A version of this story about Brian Tyree Henry and “Causeway” first appeared in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.
Of all the indelible couples in 2022’s movies — Sammy Fabelman and his mom, Elvis and the Colonel, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey on the Weinstein beat, Pádraic and Colm on Inisherin, Maverick and his jet in “Top Gun” — the most affecting might be the pair of wounded souls played by Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry in Lila Neugebauer’s gentle drama “Causeway.”
Lynsey is a veteran of the war in Afghanistan recovering from a traumatic brain injury; James is an auto repairman wracked with guilt over a car accident in which he lost a leg and a family member. And in quiet, measured steps, they move cautiously toward some form of healing and understanding. (But no, not romance — leave that for a less artful and more predictable film.)
“James was unlike anyone I had read before, and that terrified the hell out of me,” said Tyree Henry, who has appeared in “If Beale Street Could Talk” and “Widows” and been Emmy-nominated for the TV series “Atlanta.” His hesitancy about playing the part, though, was outweighed by his desire to work with Neugebauer, a stage director he’d known for years, and with Lawrence. “I never thought I’d have the opportunity to collaborate with Jennifer Lawrence, but when the universe said, ‘OK, cool, let’s try this,’ I had to do it,” he said.
Still, he worried about the places he’d have to go to play James.
“I think the reservations came from a place of me wanting to play him in a way that was first and foremost honest,” he said. “I was dealing with a man who was responsible for the death of someone very important to him, and a man who is living his life in solitude because no one has chosen to stay by his side. And also a man who is asking for forgiveness and seeking friendship and a true connection. In order to play that, you have to in some way turn a lens onto why that scares you.”
The actor added that part of his connection to the role came through his own experience with grief.
“I think a big part of it was because I, too, have been dealing with the kind of guilt and loss and grief that James had been dealing with,” Tyree Henry said. “And sharing your grief with people is terrifying, you know? There’s nothing more terrifying than when people can see through your grief, because then there’s nowhere to hide.”
One key, he added, was that James was comfortable pretending that everything was OK and walling himself off, refusing the crutches or ramps that might make life easier. “But with the introduction of Lynsey into his life, you start to see this glimmer not just of what his life could be, but a reminder of who he was and what he can actually get back to. The friendship reminds him of possibilities.”
But the richness of the relationship, which becomes deeper and more revealing as the movie progresses, did not come without work. The script was originally focused on Lawrence’s character rather than on the friendship; James was mostly there to help Lynsey heal. It wasn’t until the movie was shut down during the pandemic in 2020 that Tyree Henry and Lawrence began to lobby for a different approach.
“When we went through the pandemic, actually communicating or connecting with another person was dangerous,” Tyree Henry said. “I remember Jennifer and Lila and I checking in with each other and having conversations and knowing that this opportunity we had to come into each other’s lives wouldn’t leave us. I think the chemistry that was happening between Jennifer and me was lingering, and we wanted to figure out how to really showcase that. So when we went back, we dove a little deeper.”
Tyree Henry paused. “It’s easy to make yourself a fortress when you’re dealing with grief and loss,” he said, reflecting on the loss of his own mother in 2016. “We human beings do this weird balancing act of acting like we have it all together. But pretending to be OK is no longer good for us anymore, especially after what we’ve all endured in these last two years — hell, in the last decade.
“There’s a beauty to making a connection that allows you to address that you survived and that you are yearning for something more,” he concluded. “We wanted the characters to feel like there was a way for them, and so we had to come back and really unpack what that looked like.”
Read more from the Awards Preview issue here.
