For most of his career Vince Vaughn has made us laugh. Now we see a completely different side of the actor in the sinister True Detective. This change comes at a perfect time in
his career.
Vince Vaughn had been binge watching the first season of True Detective. He had more than one good reason. He had been in talks with the show runner Nic Pizzolatto to collaborate on writing a project together but it did not come to fruition. He also loved the show.
“We had many conversations about story and structure and we just got along really well,” says the actor, who was fascinated by Mr. Pizzolatto’s literary approach to storytelling. “It was already before the first season of True Detective came out. When the second one came along, he reached out to me and I was really excited to participate because I was such a fan of the content.”
Pizzolatto is the auteur behind the show. He not only writes the whole show, he is on every set, guiding actors and directors alike to make sure the ‘tone’ is kept. “I am really impressed with him as a writer,” says Vince Vaughn about the creator, who also works as a professor of literature. “He has an incredible ability to tell stories. I was really, really blown away by him and I am a fan. But also he is a very down to earth guy, so I had great conversations with him that were very intelligent but also about real life experiences.” Audiences know Vince Vaughn mainly as a comedic actor. In 2004, USA Today used the term “Frat Pack” to describe a group of comedic actors (Steve Carell, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn among others) who were then starring alongside each other in a string of hit comedies. They appeared in such films as Old School, Starsky & Hutch, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story and Wedding Crashers.
“I have already done a lot of independent films and more dramatic stuff,” says Vince Vaughn to point out that the dramatic arena is not completely foreign to him. “I did it with Clay Pigeons and Return to Paradise, but kind of got a run of doing these studio comedies and have recently been more in assembly line comedies. So I was really pleased to get a chance to go and do something tonally different.”
In True Detective, Vaughn plays the very dark and troubled character Frank Semyon. When his business partner in a development scheme connected to California’s high-speed rail system is viciously and brutally murdered, he returns to his dark past to find out who killed him and why.
“I did a lot of research,” says Vince Vaughn, who looked at documentaries and books on the subject and talked to older friends of his from Chicago, who had met shady business people. “And then I used my imagination to create his back-story. Who his parents were and how he grew up and how he saw the world. How he ended up who he was. So I was trying to get an emotional understanding of him and get an idea of how he would react.”
It looks like True Detective might do for Vince Vaughn what it did for Matthew McConaughey, who played one of the leads in the first season. And Vince Vaughn needs a career boost. His latest films Delivery Man, The Internship, The Watch and The Dilemma were not successful at the box office and his last hit was Couples Retreat back in 2009.
“The timing of the project was great for me,” acknowledges Vaughn. “It was mainly about the material and to get a chance to participate in the work of someone who is at the top of
his game.” The actor turned 45 earlier this year. He married Kyle Weber in 2010 and has two children: a 4-year-old daughter Locklyn Kyla and a soon to be 2-year-old son
Vernon Lindsay.
“I actually enjoy this time in my life,” he says. “I am happily married with kids and I am focused on working on stuff I really like and I am trying to be connected with my surroundings and to better myself and have better experiences. I think that getting married and having a kid was a determining point in my life where I really strive to better myself.”
TC