Interview: Monica Barbaro and Lewis Pullman Talk Working With Joseph Kosinski on 'Top Gun: Maverick'
The two high-flying actors discuss Joseph Kosinski’s approach and making 2022’s highest-grossing movie
Those who know me know how much I love director Joseph Kosinski’s oeuvre. Seeing TRON: Legacy as a twelve-year-old kid in the winter of 2011 was a foundational moviegoing experience for me which brought a level of action filmmaking I had never seen before. And his subsequent films (even Oblivion and Spiderhead, which are unfairly maligned) are just as good. But nothing has come close to the experience I had watching Top Gun: Maverick, which is one of the most triumphant films of the year.
The movie is this year’s highest-grossing production and is still making money in theatres five months after its release. It has struck a chord with millions of people around the world and still finds new audience members. For Monica Barbaro, who plays Natasha “Phoenix” Trace, the reason why so many people responded to the film is that it was made with “a lot of love and heart:”
“There is obviously a love for aviation, but there’s massive artistry behind it, which is not something that's talked about a lot. The relationships are so strong, and every character’s introduction is so strong. You really follow them on this journey and want them to come home. And as much as it’s an American movie, where you see lots of American flags, I think it's also I think it's been internationally successful because of those other pieces. It’s a competition film, it's about camaraderie, teamwork and wanting everyone to come home. And they just built that so beautifully.”
On working with Kosinski, Barbaro described his filmography as “beautiful,” because of his “ background in architecture and mechanical engineering, he's just so good at what he does. A big part of this movie is that it's a love letter to aviation, and you have to understand those mechanics, and he was really the perfect person to work on it, with Claudio [Miranda], of course, the director of photography. The two of them just work so beautifully together.
In terms of our friendship dynamic, and everyone's relationships, I remember meeting with him before we took our first trip to the actual Top Gun. A couple of days after I booked the part, when I read the script that then got tossed out and met with him, he was like, “Okay, you guys are going to go to the Top Gun.” He was also telling me the order of events, and all the things that we were going to learn and he's like, “At the end of the night, you're going to go to the bar you're going to drink with with each other.”
There was never any pressure put on to drink specifically, but it was more like, “This is your time to bond with each other. And this is about your friendship as a group and how you guys interact.” And I think we really had an even better time that night because he was like “Show us who you guys are when you let loose.” Rather than doing a lot of stiff interactions and then getting to know each other three months down the line, we were just thrown into it. And that was fun.”
Lewis Pullman, who plays Robert “Bob” Floyd, described how Kosinski has “such a keen eye. It’s like a painter, especially in the way he's framing us all up. He had a lot of really specific desires for how he wanted the frame to be filled out and to look. I think that is due to his background in architecture, which is one incredible skill. But he also encourages life within boundaries. He was always trying to get the frame in this beautiful composition, and then encourage us to live within those bounds. I think that that was kind of what toed that line really well, and a part of what made him so magical to work with.”
CHECK OUT THE FULL INTERVIEW BELOW:
