Joel Edgerton on ‘Black Mass’: “I Felt It Was the Wrong Idea to Go and Milk [John Connolly]”

“Whether I had access to [John Connolly] or not, I don’t know, but to go and visit a guy in prison and then say, ‘hey, I know you have one version of events, but I’m actually going to go over here and make a movie and say that you’re a bad guy,’ feels dishonest,” Black Mass star Joel Edgerton tells The Hollywood Reporter as to why he declined to spend time with the former FBI agent he portrayed in the film.

to do just the opposite.””]

“He’s been very vocal about his opinion of those events, that he was sanctioned under the FBI,” Edgerton explains, “and [Black Mass] was saying completely different.”

“I talked to a lot of [Connolly’s] colleagues, and I had tons of footage of him,” the actor says of what he used to research the role, but when it came to face-to-face interviews with the incarcerated man, Edgerton wasn’t interested. “I just felt like it was the wrong idea for me to go and milk him and then say, ‘alright you stay here in prison, I’m going to go over here and be on a movie set.'”

The actor wrote and directed this year’s thriller called The Gift. He discusses his experience with THR saying, “As an actor, we’re one part of the watch, but as a director I felt like the watchmaker.”

The full Actor Roundtable will air on Close Up With The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday, Jan 17, at 11 a.m. ET on Sundance TV.

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