Fans of David Fincher’s The Social Network may be familiar with how the director used an actor named Josh Pence to act opposite Armie Hammer in scenes featuring the Winklevoss twins. Pence’s face was later digitally removed and replaced with Hammer saying the necessary lines, and, boom, you have two Armie Hammers in one scene. Director Andy Muschietti used a similar process to get two Ezra Millers on screen for a significant majority of The Flash.
Funny how both actors who’ve had their performances doubled later had scandals, but luckily, we’re here to talk about the guy acting opposite Miller during principal photography on The Flash. Meet Ed Wade, an actor, dancer, and rugby player who was in the trenches with Miller for seven long months:
Per Wade’s Instagram post, Muschietti recently spoke with Movie Maker about the search for someone to act opposite Miller for most of the production. The director explained:
“We needed someone that physically resembled Ezra because there are many shots where we only replace the head. … The other part we needed was chemistry with Ezra. Ezra was very much part of the election, let’s say, of choosing the actor. Another thing was the adaptability and the ability to mimic Ezra’s mannerisms. That was a job that Ed took very seriously, and he just excelled at it.”
Producer Barbara Muschietti, Andy’s sister, thought Wade was crucial to building a sibling element between the film’s two Barrys. She said, “It was hard when we were done because Ezra and Ed played together for basically 138 days. It was like watching twins separate.”
As far as how they shot it, the director explained that Miller often played the central and slightly older Barry during the shoot, but if the younger Barry had more screen time, Miller would pivot to that. Then, a few months later, Miller acted out the parts they didn’t originally play inside the so-called “volume,” which is a massive LED screen used on projects like Disney Plus’ The Mandalorian.
According to Muschietti, those later performances were captured after the original scenes were fully edited, noting, “We needed those scenes to be edited to know what performances we were using and condense the work that we were doing with volume capture.”
It sounds like none of that would have been possible without the dedication of Wade across months of shooting. Muschietti called him “an incredible actor,” so let’s hope some of the praise being given to Miller for anchoring the emotional core of a pretty insane movie will find its way to the other half of the Flash equation.