Nicolas Cage’s superhero journey’s been packed with more twists and turns than Howard Hawks’ “The Big Sleep.”
It began in the late-‘90s, when the enigmatic actor was all set to play the Last Son of Krypton for director Tim Burton in “Superman Lives,” only to have the plug pulled weeks before filming. Then, Sam Raimi offered him the part of supervillain Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in “Spider-Man,” but Cage was otherwise engaged (more on that later). The aughts saw Cage approached for the role of Bloodnofsky, a murderous Russian crime lord, in “The Green Hornet,” only to have his vision for the character clash with Seth Rogen’s. There’s also the saga of Cage’s rare copy of the comic book “Action Comics #1,” featuring the first appearance of Superman, which was stolen from him, retrieved and subsequently sold at auction for millions to help cover his rising debts. Oh, and the fact that his stage name was inspired by none other than Luke Cage, a decision he’d made to avoid charges of nepotism as the nephew of Francis Ford Coppola.
Sure, Cage did play Ghost Rider in a pair of messy flicks, Big Daddy in the underrated actioner “Kick-Ass” and voiced some animated superheroes, but embodying a superhero character that fully aligns with his vision had thus far eluded him — until now.
“Spider-Noir,” a new series premiering in a binge on May 27 on Prime Video — while also airing on MGM+ — is the tale of Ben Reilly (Cage), a private investigator in Depression-era New York City whose grief over the death of his wife (Diane Kruger, in a “National Treasure” reunion) has compelled him to retire his crime-fighting Spider-Man alter ego. However, an enchanting nightclub singer, Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li), and a case involving World War I veterans imbued with strange powers, pulls him back into action. Created by Oren Uziel and adapted from the Marvel Comics’ character Spider-Man Noir, who Cage voiced in “Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse,” it’s a visually stunning spectacle — available in black-and-white and color (I’d opt for the former) — that deftly merges the film noir and superhero genres.
At the center of it all is Cage, whose outré approach keeps you engaged throughout. The Oscar-winning actor sat down with Variety to discuss “Spider-Noir,” his unique acting philosophy, and so much more.
I assume you’re a big fan of film noir, right? What are some of your favorites?
Oh yeah. Richard Basehart in a film called “He Walked by Night” was quite wonderful. I saw it when I was very young. The movies that informed “Spider-Noir” were certainly “The Big Sleep” by Howard Hawks, with its rhythm and fast-paced dialogue; “The Maltese Falcon” and “In a Lonely Place.” A lot of Bogart. I wanted to try to create an essence of some of my favorite old world actors because I wanted to embody that style — Bogart, Cagney, Edward G. Robinson — and designed my performance to fit within the black-and-white format, just as Darran Tiernan was doing with the photography and Trayce Field was doing with the wardrobe. I wanted all of that to coalesce so when you watch the black-and-white format of “Spider-Noir,” you really feel like you’re being transported to another time.
Nicolas Cage in “Spider-Noir.”
Prime Video
Your character in “Spider-Noir” reminded me a bit of Elliot Gould’s Marlowe in “The Long Goodbye” with how chatty and sarcastic he is, and how much he enjoys needling people.
I get that. I think the thing that I kept looking at with the Bogart element was that he seems so bemused, like in “The Big Sleep,” when the femme fatale is doing anything wicked he finds it amusing — he enjoys seeing the danger in other people — and I wanted to play a little more of that. As you go deeper into the different episodes, you’ll see other influences emanating. One of the things that we managed to sprinkle in, which is a luxury of doing episodic television, is you have the time to plant these little seeds and watch them blossom. Oren Uziel, the showrunner, and I got to the point of explaining why he is the way he is, and how he’s trying to reprogram his humanity because the DNA of the arachnid is in his body, so he’s trying to figure out how to be human again.
What kind of preparation did you do for this? Did you study spiders?
It’s no secret that people know that I like old-style German expressionism, and I remember Max Schreck in “Nosferatu” at the end before he gets hit by the light and turns into a puff of smoke, he just goes like that [tilts hand down]. That, to me, is indicative of German expressionism, the choreography. It seemed to me that a move like that would be arachnid, so I worked with my body to create that feeling of an animality in the character. Did I study spiders? No. But I do know a little bit about them, and one of the most interesting things I find with spiders is that they have no muscles — their appendages are like straws, and they shoot fluid to move — and so that informed this idea of the movements.
Were you the one that coined “nouveau shamanic” as your acting style? And what is that?
The imagination is an actor’s greatest tool. If you don’t have the imagination to want and believe you’re in this situation so it’s believable to the audience, it’s not going to work; and if you don’t have the imagination to create something that’s outside the box, magic, and different, it’s going to be boring. It actually came from Brian Bates, who’s a professor who wrote a few books on acting, and he put forth the notion that all shamans were actors thousands of years ago going into flights of the imagination and trying to come up with answers to help the village. And the notion is that actors in movies or television are doing the same thing — they’re using their imagination to tell a story that somebody may or may not find helpful in their own lives. We see a character in a movie, and it puts a little spring in our step, or you play an alcoholic in “Leaving Las Vegas” and someone who has struggled with that sees it and they get some sort of answer. The idea is that we’re all like these thousand-year-old shamans going into the imagination. So, what is nouveau shamanism? How you augment your imagination so it becomes more accessible to you.
Do you still go to extremes when getting into character? There are so many amazing stories, like you pulling your own teeth out for “Birdy” or, as Mike Figgis recently recounted, you downing a whole bottle of vodka before a scene in “Leaving Las Vegas” and destroying a casino.
Let’s remember: I started acting when I was 15, and that makes me a child actor of sorts. I had to learn as I went along, and at that time, you had all the stories about De Niro and we all thought we had to live the part and do these wild things to believe we were the character. But I’ve been doing this for 45 years, so I don’t have to do that anymore. And anytime Mike brings up that story, I just want to say: It was in the script, OK?
That [“Leaving Las Vegas”] character, Ben Sanderson, has a total meltdown in a casino — that was in the script — and I did say to him, “I’m not going to drink on this movie, but I want one or two scenes where he’s really drunk,” and he knew I was going to do that, so I think he’s just trying to get more media for his movie 30-something years later by making it a tabloid story.
What made you decide to come to television? The line between cinema and TV has blurred a bit in recent years.
I was adamant about not doing television, because I didn’t want to do anything that was too homogenized or that was like everybody else. And my son sat me down during COVID, and he showed me “Breaking Bad.” I began to see that the actors in that show were afforded the luxury of time to tell their story. I saw Bryan Cranston staring at a suitcase for what seemed like minutes. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and all he was doing was staring at a suitcase, and it occurred to me that you can’t do that in movies: You don’t have the time. I thought, maybe with an eight-hour narrative I can start planting seeds for a character that can bloom into something that I don’t have the luxury of time to do in a movie. That was the main attraction.
I waited for something that I thought would be special, and I can tell you that with “Spider-Noir,” the vision that I had in my imagination manifested in the exact way that I’d hoped. And it was scary, and it was risky. I was constantly worried that I was going to get fired, because I was doing this thing of channeling old actors and colliding it with Stan Lee’s masterpiece that is “Spider-Man” to create this Roy Lichtenstein pop-art sensation of sorts. I didn’t know until I finally saw the eight episodes whether it was going to work.
I was very nervous to do television, I’ll tell ya. One of the producers said, “We’re going to do this read-through because we haven’t hit yet with Amazon, and you gotta make sure that during the read-through you don’t mumble.” I was so nervous that I called my good friend Charlie Sheen, who’s done a lot of television, and asked him for advice. He said, “Well, that’s the hardest part, Nic — the read-through. So, what is it that you’re nervous about?” And I said, “One of the producers said, ‘Don’t mumble.’” He said, “I’m sorry… who told you not to mumble? Is his last name ‘Sony?’” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Well, tell him to fuck off!” So, I had a big laugh, went in, and did the read-through.
You mentioned Charlie Sheen. What’s it like to grow up with this group of young, up-and-coming actors who were your pals — Sean Penn, Chris Penn, Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Johnny Depp, yourself — who are now household names? And weren’t you the one who convinced Johnny to act?
That’s true. We were dating the same girl, and he came to L.A. not wanting to like me. He was a guitar player. I liked him right away, and he said, “I like Nic… I can’t not like him.” We became very good friends, and we were playing Monopoly one day. He was having a very hard time financially — he was selling pens, I believe, and I let him live in my apartment, but then he started stealing my money to buy drinks — and I said, “Why don’t you just try acting?” And he said, “I can’t act.” And I said, “Yeah, you can. Why don’t you just go meet with my agent?” And he met with my agent, and the rest is history. He was an “overnight sensation,” as they say.
Giving yourself the name of a superhero — “Cage,” after Luke Cage — is interesting. How has that name affected you? Is it strange to still be known as “Nicolas Cage?”
No. I am Nic Cage. I changed my name legally last year. I’m Nic Cage in life, and I’m Nic Cage on camera. ‘Tis better to be the patriarch of my own little family than the clown cousin on the margins of someone else’s, so I decided I’m going to bring it on and be “Cage.” “Cage” is a name that I liked coming across in the comics — I just thought he had a cool name — and I grew up in a very avant-garde, artsy family and there was talk about John Cage and the experimental compositions that he did. I was looking for something like “James Dean”; I was looking for something short and sweet. I thought, well, I’ll keep the name “Nicolas” because my father named me Nicolas — with French spelling, which has always frustrated me, because everyone adds an “h.” I don’t know why he gave me the French spelling! But he did.
It does sound like a superhero.
Nic Cage or Nicolas Cage?
Nic Cage.
I think so. You think I should’ve shaved it off and just made it “Nic?” I’m both! I think people know me as both.
Nicolas Cage.
Getty Images
Why have you never worked with Quentin Tarantino? I think that’s something the people want.
I have no idea. I would consider Quentin a friend of sorts. He’s someone I occasionally email with, and we talk about movies, and I liked his book about movies and enjoyed looking at the movies through his eyes. It just never happened. I think there’s a mutual admiration. I’ve always thought he was an acrobat with filmmaking. His movies move in a way that are absolutely dazzling.
You have delivered his lines, though — in “The Rock,” since he punched up the script.
I want you to tell me what lines you think he wrote.
“Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.”
Yeah. But I’m the one that added, “Carla was the prom queen.” And I added, “I’m sensing a lot of prepubescent volatility, a lot of ‘16, I’m angry at my father’ syndrome.’” That’s all me. In that regard, yes — we wrote together in collaboration on dialogue.
I’m 41, and I feel like you have such a stranglehold on elder millennials, because when I was 11, “The Rock” hit theaters that summer. And then the following summer, “Con Air” and “Face/Off” were released within weeks of each other. Three iconic popcorn films.
I like hearing that. It was very unusual to have two movies come out in the cineplex within weeks of each other, and then both go to No. 1. I got lucky. That was a different time.
What’s going on with “Face/Off 2?” I understand Adam Wingard dropped out as director.
Listen, Adam and I had a great lunch together at the Smoke House in Burbank, and we had a terrific conversation. We share similar interests. I like what he’s been doing with the “Godzilla” group, and we talked about one of our favorite supervillains in the old Godzilla movies, which was Hedorah. I’m sure at some point our paths will cross again. I don’t know what happened, and I have zero idea if it’s going to happen. I’m the last guy to know anything.
I love how you and John Travolta match each other’s freak in “Face/Off.”
He did a great job in that movie. I’m only Castor for the first 12 minutes — but what an opening it is — and then he took the ball and ran with it beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. He really had fun with it. I like to think that I liberated him a little bit. I set the template, and he riffed on it and took it.
Speaking of “Spider-Man,” is it true that you turned down the role of Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in Sam Raimi’s first “Spider-Man” movie?
Yeah. Sam and I had a great lunch, and I did say during the lunch, “Listen: whoever plays Spider-Man, let them do one scene where they’re crawling around like a spider when they’re alone,” and it didn’t happen. He wanted me to do the Green Goblin. I liked the idea of Sam Raimi, because of “Evil Dead 1″ and “2,” and I wanted to work with him, but I had this other film called “Adaptation.” It happened with Jim [Carrey] and “Dumb and Dumber,” and I said, “I’m going to do this other film called ‘Leaving Las Vegas,’” and with Sam, I told him, “I’m going to do “Adaptation.’” Both those decisions were the right ones for me, and I’m happy with those results.
Is “True Detective” Season 5 happening? There were reports that you had been cast.
I have no idea. I think they’re working on the material, but I haven’t heard about it in quite some time. I’m not signed on to anything; we’re just talking. I like Issa López a lot, and would be thrilled to work with her, but nothing is concrete. And I’ve never seen the first season of “True Detective,” but I’ve heard great things.
Do you feel like you’ve reclaimed the superhero for yourself to a degree, given what happened with the death of “Superman Lives,” not playing Green Goblin, etc.?
No. I get a lot of inspiration with art, like Warhol with “Wild at Heart” and what I did with the Elvis aura. Here, I was looking at Roy Lichtenstein, and I wanted to do a pop-art mashup. I believe in art synthesis, or what you can do in one art form you can do in another, and that was what I was interested in. I wasn’t necessarily interested in playing a superhero, per se. I was interested in seeing if I could channel old-style black-and-white film acting and collide it with Spider-Man. That was the danger and the excitement.
A version of this story will appear in an Emmys Extra Edition on June 4. This interview has been edited and condensed.
