Daniel Webber on “Capturing the Essence” of Mötley Crüe in ‘The Dirt’

Netflix is taking audiences into the wild and unbelievable world of music’s most notorious rock band Mötley Crüe in its new film The Dirt, based on Neil Strauss’ 2001 autobiography of the same name.

Stepping into the shoes of lead singer Vince Neil, actor Daniel Webber sat down with The Hollywood Reporter In Studio to discuss how the Jeff Tremaine film “captures the essence” of the band and why it was “one of the most fun films” he’s been a part of.

“It’s going to be an absolute roller coaster of fun, and you just follow the wildest bunch of young guys,” Webber said. “It’s like a 10-year span of their lives and their career…the highs and lows and their relationships with themselves and with each other, and then also what happens throughout that period with their life, due to success or whatnot. But it’s just one of the most fun films I’ve ever been a part of.”

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Alongside Webber as Neil, the film stars Machine Gun Kelly as Tommy Lee, Douglas Booth as Nikki Sixx and Iwan Rheon as Mick Mars, and as Webber tells THR, the actors “really became these four maniacs.”

“We really just wanted to capture the essence of who these guys were, the spirit of their story, and I think each one of us somehow just had a kernel of that, which just got slowly encouraged to come out as we went along,” he said.

Webber also spoke on capturing Neil’s complicated and troubled story in the film, saying, “There’s the outside thing that we all see, which is the charm and success and cool and attitude and bravado and all of that stuff that everybody sees in the performance, but you have to get beyond that, go dig below the surface, and there was one thing that stuck with me that kind of took me through the whole shoot, which was he said at one point his destination of choice was oblivion. And that’s a really telling statement.”

He continued: “The idea that as opposed to sort of dealing with the emotions, kind of like all of them, they just kept charging forward like full steam ahead, pedal to the metal, go as fast as you can sort of attitude. And so that has a consequence…that’s really where we get to in the story. You see the success, but then there’s also the reality of the rock and roll lifestyle and the toll that it takes.”

The Dirt is streaming now on Netflix. 

Watch the video above to hear Webber discuss working with Machine Gun Kelly, his musical background and more.