Yahoo Lifestyle Lukas Gage on ‘Companion,’ the ‘Road House’ Sequel and Not Getting Cast on ‘The Last of Us’: ‘I Got Close’
Lukas Gage is ready to tell on himself. The 29-year-old actor will make his writing debut with a memoir, “I Wrote This for Attention,” out in October.
He says the book shines a light on what he’s learned from his past mistakes. “I was a wild kid,” Gage tells me on this week’s episode of the “Just for Variety” podcast. “I partied too much. But I’m so proud of that boy, especially looking back on him, all that he experienced, all the experiences he had, all the mistakes he made.”
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“For a while I was really hard on myself and I was really disappointed and felt like a failure,” he continues. “I felt like I had fucked up so much. But then looking back, a meeker and more obedient kid would not have been able to pull off what I pulled off and would not have been in this place that I am in right now.”
I am talking to Gage over Zoom video just as his latest movie, “Companion,” hits theaters. Written and directed by Drew Hancock, the horror thriller follows a group of friends whose trip to a remote cabin in the woods goes sideways when one of the guest’s (Jack Quaid) loses control of his robot companion Iris (Sophie Thatcher). Gage and Harvey Guillén play boyfriends who appear to be madly in love.
This Q&A has been edited and condensed. You can listen to the full conversation on “Just for Variety.”
Were you pitched the movie or were you just given the script?
I think I just had the script come in my inbox and I just remember I sat down, I read it in one sitting, and that’s rare for me. But the tone of it I just remember was genius. I thought it was this perfectly dark, comedic, horror, sci-fi, thriller, relationship drama all packed into one.
What I love about it is it is definitely the kind of movie where you’re like, “Would I get a robot?”
I think that’s what’s so fun about the movie, is you can really tell a lot about your friends after you leave the theater and the wide range of reactions of, “Oh, my God, where do I get a sex bot?” Or, “This is insane. We have to completely delete every app and all AI.”
Are you scared of AI?
Definitely. Terrified. I’m absolutely terrified of it. But I also can see the positive effects it could have if you use it in the proper way. But I think it’s such a tricky line of where do we draw the line and the boundary of how much is too far.
The one thing it hits on is that age-old question since computers started is, what happens if computers take over?
Yeah, a hundred percent.
And it’s like, could they ever? And you sit there and you’re like logically, no, they can’t.
But who’s to say?
But who’s to say because you never thought that we’d have robots.
A hundred percent. We didn’t know about the Tesla bots when we were filming, and that’s all new. And that stuff really scares the shit out of me. But I think what’s amazing about this movie is even without that component to it, the message of dynamics and power, dynamics and relationships, and misogyny and masculine fragility, and entitlement that a lot of toxic males can have in relationships.
How great is it that there’s a gay couple in here and it’s just here’s the gay couple? It’s not the gay couple’s coming out, it’s not the gay couple is tortured about their relationship or they’re hiding it from the other couples. It’s just there.
It’s incredible and it’s also nice that it isn’t put into a stereotypical one note portrayal of this kind of relationship. There’s something that I think about their relationship that is really authentic and loving and equal. It feels like the most respected real relationship out of all three in the movie. So that’s cool. And like you said, it’s not a whole coming out thing. There just happens to be a queer couple on the trip and it’s never treated any different or any weird trope that it’s hitting you over the head with. It’s fun and it’s different, and I think that their love is really, really cute. I ship them.
This is going to sound sick, but how much do you love shooting a gun, stabbing someone, beating the shit out of them? Is that just fun?
I love it so much. I love anything physical I can do. I said something in an interview the other day where I made a joke about Conor McGregor beating me up [in “Road House”] and the words got a little bit twisted. I loved it. I loved every part of it. I love to think I’m a tough guy and not wear padding and try to rough it, even though I probably shouldn’t, and it was my responsibility. But I love having that element to the character. I love being able to do that training. And I just look like a badass. I do.
When I was a kid, I was fearless. I was the one jumping out of the trees, the ramps with bicycles just flying through the air. No fear. I remember reading that Burt Reynolds did his own stunts, so I wanted to be an actor and a stuntman. All I wanted to do was fly in the air in a car.
I love that. I went to a summer camp as a kid where I did acting or filmmaking or editing or rockstar camp, and one year I did the stuntman camp where we would hit each other with sugar candy that looked like glass and do these choreographed fight things. And I was obsessed with it. I loved it so much.
How old were you?
God, it must’ve been from 9 to 12 I would go to this camp. I loved it. There was also a massage part of the camp where you could learn how to massage.
No!
Yeah. It was normal back then.
Is it still around?
I don’t think it’s still around. That part, it’s a little bit weird looking back on it.
Did you take massage classes?
Oh, hell yeah. I did it because I signed up late one year and they were like, “Everything is full.” So I had to learn how to do Shiatsu massages.
Hold on, hold on.
I know.
How old were you?
Must have been 10 or 11.
You’re massaging other 10-year-olds?
Yeah. It could never be around today. Great times though…All those skills. The stunts came in handy for this and “Road House,” and the massaging came in handy for “Down Low.”
Will we see you in the “Road House” sequel?
I didn’t die. So I think that there’s hope for me. I loved working with Doug Liman and then obviously to work with Jake Gyllenhaal, someone I grew up just admiring and rehearsing “Donnie Darko” in my room as an 11-year-old and wanting to be him.
In between massages.
In between massage camp. Exactly. It’s so crazy. It’s so insane.
The visuals are just weird. Get them out of my head.
People rubbing each other’s baby fat with oil. That was my childhood.
That has to be in the book. Please.
It’s absolutely in the book. Don’t worry. There’s a whole chapter about it.
Wow. Let’s go back to “Road House.” Have they spoken to you about the sequel?
Yeah. I think they’re in the really early stages of it, and Jake has been super busy with being a Broadway star and figuring out his schedule with the M. Night Shyamalan movie, but it’s for sure happening. It’s in early stages right now.
So you’re definitely in it.
I don’t know. I hope so.
You’ve done so much television. Is there a TV show you really wanted but you didn’t get?
I’ve been luckier in TV than I have in film. There was one on “The Last of Us” the new season that I didn’t get that I got close to. I would’ve loved to have done that.
What do you love about “The Last of Us?”
I was a fan of the game. I had a real video game era in my life where I had to throw it away. There was this game called “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion,” and it was so bad that I would spend nights not sleeping, playing that video game. So I had to get rid of all video games.
So let’s talk about that book. I know we talked a little bit about it the other night. You said it was therapeutic to do it.
I’m very young and I’m aware that I have no right to have a memoir. On the surface people will see that and be like, “Why the hell is this person just starting his career and writing that?” But I think that’s not what it was about. It’s not, “Look at all these cool things I’ve done.” If anything, I’m more interested in the places I’ve failed. I was a wild kid. I partied too much. But I’m so proud of that boy, especially looking back on him, all that he experienced, all the experiences he had, all the mistakes he made. For a while I was really hard on myself and I was really disappointed and felt like a failure. I felt like I had fucked up so much. But then looking back, a meeker and more obedient kid would not have been able to pull off what I pulled off and would not have been in this place that I am in right now.
Is your family nervous about the book?
They’ve read it, this first draft of it. I think I do a pretty good job of not coming for anybody. Everyone in the book, including myself, has really great qualities and really shitty qualities. They were like, “Yeah, it’s pretty accurate and we’re sorry about that.” And I’m like, “No, no, it’s fine. It’s all good. It’s all good. It’s okay.”
I’m sure people are asking you already because they’re curious — is your marriage [to celebriity hairstylist Chris Appleton] going to be in the book? You kind of hinted to Andy Cohen that you signed an NDA.
It’s not really in the book. It just didn’t really feel like a really important part of the story. Definitely a divorce is talked about, but the specificity of that relationship didn’t really feel like it made the cut for this book. It just didn’t feel like that story needed to be told in this one.
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