Neil Casey is one of the stars of Ghostbusters, but you would be hard-pressed to find him in the trailers. The emphasis of Paul Feig’s reboot of the beloved supernatural comedy franchise has been on the film’s heroes – played by Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon – so the villain is usually in the background. Fortunately, that’s kind of the point.
Neil Casey plays Rowan, an expert in paranormal science whose knowledge rivals the ghostbusters themselves. But unlike our heroes he’s gone down a different path. Instead of saving people from ghosts, he has a plan to flood New York City with specters. And as the film progresses he only becomes more powerful.
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I got on the phone with Neil Casey earlier today to talk about his role in Ghostbusters, and find out what made Rowan turn bad. We also talked about the unexpectedly technical part of his job, and the very unusual circumstances that lead Neil Casey to play Chris Hemsworth playing Neil Casey playing Chris Hemsworth.
Some mild spoilers are coming. (You have been warned!) Ghostbusters is now playing at a theater near you.
Neil Casey & Paul Feig, Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images
Crave: You get to play the villain in a Ghostbusters movie, and in many respects your villain is an evil ghostbuster. Is that the sort of conversation you had with Paul Feig about it?
Neil Casey: Yeah, I mean it’s left a little bit ambiguous in the movie, but the idea is that this guy studied a lot of the same science that the ghostbusters did, but took a different path with his life. It’s like he’s privy to the same secrets of the paranormal but instead of him trying to learn more about the way the world works, he’s got an ax to grind.
It seems like the biggest difference is, the ghostbusters found people who shared their passions, and Rowan is very alone.
Yes! Yes, I’d say Rowan is very, very alone. Yes. Maybe he needs the ghosts to make friends with him, late in life. But yes, he’s very alone. The ghostbusters find each other and sort of make their way through the world, whereas Rowan just looks in the mirror and thinks about everything bad that everybody did to him.
This might sound like a dark and depressing question, but is that something you can relate to at all as a person, or was it a difficult journey to find this character?
[Laughs.] Well, you know, I’ve never been bullied… I’ve never been bullied but I spent years as a computer programmer, and that can be lonely work. While I was doing comedy in New York, my day job was often being a computer programmer. It’s sort of a nerdy job, and it can be a sort of isolating job. But thankfully, doing comedy, I made friends early and managed to hang onto them. Like everybody I like spending time by myself, but people, friendships, family and stuff are the only things that really make people happy. So I’m happy to have them.
But no, you know, I’ve worked jobs… and as a writer, I’ve worked as a writer a lot too, and it can be easy as a writer – just like as a computer programmer – to sort of hole up in your own apartment and procrastinate getting something done. But I think the trick to being a writer, the trick to a lot of jobs, is to make sure that you’re getting out there in the world so you have something to come home to write about.
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Was there a lot of material with Rowan that was left on the cutting room floor? It feels like theoretically we could have spent a lot more time with him…
Yeah, Paul shoots a lot of footage and a lot of scenes. In watching it there were of course some scenes, not ones that I was in necessarily, but there were some scenes where I said, “Oh, I guess that [was cut].” I love the flow of the movie. I think the movie flows great. I think it’s really fun and exciting, and Paul moves quickly from fun thing to fun thing. We don’t linger too long on anything that isn’t fun.
But yeah, we shot a lot more in the movie, both scenes with the girls and scenes with me, scenes with other talented people out of the comedy world who shot, but there’s only so much room in the movie. Paul’s always got the audience’s eye in mind, and he wants to keep them having a good time.
Sure, I guess my question is, because Rowan is such an isolated character, he doesn’t have a lot of people to talk to over the course of the film. Was there any material that’s on the cutting room floor that expanded on his character, that maybe we’ll see in a DVD or Blu-ray?
Probably, yeah. I had one scene with Lesley Nichol, who plays Mrs. Patmore on Downton Abbey, that was just sort of a day in the life of the hotel [where Rowan works], that she was incredibly funny in, and I really enjoyed shooting, and I hope winds up on the DVD extras somewhere. And yeah, there were a couple other things that we shot that yeah, that I thought were a lot of fun to do, and if they end up seeing the light of day somehow in the extended cut or as the DVD extras, that would a bonus. I’d love to see how they turned out.
Columbia Pictures
There’s a big chunk of the movie where Chris Hemsworth is playing you, playing Chris Hemsworth.
[Laughs.] Yes!
Did you talk to him about how you would possess him, if you had Chris Hemsworth’s body?
Yeah, we talked about it a little bit in person, and then I recorded me doing my entire part from the script, so that he could watch it on video and get it, to see how I was playing this guy. The funny part… I don’t know if it’s noticeable, and in fact I only saw the movie the one time at the premiere so I’m not sure how exactly this mixed in… but one of the funny experiences for me was I ended up doing ADR, re-recording Chris Hemsworth’s lines in my voice so that they could sort of make his voice sound a little different, with a little bit of the tone of my voice. I think it’s just a little sugar in the sound design. It’s not very noticeable.
But what was very funny about re-recording those lines was that I was watching Chris Hemsworth do an impersonation of me, but then I was matching his lips to do my voice, as he was talking like me but with the cadence and rhythm of an Australian accent. So it was an especially surreal morning down at the Sony lot, as I was pounding my bottled water and recording over him pretending to be me, pretending to be him, and so on. It was a very fun part of the post-production process.
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Is that the sort of thing you thought you’d be doing when you thought you’d be going int acting?
The post-production stuff?
Specifically, that’s a weird situation that you were in.
[Laughs.] I really am, I get really into the technical stuff behind moviemaking. I’m really interested in how they balance practical effects and special effects. So when I got into doing voice re-records and things like that, that is the sort of workmanlike part of the job, you know? There is the element of, I’m going to show up to set and try to deliver a good performance, and really try and bring everything that I can on the day, but then there is also a lot of, I’ll sort of show up and re-record stuff because they to get it using a particular microphone so that they can mix it into a particular channel for THX or Dolby or whatever. So I did not know about all that stuff before I started doing more work professionally in TV and movies, but I’m always excited to do it.
It always sticks with me, any time I do ADR, I remember in Rob Lowe’s autobiography [Stories I Only Tell My Friends], he always talks about how a good actor knows that the looping performance, or the ADR record, is really your last chance to deliver a good performance in the movie. Whether they’re trying to change something or just for technical reasons get another version of something you said, it’s sort of your last chance to deliver. So it’s an important thing to show up and be prepared for, and hopefully be able to deliver on.
Columbia Pictures
When Rowan turns into the ghost from the Ghostbusters logo, was that you at all, or did you just the animators decide how a ghost moves?
They animated that. I did do a lot of the screams and grunts for him. But no, they didn’t motion capture that or anything. That was the talented animators. That was the animators making that happen.
The legacy of Ghostbusters villains, between the movies and the cartoons, is actually rather extensive.
Mm-hmm?
How do you feel Rowan fits into the history of the series, or the franchise? What do you think his place is amongst that pantheon?
As you said at the beginning, I thought that the most interesting thing about him was that he was the dark mirror image of any one of the ghostbusters. That he was the sort of twisted, sad, angry, nerdy version of… well, they’re both nerdy, but the twisted, angry version of them. So to have the ghostbusters going up against a dark version of themselves, to have the villain be an embodiment of what any of them could have become, or could become if they went down a dark path… I feel like I’m maybe channeling a different movie franchise here! [Laughs.]
But I think it’s interesting because there is an infinite universe of interesting, paranormal, supernatural villains. A whole horde of imps and demons out there that could come and threaten humanity. But I felt what was really interesting about Rowan is that he was as human as them, and was sort of trying to tap into that dark place, instead of coming himself from that dark place.
Top Photos: Jerod Harris/Getty Images and Columbia Pictures
William Bibbiani (everyone calls him ‘Bibbs’) is Crave’s film content editor and critic. You can hear him every week on The B-Movies Podcast and Canceled Too Soon, and watch him on the weekly YouTube series Most Craved, Rapid Reviews and What the Flick. Follow his rantings on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
