From left: Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Zach Braff, Owen Wilson, Harrison Ford, Glen Powell and Riz Ahmed were photographed April 25 at The Georgian Hotel in Santa Monica. Photographed by Beau Grealy These days, people come up to Harrison Ford and don’t want anything from him. “They don’t want a picture, they don’t want an autograph, they just want to tell me that they like the show, and then they walk away,” says the Shrinking star. At 83, he’s tickled by it. “I think it’s because I’m in their living room now, and I’m much more familiar. It’s a testament to what television does.”
On Mateen: Yves Saint Laurent shirt, tie, pants. On Braff and Wilson: own clothes. On Ford: Paul Smith suit; Ford’s shirt, tie, socks; John Vanderhoff shoes. On Powell: Caruso suit, shirt; Saint Laurent shoes. On Ahmed: Louis Vuitton suit, shoes; Completed Works ring; stylist’s tee. Photographed by Beau Grealy The reflection comes early in a boisterous hour-plus with the sextet — Glen Powell (Chad Powers), Owen Wilson (Stick), Zach Braff (Scrubs), Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Wonder Man) and Riz Ahmed (Bait) — gathered at The Georgian Hotel for THR‘s annual Comedy Actor Emmy Roundtable. Over a few Bloody Marys, the men swap stories and advice about navigating fame, fandom and their own insecurities.
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What’s the wildest thing a fan has come up to you and said?
HARRISON FORD “My mother wants to sleep with you” — loudly announced in an airport.
GLEN POWELL I didn’t mean it, by the way. It was the first time I was meeting you …
FORD I know. And your mom didn’t mean it, either. (Laughter.)
RIZ AHMED Once, somebody asked me to sign something, and I signed it and then they chased me down the street and started yelling at me: “That’s not your signature!”
ZACH BRAFF I was once parallel parking in Manhattan and doing a really poor job, and a guy just walked by and went, “You’re killing it, Braff.”
OWEN WILSON You feel that somehow your street cred is on the line with parallel parking.
BRAFF I know. And it’s bad enough when you’re doing it anonymously and fucking it up.
Glen, you must get some wild ones?
POWELL I did have somebody ask me to sign a photo that was like a family photo that there’s no way they would have access to.
FORD Of your family?
YAHYA ABDUL-MATEEN II And they asked you to sign it?
POWELL Yeah. So, I’m sitting there like, “Where did you get that?”
AHMED That’s scary.
FORD Did they already have the rest of your family sign it and you were the closer?
POWELL I was the closer. (Laughter.) There’s [also] a woman in London who has been printing out pictures of my face for the last 80 days and has eaten my face every day. Literally will eat my face until I give her a role in a movie.
WILSON Whoa, you’ve had some really chilling encounters.
POWELL I didn’t know this was a thing until it was described to me while I was on the red carpet. They’re like, “Hey, the girl that eats your face is on the red carpet.” I go, “What are you talking about?”
BRAFF How did she get red carpet access?!
POWELL That’s what I was like. “Guys, come on, this is a real liability.”
Ford says he can’t tell the difference between a Star Wars, Indiana Jones or Shrinking fan: “You should be able to spot it coming.” Paul Smith suit; Ford’s shirt, tie, socks; John Vanderhoff shoes. Photographed by Beau Grealy Riz’s show, like Yahya’s, is about an actor in that fake-it-till-you-make-it stage of his career. He’s literally keeping the tags on his Prada sweaters to return them after auditions. What do you miss most and least about that phase of your career?
WILSON I wouldn’t miss doing auditions. That’s always a very uncomfortable thing. I had a friend that went in for an audition, and he got really bad cottonmouth, where it was almost like his voice was whistling.
ABDUL-MATEEN Aw, man.
WILSON And you know when you finish, everybody says, “Well, thank you. That was terrific”?
ABDUL-MATEEN But everybody knows …
WILSON Everybody knows! And he was so embarrassed, and he leaves and he went out the wrong door.
ABDUL-MATEEN Oh no.
WILSON He was out on the balcony.
ABDUL-MATEEN Oh no.
WILSON And rather than go back inside …
ABDUL-MATEEN He jumped off?
WILSON He climbed down the fire escape. So, you think about the people in the room waiting, going, “Oh, God. Now this guy who can’t talk is out on the balcony. Well, we got to wait for him to come back. Where is he?” Then looking out and seeing him like Starsky & Hutch jumping off a fire escape.
FORD That should have gotten him the part.
WILSON You’re right.
ABDUL-MATEEN Where is he now?
WILSON Actually, it was my older brother.
POWELL Wait, it was Andrew?
WILSON It was Andrew.
POWELL That is great.
WILSON So, yeah, I wouldn’t miss stuff like that.
Styling by Felicity Kay. Louis Vuitton suit, shoes (group shot); Completed Works ring; stylist’s tee. Photographed by Beau Grealy Anyone else?
AHMED What popped into my head was this sense of dancing like no one’s watching is the best dancing. And I think about some of the films I did in the beginning, and I was 100 percent certain no one would watch, which was so liberating.
You could just take swings. But sometimes you get that thing in your head that people will see this, and it can get in your way.
WILSON Inhibit you, yeah. I also wouldn’t miss that feeling you get, when you’re a bit more established, of being nervous, where you do feel self-conscious. It’s nice to get to a place where you have some confidence, like, “Oh, they can’t really do anything to me now.”
ABDUL-MATEEN I actually went through a bit of a wave because breaking into this thing with my first job, I was like, “I like my ideas.” I was a big fan of myself, and I’d go out and that was really the energy [I’d bring]. And then I started to get feedback, and it was like, “Oh, maybe I don’t have the best ideas.” That was the first time that I was engaging with that.
WILSON That idea? That possibility? What a reckoning that must have been. (Laughter.)
ABDUL-MATEEN Right, right, right. But now I’m enjoying the freedom that comes with having been around the block a couple times. I’m like, “No, I do like my ideas.” My ideas are what make me me.
FORD I’m reminded of a piece of advice that Marlon Brando is said to have offered. He said that you can’t care or they’ll see it on your face — but you’ve got to care before you decide to not care. You’ve got to care a lot to take care of your part of the job. But then that not-caring part is like turning out the lights and dancing. It’s critical to be able to retain that freedom that you felt when it didn’t matter so much. Because now all of a sudden, it’s your fault that the movie is not making money, so you’ve got to be a little bit more careful. No. You shouldn’t. You can’t. It’s the end of it when you do that.
“I was so obsessed with Zoolander, I wrote a treatment for Zoolander 2,” says Powell. Styling by Warren Alfie Baker. Caruso suit, shirt; Saint Laurent shoes (group shot). Photographed by Beau Grealy Zach, you were in your 20s when Scrubs hit the first time and then you made Garden State. What was the blessing and the curse of having that success so early?
BRAFF Well, I think it dovetails with what these guys were just saying where I was instantly so huge, so fast, and I got very self-conscious and didn’t know how to follow it all up. You hear a lot of bands talking about their first album. Garden State was a success, and they were like, “All right, good. What’s next?” And I was like, “What’s next? I’ve been writing that movie my whole life.” (To Wilson) You must have experience with this, with your films …
WILSON Yeah, yeah.
BRAFF I felt like it peaked and I was hosting SNL and all these things were happening, and I didn’t really know how to keep that going or follow it up, and I got in my head about it and was overly precious about it. And once you start getting in your head too much, you really can get in your way. I think I did in some ways.
WILSON Sometimes it does seem like the old studio system where directors were just thrown in [to the next thing was healthier].
AHMED And because you’d just get on the horse and go, people were given more opportunities to swing and miss.
WILSON Exactly.
AHMED Now, there is so much pressure on every swing. Like Harrison said, it’s your fault if the movie is not making money. And there’s so many eyeballs on everything, and there’s people eating your face every day on TikTok. So, it can be hard to convince yourself that no one is watching because everyone is watching all the time in the most intense way in a business that feels more precious.
Glen, do you feel that? You can sometimes read headlines and think that you’re almost supposed to save the theatrical experience …
BRAFF Are you going to save the theatrical experience?
AHMED Could you please?
POWELL Guys, please don’t do this to me. (Laughter.) The thing that I think I’ve started realizing is that it’s very easy in this business to get in your own head or let the noise influence the way you feel about the job. And the thing is, sets are the happiest places on earth for me — if I’ve done the work ahead of time. I actually did a movie with Owen when I was, like, 15, called The Wendell Baker Story. His brothers [Andrew and Luke] directed, and I played a paperboy. I remember getting the call that I was going to get to be in a movie with all these guys. I mean, Zoolander was also one of my favorite movies of all time. I almost got kicked out of church camp for doing a walk-off onstage.
WILSON Whoa.
POWELL That’s another story. But after getting it, I remember practicing in our cul-de-sac with my mom, just throwing papers over and over and over, hundreds of rolled up papers, and then the feeling of confidence when you step on set, knowing that you are going to throw a paper better than anyone else. For me, discipline is the key to my happiness. If I feel like I haven’t done the work, then that imposter syndrome, and probably the world at large, starts getting in your head and messes with it. But if I’ve invested in it properly, I get to tune out the world and just enjoy the ride.
Wilson’s own clothes. Photographed by Beau Grealy What do you wish you knew about navigating fame and success and all that comes with it when you were starting out?
FORD You don’t have to, whatever it is.
WILSON Oh, that’s good.
FORD We do have a choice, and we can make choices about our behavior. And for me, what I want to be is useful. I’m not there to show off. I’m there to do the work and get it done. And I love the company and I love what we’re doing together and I love occasionally being scared of what I don’t quite know how to do.
WILSON I remember a friend saying, “If you’re on a set and you’re not feeling really lucky to be there, there’s a problem.” And I’m sure sometimes you do get that, where you’re like, “Hmm, I don’t feel that lucky to be here.” (Laughter.)
ABDUL-MATEEN Oh, yeah.
WILSON I’ve worked on lots of things that haven’t worked, but at least while I was working, I got to a place of believing, “This could be pretty great.”
BRAFF Have you had this experience where it was awful and then it comes out, and you’re like, “Fuck, that was good?”
WILSON I’ve had much more the other way. (Laughter.)
POWELL I have this letter in my office from Richard Linklater that he wrote to me right before Everybody Wants Some!! came out. We had the best time ever making this movie, and he probably knew it was going to make zero dollars — and he said, “You’ve got to separate the experience of making a movie from the experience of releasing it. You’ve got to literally protect both of those experiences as different things because otherwise the experience of releasing a movie will taint what it felt like to actually make it.”
WILSON That’s really good.
POWELL It’s saved me from a lot because that noise can get really loud and just taint how much fun this shit is.
Styling by Jan Michael Quammie. Yves Saint Laurent jacket, shirt, tie, pants. Photographed by Beau Grealy What would you all do if you had anonymity for a day?
ABDUL-MATEEN I assume I have it. One thing I’m pretty adamant about is making sure that I keep the ability to do whatever I want to do. Because Harrison Ford said I don’t have to. He said I don’t have to make a choice.
FORD Also, if you’re just acting like a normal person, nobody’s going to pay attention to you.
BRAFF (To Ford) I see you walk around Manhattan. You’re one of the most famous people on earth and you don’t seem to let it affect how you behave.
AHMED It’s a weird thing as actors because we all want to be looked at on some level. We also don’t want to be seen.
WILSON Yeah, that’s interesting.
AHMED So there’s this weird push-pull, but I very recently made the decision to stop hiding. I don’t want to wear my baseball cap or these glasses. And you know what happens? Nothing. A couple of people go, “I like that movie.” The world’s a slightly friendlier place. Every now and again, maybe something weird happens. OK. You get on with your day.
FORD Right.
AHMED I think part of why we feel so happy and safe on these film sets is because we can be unguarded, and we can have these collisions and connections. So, I just said, “I want to treat life like that a bit more.”
POWELL (To Ford) We did Expendables 3 together. Oscar-nominated Expendables 3. We were at Cannes, going down the Croisette in tanks.
WILSON So Hollywood.
POWELL Oh, it was so Hollywood. We literally invaded Cannes in tanks.
AHMED It’s why we love you guys in Europe. We really are big fans of Americans. (Laughter.)
POWELL But I remember showing up, and you have some of the biggest action stars in the world in this movie, and a lot of the guys had these big bodyguards that are jacked, they got the earpiece, and they just looked like they had something to protect. And then you walked right from the plane into Cannes, and no one bothered you. I watched it happen, and I was like, “Wow, if you don’t act like it’s a thing, it won’t be a thing.” You figured out how to do it. It was awesome.
FORD Well, they thought I was you. (Laughter.)
POWELL By the way, there was no reason for me to be in that cast.
FORD There was no reason for anybody to be in that cast! (Laughter.)
“Once you start getting in your head too much, you really can get in your way,” says Braff of early successes in Scrubs and Garden State. “I think I did in some ways.“ Braff’s own clothes. Photographed by Beau Grealy Glen, I believe you wore your Chad Powers prosthetics out in the world, or at least to a Starbucks?
Powell Yeah, I’ve worn them out just for fun. Not as a lifestyle.
Abdul-Mateen II He’s giving it a test run.
What was your experience walking in those shoes?
Powell There’s something really fun about it – you’re putting on prosthetics and doing something a little crazy. The buy-in of the show is kind of wild, but there’s something, as an actor, about the freedom of getting away from your face for a bit and just really, really swinging for something. But it’s not going to be a lifestyle. You’re not going to see me go off the reservation and full method.
Yahya, not too long ago, you defined “freedom” as being at a place in your career where you don’t have to live in New York or L.A. anymore. Talk to me about these moments where you think, “Maybe I’ll move to Kansas and just be a farmer.”
ABDUL-MATEEN Glen and I have been talking about my little farm thing. And, actually, I met Riz back in 2021 at an event at the Soho Farmhouse.
WILSON The place outside of London?
ABDUL-MATEEN Yes.
BRAFF I love that place, but I know a lot of English people will be like, “This is an American fantasy of where we’re from.”
AHMED Don’t ruin it for him.
BRAFF No, I love it, too.
ABDUL-MATEEN I’m going to own it, man, because as soon as I got on those grounds, my whole body just said, “Shh.” So, I’ve been looking for that — this idea of, “I don’t have to be in L.A. or New York constantly chasing the work, chasing the work.” Looking for a farm is really just stepping out on faith and saying, “You know what? I need to stop and actually go get a life and trust that the work is still going to be there.” That’s really what my farm is about.
It’s still a dream, not a reality?
ABDUL-MATEEN I’m getting closer. Has anyone seen Lenny Kravitz’s farm in Brazil?
AHMED I’ve seen videos.
ABDUL-MATEEN That’s my inspiration. I want Architectural Digest to show up to my home, and I want to pull up to the gate on a horse …
WILSON Is it incredible?
AHMED It’s unbelievable. I met [Kravitz] at a fashion show once, and he’s so charismatic. I didn’t even know what he was saying, but I remember him telling me: “Any time you want to come stay on the farm, let me know.”
ABDUL-MATEEN Oh, really?
AHMED So, boys, we’re going after this! No, he was being polite. I think he thought I was Dev Patel.
POWELL That would be incredible if you got to Brazil and he thought you were Dev Patel.
AHMED I’d go with it. Actually, that’s a moment in my TV show. In the first episode, I get confused for Dev Patel. I called up Dev and said, “Listen, I’m going to do this bit in the show because it keeps happening to me.” And he was like, “Yeah, same here.” He got nominated for a BAFTA, and a famous fashion brand put up a photo of me and said, “Congratulations to Dev Patel on his BAFTA.” And I’m retweeting it, like, “Yeah, I got nominated.” (Laughter.)
Braff Oh my God.
Ahmed I don’t correct people now. I have this with a few different people: Aziz Ansari, Hasan Minhaj, Dev. And we have a pact, don’t be a dick. Don’t let people think that Dev is a bad guy or Hasan is a bad guy.
Who else regularly gets mistaken for someone else?
BRAFF It happens to me with Dax Shepard a lot. People are effusive and they’re giving me compliments and they’re saying, “I just love you so much.” And then, little by little, I start realizing that they’re talking about Dax. I don’t always know how to get out of it.
AHMED You don’t correct them?
BRAFF Depends on what mood I’m in. Sometimes I’m like, “Thank you. Yeah, it was so fun making CHiPs.” And then, “Yeah, Kristen’s great. She’s the best.” Then other times, I’m like, “No, you’re thinking of Dax. We do look alike. He’s a great actor.”
WILSON I get my brother, Luke. I get Woody Harrelson. I think if you’re from Texas, it happens.
POWELL All the Texans get mixed up a bit.
Do you play along?
WILSON Yeah, you don’t bother to correct it if somebody’s gone too far down the line.
AHMED Particularly if it really means something to them.
WILSON You don’t want to take the wind out of their sails.
BRAFF It’s easier to go, “Thank you.”
So, we’ve got Yahya flirting with farm life. What’s everyone else’s fantasy if you walked away from all of this?
WILSON Harrison, could we do something together? Maybe cycling or something?
FORD Yeah, we could do something together. But I would like to be alone for a while.
WILSON What happened to you’re so happy being a part of [a company], making something together? (Laughter.)
FORD No, no, that’s great …
WILSON It’s like we’re getting mixed messages here.
ABDUL-MATEEN I thought we had something.
POWELL You want to go dutch on a compound?
FORD No.
WILSON “I want to be alone.”
FORD Yeah. I don’t know. I feel like if I stop working, I’ve got storage rooms that need to be cleared out. I’ve got drawers that are not organized. I’ve got too much shit, and I’ve got to get rid of it.
Well, that doesn’t sound fun.
POWELL Honestly, Harrison Ford’s garage sale would probably be pretty awesome.
FORD You’ll get an invitation.
POWELL I’m just kind of picturing the end of Raiders, just that big warehouse.
FORD (To Powell) So you didn’t see the last movie?
POWELL I saw the last movie! Thank God I have this answer. On Twisters, I brought the whole cast to see the last Indiana Jones. It was great.
FORD Did they pay to get in?
POWELL I paid.
FORD I’m grateful.
Zach returned to an early success with this Scrubs revival. What previous project or world would the rest of you revisit if a greenlight was automatic?
POWELL Harrison, you and I both talked about doing The Expendables 5.
FORD You talked. I listened.
BRAFF We could definitely use another Bottle Rocket.
WILSON Thank you. Yeah.
AHMED More Zoolanders, too.
POWELL (To Wilson) By the way, when I was a kid, I was so obsessed with Zoolander, I wrote a treatment for Zoolander 2: The Spawn of Hansel [Wilson’s character], and I was to play your son.
WILSON That’s great.
POWELL I’ve got to dig up that treatment at some point.
AHMED You know studios are going to be bidding on this idea tomorrow.
BRAFF (To Ahmed) How about The Night Of? Come on.
WILSON Yeah!
AHMED It would be interesting to see where those characters went. It was such a formative experience for me as well.
BRAFF That must have changed your life overnight. It was huge.
AHMED It was a very different experience because I’d been doing indie films in the U.K. for 10 years. I was so ignorant to what was going on here. Honestly, the only context in which I knew HBO was boxing. So, I got this script saying it’s an HBO show, and I remember thinking, “Those boxing guys are trying to make a TV show? It’s going to suck.” We didn’t have HBO in the U.K. And, yeah, it did feel like things changed. People started yelling at me in the street. “Naz, did you do it?” Every time I go through JFK, “I’m going to let you through, but did you do it?”
That’s amazing.
AHMED That was the big shift. And it was during that period that I started scribbling down ideas for this current show, Bait, which is about how the distance between how you’re seen, your public self, and your private self starts to become huge. People think Han Solo doesn’t do his laundry or whatever it is. (To Ford) Well, you might not. Glen does your laundry.
FORD He has people for that.
AHMED But I found this massive chasm between my public self and my private self, and that was stressful and confusing but also funny in weird ways. I remember the same week [news broke] that I was in Star Wars [Rogue One], my friends, family, people from high school were all texting me, going, “Bro, you’re crushing it,” I got banned for suspected shoplifting at my local supermarket just because I forgot to beep the pizza on the checkout.
BRAFF Sure, you did.
ABDUL-MATEEN So, it really wasn’t suspected …
POWELL Sounds like an open-and-shut case. (Laughter.)
BRAFF “I’m in Star Wars, I don’t have to pay for pizza.”
AHMED Here it is. I knew I’d get a grilling from you guys.
Looking back, what was the role you had to fight the hardest for?
WILSON The way that Val Kilmer did with The Doors? He went so into that and convinced Oliver Stone that he could play Jim Morrison. I love examples like that. I wish I had one.
ABDUL-MATEEN I play this character in Wonder Man, and he got his big break by sneaking into the audition. He went behind his agent’s computer, found the listing, forced his way onto the sheet and eventually got the job. He was just, like, whatever it takes. Does anybody have any stories like that?
BRAFF My Scrubs story was a little like that. The first time I auditioned back in 2000 …
WILSON It was supposed to be for Dax? (Laughter.)
BRAFF I’m so lucky Dax did not get an audition. No, I auditioned in New York, and it wasn’t good. I hadn’t done the work, and this is back when we were FedEx-ing VHS tapes to L.A. to be seen. Weeks later, they still hadn’t found their guy, and my agent said, “Look, they’re seeing so many people, I don’t think they’re going to keep track. Just go in again.”
WILSON Go in again?!
BRAFF Yeah. I was in L.A. this time, and this is old-school pilot season, where you’re going on five auditions a day, and my agent was like, “It’s chaos over there.” So, I went in like I had never read for it. This time, I was very prepared, and I knew I crushed it because the casting director was like, “What are you doing later today?” Which is the greatest thing you can ever hear. And then rapidly I was sitting with Bill Lawrence, and it was all happening and it’s all because this agent had the audacity to be like, “I think you should just go in again.”
ABDUL-MATEEN That’s crazy, man. But that’s what it’s like. Back when I talked about just loving my ideas, it was like, “Yeah, I’m going to do whatever it takes. What do I have to do? Yeah. OK, cool. I’m going to do that.” And man, you just see green lights the whole way. That’s a really beautiful place to be.
AHMED Sometimes you got to just bet on yourself when no one else will. I remember when I did Nightcrawler, I’d hit a real ceiling in the UK with these indie projects. When we did the pilot of The Night Of, everyone was like, “It’s going to get picked up.” We actually did it with James Gandolfini, he played John Turturro’s role in the pilot, and then it didn’t get picked up.
WILSON Woah.
AHMED I thought it was going to be my big American break but then I’m back to being unemployed in London. Then Gandolfini passed, and two years later, that show came back together with John. In the interim, I’m just dead broke. And I remember I met the director of Nightcrawler and he was like, “Look, this is a really American role. You’re a classically trained British Shakespeare actor, you’re not right for it.” I was like, “I’m definitely not right for it, but do you mind if I send you tapes? You’re a cool guy, you could give me feedback?” I lured him into this thing of sending him tapes and he was giving me notes and it got me through to the last two or three.
ABDUL-MATEEN Wow.
AHMED Then it’s, “You got to come to L.A. for a screen test, but we can’t pay, it’s an indie.” It was like a $750 flight and I had, like, 800 pounds in my account. But Idris Elba, who was a friend, was like, “You should go to America, man. You got to bet on yourself.” I had that in my head, and I went, “Screw it.” I booked the flight and I was just running lines the whole time. Eleven hours. And then I landed, literally taxi straight to the audition, and I booked it. That was not just the confidence of youth, but the desperation of it as well. It can be a real rocket fuel.
Harrison, I’ve heard you say that you’re “in danger of the plague of legacy,” but on Shrinking, you’re not a legend. What does that mean and how does it alter your experience?
FORD Shrinking is an ensemble effort, which I love. It becomes a community, and you have these common experiences and it’s real glue that helps hold the whole thing together. Movies are still a great adventure, and I still love doing that kind of work, but there’s something very different about working on a sustained basis and having an audience have that relationship to a fully fleshed-out character.
BRAFF You seem so in your element. Obviously you’re very funny and you’ve been funny in many of your films, but as a director, it’s lovely to see Harrison really lean in to comedy and just love playing. I’d also imagine, in your films, you’re the star, it’s about you. And here, you’re all bouncing off of each other and, just from my perspective, being a fan and a director of the show, you just seem like you’re having so much fun.
FORD Shh, don’t tell them.
I believe you all went into Shrinking thinking it would be three seasons…
Ford Two. I thought maybe two.
Did you flirt with signing off after this last season? Your storyline could have tied up in a nice bow at the end …
Ford No, I don’t want a nice bow at the end on it. I mean, I don’t know what I want from it. One of the great pleasures of doing this is I don’t have all the scripts for a season. I don’t have the next episode. And I’m playing a guy with Parkinson’s disease. I don’t know my fate. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. Oh shit? No, that’s like life. That’s kinda cool. And because I’m so supported by the writers and I know that they’re going to take care of it, so I can really just enjoy the day-to-day stuff.
Shifting gears here. If you look at all of your work and your public appearances that have found their way online, what is your favorite meme of yourself?
FORD What’s a meme?
POWELL This is my favorite moment to be a part of right here.
BRAFF How do you describe a meme? It’s kind of like a picture of a moment.
POWELL And a script underneath that describes the moment.
BRAFF It could have movement to it or just a picture.
There are many online with you, Harrison.
FORD I get it. I get it.
POWELL Like, “Get off my plane!” and it’s just that picture [from Air Force One]. I’ve sent that GIF before.
BRAFF I once went on Conan, and I’d done [the 2013 animated film] Oz the Great and Powerful, and so the gag was that I would take off my clothes and reveal a green-screen onesie. And I just sort of did a couple humps of the air. And as I’m humping the air, Conan just slightly looks away to avoid watching. And that’s my favorite GIF on the internet.
ABDUL-MATEEN I have one. I played Doctor Manhattan in [HBO’s] Watchmen and Doctor Manhattan was blue [in the show]. And I think people were kind of … it was a conversation that I’m Black because in terms of the canon, Doctor Manhattan was white. So, there are [memes] of me as Doctor Manhattan with a chain and a dashiki and a kufi and, like, red laser eyes. I don’t know what the red laser eyes are really about, but I find the humor in it. It’s like, if we’re going to make him Black, let’s make him blackity-Black.
If a fan is shouting a line from one of your projects at you, what’s it most likely to be?
WILSON I get a lot of “Ka-chows” from Cars because those kids have now grown up and they realize that it was a human playing Lightning McQueen.
FORD They go back to the beginning for me. They want to know who shot first: Me [as Han Solo] or Greedo?
BRAFF Do you have thoughts on that?
FORD (To Braff) Who’s Greedo?
BRAFF I believe Greedo …
FORD No, that’s my thought.
BRAFF All of a sudden, I thought I was going to have to tell him. You’re good …
POWELL I was in it.
AHMED I was in it too.
BRAFF I was like, “The fans want me to explain to Harrison who Greedo is?”
FORD You failed your audition for Man on the Street. (Laughter.)
Harrison, can you differentiate between a Shrinking fan versus an Indiana Jones fan versus a Star Wars fan?
FORD No, and that’s kind of weird because you should be able to spot it coming.
AHMED Do you not find the Star Wars fans are running around with massive Star Wars posters? Because that’s what I find.
FORD But those are not fans. Those are autograph sellers 100 percent of the time. You do really appreciate people who are fans. And when people come up to me, I’m not trying to figure out what they’re coming for. I just know that they’re likely to be a customer and I’m in a service occupation. We sell stories.
POWELL Did you always have that perspective?
FORD Yeah, I think so.
POWELL I feel like sometimes it’s hard to differentiate when you do have the different segments that are coming up because you want to show up in that way all the time, but I feel like sometimes it’s hard to …
BRAFF We can’t all the time. In fact, I have a quick, funny story about the first time I ever met Harrison Ford. We got in a golf cart, and we’re driving around the Warner Bros. lot, and I was like, “Oh my God, my childhood dreams have come true. I’m on the Warner Bros. lot in a golf cart with Harrison Ford.”
FORD Pfft.
BRAFF And one of the trams goes by with all the tourists in it, and Harrison sort of just gently looks the other way. And I go, “Do you ever wave?” And he goes, “No … but I do feel bad about it.” (Laughter.)
This story appeared in the May 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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