Joe Alwyn Says Role In ‘The Brutalist’ Inspired By Trump Family: “I Can Do What I Want”

Caroline Frost
·2-min read

In The Brutalist, enjoying lots of appreciative chat as Awards Season prepares to kick off with the Golden Globes, Joe Alwyn plays Harry, a rich industrialist’s son, with a performance he says was inspired by president-elect Donald Trump and his offspring.

Alwyn told The Guardian newspaper that he perceived Harry as “a wrong ‘un, but quite interesting,” going on to explain:

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“Look who’s the new president of America, and his family. Often family businesses are so insular and stunted and hollow. And you see it with Trump and his children: ‘I can do what I want.’ A convicted felon accused of sexual assault and grabbing them by the pussy and all of that. He’s unanswerable, unfortunately.”

The Brutalist is up for seven Golden Globe Awards Sunday evening, including a Best Actor nod for previous Oscar winner Adrien Brody (who collected a gong at this weekend’s Palm Springs International Festival), Best Actress nomination for Felicity Jones, Best Supporting Actor for Guy Pearce and Best Director nod for Brady Corbet

The film, made for under $10million, comes in at three and a half hours in length, telling the story of the American dream through the eyes of Brody’s László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor who emigrates to America.

Alwyn told The Guardian he didn’t initially believe the film would tick enough boxes to draw big audiences, saying: “To be honest, I thought it might be a really good film that not many people would end up seeing… Given the things against it, given that it ticks most boxes of what you’re not meant to make as a film these days: length, content, all of that – anything on top of that is a really nice surprise.”

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