Interview With Pat Healy, Star Of ‘We Need To Do Something’

There have been some really amazing films this past year that were made during the pandemic. One that I really enjoyed watching was We Need to Do Something. Not only was it super suspenseful, but star Pat Healy has given us his best performance yet. The raw emotion of his character really resonated with me so when I was given the chance to speak with Pat about this character, I jumped at the chance. We had a delightful Zoom chat about what made him want to be in the film, how he prepared to play Robert, and what’s up next.

 

PopHorror: Hi Pat!  I watched We Need to Do Something last night and I have to say that I think it’s one of your best roles yet. It was so good.

Pat Healy: Oh, thank you.

PopHorror: I loved it so much. So what intrigued you about the script and made you want to be a part of the project?

Pat Healy: It was exactly in the middle of this pandemic. We were shooting in September and October. I’ve always been able to say that things are going to be okay and it was the first time that we all sort of agreed that we weren’t sure because it was before the election, before the vaccine, so it wasn’t a reach to connect to the material in that way. It’s cathartic for me to be able to act out in this way, even though I don’t relate to the anger being directed in the way that it is with this character. I, myself, know that it’s just good for me to get outside of myself and let it all out. Alcoholism is something that, as is in many families and certainly is in mine, is something that interests me. I think withdrawal from alcohol is a fascinating and terrifying thing. And I thought I could, in concert with the other actors and the director with the writer Max (Booth III) portray it in a way that I think was not – not that it’s ever fun – but it isn’t so dark and depressing in this situation because it’s kind of an absurdist movie in a lot of ways, and it could be funny or fun in some ways because the characters, even though he’s terrifying, he’s also ridiculous and a bit of a clown too.

PopHorror: As I said, this is definitely one of my favorite roles of yours. I thought you were just fantastic.

Pat Healy:  It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever done. I really am really happy with it. 

PopHorror: I feel like it was almost made for you because it was just so perfect. So, how did you prepare for this role?

Pat Healy: All of it kind of comes from Stella Adler’s approach to method acting, which is just a studying of the script and reading it over and over again, and each time you do it, it’s revealing more and more about itself to you. Physically it was a little daunting. I was in a car accident just before – at the end of February – so I was just kind of recovering. I gained a lot of weight because I’d been pretty immobile, and I was in the middle of losing weight, so it was good to be physical again. I lost 10 pounds during the making of the movie so it worked for the characters who have been in that room a long time without food really, up to a point. We won’t talk about that. And like I said, I think we all related to the situation. But what was really nice, which you don’t normally get, is we got to rehearse for a week. You really don’t even get that on big movies, much less a little movie. But Sean (King O’Grady) and Bill (Stertz) the producer and Sean the director, were really smart to do that because we learned a lot and we got to know each other really well so that we seem like a real family unit. We felt like a real family unit. We were all quarantined to this hotel and we walked out the door, and the stage was 100 feet away and went to work every day in that room. And just being very present, knowing everything had been fully prepared ahead of time, knowing all the lines, being rehearsed, knowing each other and we could just then go in there and play, which was great. 

PopHorror: You mentioned being in one room. What were the challenges of filming in basically just one location?

Pat Healy: I liked it. Filming in one location and having no outside distractions, we have no life because we couldn’t see people. We couldn’t go out. So you’re just super hyper-focused on making the movie every day. That’s your life. So it becomes a kind of reality. And it was fun to do. I think the challenge in this instance is that everybody had to be masked. Everybody has to be kept a certain distance. I’m on a movie now and it’s still that way. The rules are still the same as they were last fall. And this is a much bigger movie that I’m on now but that was certainly challenging. There’s something really good about that too because there’s… I love being on set and it’s a very social experience. It’s a lot less social now because we have to keep our distance from each other and we have to be masked. So, there’s something good about that because it does really make you super myopic about the work. I miss some of the social aspects but I think we do really good work because there’s no time to waste. We can’t go off and screw around. You’ve got to just be like that so I like that about it. It was a good challenge.

PopHorror: You really didn’t need much more than those four people in the room. I have no words for it except I thought it was great.

Pat Healy: Yeah, it takes some words away. I started in the theater and it is a lot like doing a play.

PopHorror: That’s what I thought! It feels like a play where you have your central location and you have all your actors and then everything happens off-screen. 

Pat Healy: I’m super comfortable with working that way so it’s good for me. 

PopHorror: What is up next for you, Pat? You said that you’re currently working on something right now.

Pat Healy: I’m doing this Martin Scorsese movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, in Oklahoma, which is with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. The story of the mass murder of Osage Indians in the 1920s here in Oklahoma. We’re shooting it here on Osage territory like we’re actually where everything happened. It’s based on a best-selling book by David Graham. A true crime book about these murders. It’s basically the birth of the FBI, the first major case that the Bureau of Investigation at that time. J Edgar Hoover sent people down and solved the case. I’ve been here for four months and I’ll be here for about another month. It’s a big, big long one.

PopHorror: Well I am intrigued, so I’ll keep an eye out for that.

Pat Healy: You won’t be able to avoid it. It’ll be everywhere, I’m sure. Next year.

PopHorror: I just have one last question for you today. What is your favorite scary movie?

Pat Healy: Poltergeist. It scared the crap out of me when I saw it when I was 10. I think it was living in the suburbs and this idea that your parents couldn’t do anything about it. I didn’t realize that at the time but later on, I became incredibly scared and anxious around that time as a kid, after seeing that movie. I think that’s what it was. Like no one was going to be able to help you and even your parents weren’t gonna be able to save you. That haunted me for years. I couldn’t even watch it again for years after that.

Thank you so much to Pat for taking the time to speak with us. Be sure to catch We Need to Do Something when it storms into theaters on September 3, 2021.