It was almost like a veil had been draped over his reality.
You were allowed out for like an hour a day to do exercise.
Just walking around the center of town, I’d never seen it like that.
VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images
It just was completely dead.
But it was a welcome change.
I’d been so manic, he says.
Steve Dietl/Netflix
Manic is putting it lightly.
After that, it was back toInvisible Manmode for a press tour, and then… nothing.
Another was baker, but that fad lasted only a few days.
EIKE SCHROTER/NETFLIX
So, he turned to clearing out cupboards.
I found all the folders with all my scripts fromBly.
I opened it up and there were all these notes from the kids.
Ben used to write me these notes: To my friend, Oliver.
You win the award of best friend of the day.
They are just the sweetest, sweetest kids.
Jackson-Cohen portrayed Luke Crain, the heroin-addicted twin brother of Pedretti’s Nell.
It was the first time he felt like he could put himself into a character.
Not that he’s had a heroin addiction.
It was more about Luke’s emotional trauma and childhood that he understood well.
I’m actually quite a sensitive, emotional man.
I didn’t have to be those things.
It was quite freeing in a way to play a character like that.
It was just nuts for two months, he recalls of the hype.
I kind of signed up based on this phone call, he says.
There were so many different iterations of how it was going to play out.
We werent clear on who I would play.
In one early draft, Jackson-Cohen was to play the gardener.
It was an iteration where Victoria and I were going to play lovers, he remembers.
This marked another rarity for Jackson-Cohen: he sat down with Flanagan to conceptualize their iteration of Peter together.
I said, very early on, we can’t play him as a villain, the actor explains.
It was a similar conversation that director Leigh [Whannell] and I had onInvisible Man.
We didn’t want him to be the black mustache-twirling [guy].
I think the same thing applied with Peter.
Mike and I were both really interested in blurring the lines.
What Peter does in Bly is toxic.
It is about masculinity and it is about ownership and it’s about possession.
Jackson-Cohen equally finds Peter interesting in relation to Luke and the idea of choice.
Luke chose to be good, he adds.
He had a will to be good.
It’s characters like these that drew Jackson-Cohen into horror in the first place.
Jackson-Cohen plays Johnson’s onscreen husband in a story, he says, about motherhood and what that means.
By early next year, COVID willing, he’ll then be filming the period pieceMr.
Malcolm’s Listwith costars Constance Wu and Sam Heughan.
He pauses to consider his next words.
So, it is quite hard.
I’m doing these next two [movies], but after this, I have no idea."
Here’s hoping he finds a new hobby.
