Andrew Garfield And Gil Birmingham On Under The Banner Of Heaven And Spider-Man's Future

Andrew, first of all, congratulations on the success of "tick, tick...BOOM!" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home," and I have to go back to one of my favorite films of the last decade, "Hacksaw Ridge" — all three done in decidedly different genres. Now, you're in the crime thriller genre with "Under the Banner of Heaven." Was it a move by design or is it by happenstance? Did you do it because you wanted to play in that genre since you haven't before or did it simply boil down to a great script?

Andrew Garfield: A little bit of both — and thank you so much. I loved the Jon Krakauer book, when it first came out. I read it and ate it up. Like everyone else, I was wondering, "Oh, someone's going to be turning this into a film or a TV show and I wonder how." Cut to ten years or so later, and Dustin Lance Black says, "Hey, I've adapted 'Under the Banner of Heaven.' I've been working on it for ten years and I have some scripts I want to show you." It's like, "Oh my gosh" ... [I was] immediately interested because I love the subject matter so much and I love Dustin, and it quickly became a no-brainer.

Part of the attraction, absolutely, was that it was very different, a genre that I've never done. A genre that I love. I love watching. I'm curious to see how I would feel being a part of it. Also, the character is a much more internal stoic kind of human being than I've been playing in the last ... He's pretty far from a televangelist or a flamboyant musical theater writer or an angsty superhero. [He's] a very internal, solid, ordinary, centered dude — a father, a husband and a cop, and a Mormon. It's fun to stretch in that way.