We Got This Covered: Miles, you have played a number of diverse roles in movies like Rabbit Hole, Footloose and this one. What do you look for when choosing roles?
Miles Teller: I guess it starts with the script. Now I’m kind of really trying to find out about directors though. I think directors are so important because once you leave a movie it goes through a lot of different changes. I need somebody in the room to really have a strong hand on it. For me, at a young age, I said I wanted to do drama and comedy. As an actor, you want to believe you can do everything. Obviously people do a lot of things better than you. But for me it’s just like with this script, I thought this was the funniest script I read in a very long time, and we’re constantly reading scripts.
Justin Chon: By the way, this guy just got the Grand Jury Award at Sundance for Best Dramatic Actor. That’s a big deal.
Miles Teller: Yeah. This movie The Spectacular Now which is coming out is more dramatic. There are scripts that you really connect to that you hope you get the chance to do them because bottom line is it’s hard to get a hard part in any movie because it’s a very limited field.
We Got This Covered: Miles, is it true that you were originally called in to audition for the role of Casey (which later went to Skylar Astin)?
Miles Teller: Yeah I was supposed to go in for Casey because he was the attractive leading man who gets the girl, and I was like “no I think Miller is a lot funnier.” In the script Miller was like a big Phish fan, and I’m a big Grateful Dead fan so I went in wearing a tie-dyed Grateful Dead t-shirt and said “I’m not reading for Casey, I’m ready for Miller so let’s do it.” That was like the closest to my own voice that I read in a script in a long time, so I felt pretty good about it. That’s Hollywood; your agent’s like “no you want this part he gets the girl” and I’m like “I don’t give a fuck! I think the other part so much better.”
We Got This Covered: With a movie like 21 and Over, how much trust do you have to put in each other?
Miles Teller: With improv you really just do need to trust who you are working with. It’s always yes to everything you’re saying and you don’t want to be a dick about it. And Jon and Scott trusted us a lot to ad lib which in my experience is not always the case because with ad-libbing you can go nutty and you go all these places to where you forget about the scene. So there’s lot of trust with the comedy.
Justin Chon: I had to trust these guys 100% because my eyes are closed most of the time. The scene that I hate of the most was in the car where I was in the windshield. Skylar kept touching me and I got angry. Then Sarah tried to touch me just to say “are you okay” and I said “DON’T FUCKING TOUCH ME” and she was like “oh my God! Sorry!” I was claustrophobic and my neck was all tweaked, and I had to trust them for that because I was in the windshield of a car.
We actually shot part of it in China, not in this version, but I woke up on my bathroom floor with my neck tweaked and I couldn’t move my neck. So they hired a full-time acupuncturist to come and do acupuncture on me six times a day because I couldn’t move my neck and I’m supposed be running through these Chinese villages, so that’s a whole other thing.
We Got This Covered: What were your 21st birthdays like?
Miles Teller: My 21st birthday was actually pretty cool. Eight of my best friends from Florida flew up to New York, I was going to NYU at the time, and my mom said “there’s a guy in a park you’re going to meet. You going to meet this guy in Union Square Park, don’t ask him any questions, he’s got a package for you. Go up, grab the package and leave.” So I walk up and its Duncan who was like my cousin’s buddy who I have met a bunch of times, and he’s wearing a mustache and he says “take this package” and I say “thanks Duncan.” I go back to my house and open it up, and it has eight fluorescent green shirts with my face on it with a crown that says 21. So the next day from 10 AM, me and all my boys were bar hopping and wearing T-shirts with my face on them and we went around New York. New York is a nice playground to wander around in, and that was awesome.
Justin Chon: My story is not as cool as that. I was going to USC at the time and I studied abroad in Korea for a semester. I got really wasted and I woke up on the street on the door of a pharmacy or something. My shirt started off white, but it was completely black. When I woke up it was just raining on me, and my friends just left me there on the street. Then I took the subway to my grandma’s house and took a shower and stayed there to get over my hangover.
We Got This Covered: What did you take away from the experience of making this movie?
Miles Teller: This was the most fun I’ve ever had in a movie for me.
Justin Chon: This was good times.
Miles Teller: Every film I’ve ever done, the first time I see it absolutely hate it. By the second time, I can accept it and it doesn’t go past that. But the first time I saw it I was laughing. I thought it was really funny and it was easy to watch. I wasn’t so self-conscious about it.
That concludes our interview but we’d like to thank Justin and Miles for talking with us. Be sure to check out 21 and Over, in theatres this Friday.