With a knock on the door in the early morning, a family’s life is upended forever. In the upcoming film Omaha, a widowed father (the unnamed “Dad”), played by John Magaro, is forced to move his two young children, their dog, and their meager possessions into his broken down car — and a heartbreaking cross-country roundtrip begins, seemingly with no real destination.
Directed by Cole Webley and written by Robert Machoian, the film features a mostly silent but incredibly powerful performance by Magaro as a father who’s clearly struggling to provide for his children, 9-year-old Ella (Molly Belle Wright) and 6-year-old Charlie (Wyatt Solis) — forgoing his own meals so they can eat, feigning smiles to keep the kids entertained as he struggles to find a path forward (it’s set in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when options were few). The film, which debuted at Sundance, earned raves for Magaro’s “quietly haunting,” “staggering” acting, landing a 90% “Certified Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a “generally favorable” 76 score on Metacritic.
Magaro, who recently starred in September 5, tells Gold Derby he relished the challenge of taking on an indie project like this one. “I enjoy being able to go from my TV show, The Agency, to something like Omaha, to something like The Bride, and then do theater here and there, or even do just like a workshop of a play that a friend wrote,” he says. “Anytime you get to exercise that muscle as an actor and explore different avenues is going to just make you a stronger performer. You really never know what’s going to fulfill you as an artist. So I think you’ve got to keep your horizons very open. And for me, personally, I don’t know how else to do it besides that way. I just don’t find it think even in success, that it would be rewarding if you were trapped in one world.”
Omaha opens in limited release on April 24 and nationwide next month.
Gold Derby: What drew you to this film?
John Magaro: The script, as it usually does. I thought it was really powerful and something special, and I knew I wanted to be a part of it. It’s also something I hadn’t really done before. At the time, I was a new father myself. So I think that just subconsciously drew me into the world even more than it might have before I was a dad.
“Dad” is a man of very few words. How did you even begin to find your way into playing him?
It goes back to the writing. I think when you have good writing, it can really paint a picture for you, and that’s what Robert’s words did. It’s a place that I haven’t been to as a parent. I think we all have points in our lives when we realize our parents aren’t quite what we expect them to be, where the cracks start to show, and that’s usually around the age that Molly’s character is, when you start to realize that the parents are human beings, too. So I had that to lean on, but it was really just kind of a dive into this world and discovering it as we went. And luckily, I had two great kids with me who allowed for that discovery. And in that play, because a lot of it was improv and play, we were able to forge this relationship that felt very authentic and exciting and tragic at the same time.
How did you forge that relationship with these two child actors?
I think it’s building trust. Cole was really lucky to find two talented young kids — especially Wyatt, who isn’t really an actor, he’s just a kid. So that presents its own set of difficulties, too, because it’s not like you just turn on the camera. The scenes really had to be discovered through improv and through just talking to them. I think being a dad helps you understand the rhythms of young kids, so you can figure out how to sense their moods and when they’ve had enough, or what they respond to. So there was a lot of that. I think it also helped that our DP [Paul Meyers], Cole, our producers, most of the people in key positions were fathers themselves. It’s heavy material, but I think there was a real effort to make this set as enjoyable as possible for them. So the kids were having fun and wanting to show up to work every day. And when the camera wasn’t rolling, it wasn’t living in this tragic place, it was actually just goofing around, and we were on this real road trip together. We’d find ourselves at night at the hotels where we were all going to the pool and hanging out. We went to the aquarium in Salt Lake City, just so that they would feel like they could trust me, that they could do what they needed to do as actors and not worry about embarrassing themselves. They are such great kids that it made my job a lot easier to make that feel real.
This disproves the rule of never act with kids. Because I think this film survives and thrives on the relationship between you and the two kids.
They say that about animals too, and we have an animal on this, too! I’ve been lucky. You can’t make a lot of plans. And I guess if you’re an actor who wants to have everything planned out, you’re going to be in trouble. But if you’re the type of actor who likes to be surprised, then it’s actually a lot of fun.
How much of this was improv? How much were you able to create in the moment?
Most of it was discovered. We had a framework and we had the story. But it’s not easy to get a 6-year- old to say the line in the normal way of how older people work as actors. Cole said it was like, we’re co-directing the kids, because we’re just throwing things at them. We’re on the road, we’re rolling down these highways, and we could just leave the camera filming and kind of discover what we could. That gave the film a lot of texture and also highlighted that relationship, because you are seeing us just figure out each other and making each other laugh and having a fun time. But that being said, the moments that were there, the heavy moments where the kids really break down, like giving the dog away, that was all there, and the kids were able to get to those emotional places, just almost easier than sometimes the lighter things.
Your performance is so internal. How did you protect yourself from not breaking down as the kids are breaking down? How did you manage those moments?
I think from the beginning, because it was such heavy stuff and it is so emotional, Cole and I knew that we had to find as much joy and lightness in the journey as we could. So that really required me every day to fight against getting into the pits of that character. So when the camera wasn’t rolling, it had to be as fun and light for me as possible, too. We really wanted to showcase him as a good father who had a bad deck of cards handed to him.
Do you think he’s a good father?
I think he would like to be, and I think he could be if he asked for help. I think he was making a lot of poor decisions. So on the surface, no, he’s not a good father, but deep down he’d like to be, and he wants to be.
Do you think he knew where he was heading all along?
Unfortunately, yeah. I think that’s why he takes the journey. But I think the tragedy of it is, by the end he realizes, obviously it was a mistake, but also maybe in the days to come after, he’s also going to realize he could have had other options there. He could have asked for help long before it was too late. I think this happens a lot of times, we come to situations where we might choose a bad path because we can’t see any other options. And I think that’s where he’s at. But once he starts down that road, literally down that road, it’s going to pretty much end in him letting the kids go. But I haven’t said this before — I think in his mind, he doesn’t realize it. I think he believes he’ll give away the kids, he’ll get his life back together, he’ll get a job, he’ll get a house again, and then he’ll just be able to grab them back. He’ll be like, “OK, I got my life back together, I’ll take the kids back now.” And I think a lot of people think it’s that simple. They don’t realize that once bureaucracy is set into motion, it’s not that simple. And I don’t think until he’s in that final scene, he realizes the true consequences of his actions.
What do you want people to take away from the film?
I think it’s good to go to the theater and feel things. And I think this definitely makes you feel some heavy, tragic emotion. I think a lot of people leave crying, and I think that’s OK for a film to do that to you. I like to watch something and then find myself weeping at the end of it. It’s wonderful. Something wonderful about storytelling is that it can make you feel emotions that you didn’t expect to feel at the beginning of the story, or it surprises you. But also it’s good especially for young men nowadays, even older men, that they realize that they can ask for help. They don’t have to bottle all these emotions up. They don’t have to hide their feelings. We live in a new world. My dad was that way. I’ve seen these kinds of guys and they still exist out there, and there’s no shame in asking for help if you need it.
What have you taken away from the experience of making it?
I love those kids. I loved working with them. It was such a challenge for me as an actor. I love being challenged and getting to play things that I never really expected to play. I think this is my first time playing a dad on film. And at the end of the day, those are the things that build me as an actor, these new experiences, getting to explore new feelings as a performer, and forging these great relationships with these wonderfully talented people, and this case that happens to be Cole who I love and will hopefully work with again, but also these two young talents, Wyatt and Molly.
Would you ever want to direct yourself?
Actors becoming directors is a dime a dozen nowadays, like everyone does it, so it’s almost cliché, but I definitely would. I want to find the right thing and I want to do it the right way. I see a lot of indie filmmakers will sacrifice their vision because they can’t quite get together the resources that they need to make the film. Luckily this film was a perfect example of having the right amount of money that you need, the right resources that you need, and making it together. And that also was in part because all the producers and everyone on that set was going well above and beyond their role. We had producers who were wetting down pavement, who were acting as drivers, who were running dailies back to the photo lab. Everyone was going above and beyond. That’s great, true indie filmmaking. So if I found something like that where I could do it, then, yeah, I would love that. If anyone has a script out there that they think it would be cool for me to direct, please send it my way.
