaters that summer. And then the following summer, \u201cCon Air\u201d and \u201cFace\/Off\u201d were released within weeks of each other. Three iconic popcorn films.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI like hearing that. It was very unusual to have two movies come out in the cineplex within weeks of each other, and then both go to No. 1. I got lucky. That was a different time.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhat\u2019s going on with \u201cFace\/Off 2?\u201d I understand Adam Wingard dropped out as director.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tListen, Adam and I had a great lunch together at the Smoke House in Burbank, and we had a terrific conversation. We share similar interests. I like what he\u2019s been doing with the \u201cGodzilla\u201d group, and we talked about one of our favorite supervillains in the old Godzilla movies, which was Hedorah. I\u2019m sure at some point our paths will cross again. I don\u2019t know what happened, and I have zero idea if it\u2019s going to happen. I\u2019m the last guy to know anything.<\/p>\n

\t\tI love how you and John Travolta match each other\u2019s freak in \u201cFace\/Off.\u201d\t<\/p>\n

\n\tHe did a great job in that movie. I\u2019m only Castor for the first 12 minutes \u2014 but what an opening it is \u2014 and then he took the ball and ran with it beyond anyone\u2019s wildest dreams. He really had fun with it. I like to think that I liberated him a little bit. I set the template, and he riffed on it and took it.<\/p>\n

\t\tSpeaking of \u201cSpider-Man,\u201d is it true that you turned down the role of Norman Osborn\/Green Goblin in Sam Raimi\u2019s first \u201cSpider-Man\u201d movie?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah. Sam and I had a great lunch, and I did say during the lunch, \u201cListen: whoever plays Spider-Man, let them do one scene where they\u2019re crawling around like a spider when they\u2019re alone,\u201d and it didn\u2019t happen. He wanted me to do the Green Goblin. I liked the idea of Sam Raimi, because of \u201cEvil Dead 1\u2033 and \u201c2,\u201d and I wanted to work with him, but I had this other film called \u201cAdaptation.\u201d It happened with Jim [Carrey] and \u201cDumb and Dumber,\u201d and I said, \u201cI\u2019m going to do this other film called \u2018Leaving Las Vegas,\u2019\u201d and with Sam, I told him, \u201cI\u2019m going to do \u201cAdaptation.\u2019\u201d Both those decisions were the right ones for me, and I\u2019m happy with those results.<\/p>\n

\t\tIs \u201cTrue Detective\u201d Season 5 happening? There were reports that you had been cast.\t<\/p>\n

\n\tI have no idea. I think they\u2019re working on the material, but I haven\u2019t heard about it in quite some time. I\u2019m not signed on to anything; we\u2019re just talking. I like Issa L\u00f3pez a lot, and would be thrilled to work with her, but nothing is concrete. And I\u2019ve never seen the first season of \u201cTrue Detective,\u201d but I\u2019ve heard great things.<\/p>\n

\t\tDo you feel like you\u2019ve reclaimed the superhero for yourself to a degree, given what happened with the death of \u201cSuperman Lives,\u201d not playing Green Goblin, etc.?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tNo. I get a lot of inspiration with art, like Warhol with \u201cWild at Heart\u201d and what I did with the Elvis aura. Here, I was looking at Roy Lichtenstein, and I wanted to do a pop-art mashup. I believe in art synthesis, or what you can do in one art form you can do in another, and that was what I was interested in. I wasn\u2019t necessarily interested in playing a superhero, per se. I was interested in seeing if I could channel old-style black-and-white film acting and collide it with Spider-Man. That was the danger and the excitement.<\/p>\n

\n\tA version of this story will appear in an Emmys Extra Edition on June 4. This interview has been edited and condensed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nicolas Cage\u2019s superhero journey\u2019s been packed with more twists and turns than Howard Hawks\u2019 \u201cThe Big Sleep.\u201d It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,16318,38007,11523,33395,22502,122246,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-607159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-johnny-depp","tag-nicolas-cage","tag-prime-video","tag-quentin-tarantino","tag-spider-man","tag-spider-noir","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}