INTERVIEW: Tom Hopper looks to the stars in new film ‘Space Cadet’
Photo: Space Cadet stars, from left, Tom Hopper and Gabrielle Union. Photo courtesy of Eric Liebowitz / Prime Video / Provided by press site with permission.
Tom Hopper, the accomplished actor best known for the TV series Black Sails and The Umbrella Academy, has a new film project called Space Cadet, which is now available to stream on Prime Video. In the movie, Hopper plays Logan, a NASA program director, who partners with Pam (Gabrielle Union) to judge the talents of Tiffany “Rex” Simpson (Emma Roberts), an astronaut-in-training who lied on her application to more easily get through the process, according to press notes. Space Cadet comes courtesy of writer-director Liz W. Garcia, known for her work on P. Valley, Purple Hearts and The Lifeguard.
Recently Hopper jumped on a Zoom call with Hollywood Soapbox to talk about what attracted him to Space Cadet and whether he dreamed of being an astronaut when he was a child. Here’s what he had to say …
On why he signed up for the movie …
“I think a few things really. I thought it was very 2024, very forward-thinking. From a character perspective, I hadn’t played someone like Logan before, so it was quite appealing and still had that rom-com lead element to it, but from a different angle. When this pitch [came] to me about him being British, because it didn’t state that he was British in the script, so when [Garcia] said, ‘How would you feel about playing British,’ I really liked that idea. It was something different for me. I’m always looking to be challenged. As an actor, all I look for is to be challenged and the fun I’m going to have, the experience I’m going to have on the job, and this was just a really fun one for me. And I liked what the message was underneath it. I liked the people involved, so it just ticked a lot of boxes for me.”
On whether he ever dreamed of being an astronaut …
“Not so much an astronaut, but definitely a fighter pilot. I was obsessed with planes and being a fighter pilot. I was obsessed with Top Gun, but astronaut for me was never one of those things. When you do an astronaut movie, you think, oh, it’d be good to be in space, but then that wasn’t the part of the movie that appealed to me. So it didn’t really bother me that Logan doesn’t actually go to space. I actually became more interested in space and what it all is after signing on to the movie because I did all my research on it. I got more interested in it since then than I ever did as a child. That’s one cool thing about acting is you get to delve into research and become more well-read on things than you never would have been otherwise.”
On what it’s like working with Liz W. Garcia …
“The best. Liz is the best. She’s partly the reason why I wanted to sign on to the movie. I met with Liz after reading the script, and everything about her, she’s so collaborative, she’s very funny. As a director, she allows you to be free and play. As an actor, especially when you’re doing comedy, you need to be able to feel that otherwise you just don’t enjoy it. You feel like you’re trapped, and I think you have to feel free. Liz is great at promoting that, and that goes through the whole way she runs her set as well. It’s the kind of director I like to work with.”
On the differences between his TV work and movie work …
“They’re different in the sense that one is obviously so much longer, and you have like hours and hours of footage and scripts to build the character up. I always find a movie like this is just a much more condensed version of that. So you might have less time to build them out, but you’re effectively doing the same thing; it’s just a shorter process. So I don’t enjoy either one more or less, to be honest. … Sometimes you go, oh, I’d like to have played that character for longer to see where it had gone, but at the same time, I’m a big fan of immersing myself in that project for that time, for however long that is, and then look to do something new.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Space Cadet, featuring Tom Hopper, is now available to stream on Prime Video. Click here for more information.
