Set during the post-Civil War era, A Prayer for the Dying chronicles the journey of veteran Jacob Hansen (Johnny Flynn, Harry Potter), whose aspirations for a fresh start in Friendship, Wisconsin, descend into a harrowing ordeal. As a lethal plague and encroaching inferno ignite devastation, Jacob—acting as local sheriff, mortician, and clergyman—is forced into a desperate struggle to protect his community, his kin, and his very spirit.
Also starring John C. Reilly (Step Brothers) and Kristine Kujath Thorp (Sick of Myself), the film is the directorial debut of Dara Van Dusen and was written by Stewart O'Nan and Van Dusen based on O'Nan’s novel of the same name.
In our exclusive interview, Flynn reflects on the immense responsibility placed on Jacob and the Civil War trauma that continues to haunt him, while also discussing the challenge of bringing such a visually ambitious story to the screen on a relatively modest budget.
The actor also shares his experience working alongside Reilly, the friendship they formed off-camera, and how the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic helped him understand the fear and paranoia at the heart of the film's quarantine storyline.
Your character, Jacob, is the town sheriff, the priest, and undertaker; he’s wearing all these different hats. So how do you approach playing a character who’s burdened by so much responsibility, and then his unravelling as things intensify?
Yeah, I think that’s where… what I found really interesting about this whole story is to see a person under that much pressure and how he copes. I think it was a bit of a gift in terms of, as an actor. You know, it’s really nice to kind of play with obstacles as an actor—to be trying to be doing this, but you’re up against this, and you need to be there, but you’ve got to be there. And then the kind of heartbreak of his obligation to his family as well. And then what you realize is that he’s also wading through trauma. He’s, you know, basically suffering from PTSD. And you start to learn little bits about his past as a… fighting in the Civil War, which is only a couple of years ago. And yeah, I just found it brilliant to do, and an amazing script, and the novel that it’s based on is fantastic, which is what I really got excited about—telling that story of this guy facing all these things, you know.
Later in the film, there’s this confrontation between Jacob and another character. It’s so beautifully shot with the orange skies and the light from the train illuminating the scene. What do you remember about shooting that sequence?
All that stuff was great. When I read the script and the things that we were going to have to do, I was like, does this film have, like, you know, 200 million? Like, what’s… how are we going to do this? But it really didn’t. It had, you know, a very moderate budget, but the people working on it—I mean, Kate McCullough first of all, as the DP, is a genius, and she and Dara had really just… they’d worked out so carefully in terms of the storyboarding and the way the camera would work. And I mean, they met at film school 16 years ago and have been best friends ever since. And this is Dara’s first feature as a director, but she’s been carrying it all that time. So I think they’d had the time to work out how they were going to tell those bits of the story in the most visually interesting way.
Yeah, it was just really cool. We went from being on a built set on a hill where the townspeople live—they built this incredible town—and then it sort of, once it gets dark and, you know, the forest fires coming in and everything, and that sort of gets more and more surreal. And all the train stuff was in a set. So it was fun to create those visual landscapes seemingly out of nothing in terms of this dark set and moving through the darkness and using various kinds of in-camera effects. I mean, it’s mostly like in-camera stuff. So it was very cool. The sets were incredible. And the art director… Uber was the art director on my very first film that I did, like 25 years ago or something. I was playing… yeah, like a kids’ film. It was really fun to see him. He’s a master. So that was cool.
Your co-star, John C. Reilly, is so well known for his comedic work that I think sometimes people forget he’s a great dramatic actor as well, like yourself. So to have that collaboration with him—what did you enjoy about working with him on this one?
I mean, I’ve been a huge fan of his for, you know, since I first saw him. I don’t know what that would have been in, but like, you know, he’s amazing in the Paul Thomas Anderson films that he did, and things like, I don’t know, Gangs of New York, which I remember loving when I saw that. He’s worked with some incredible people—Terrence Malick. He was telling us stories about working with these great directors, and it’s so cool that he’s doing a film with a, you know, first-time director. He feels the same way as I do about supporting people making their first film, and how what a kind of privilege it is to be collaborating with somebody, you know, doing that.
And yeah, I mean, the fact that he’s so funny a lot of the time, and then for him not to… for it not to be in the requirements for this—like, it kind of adds a real eeriness. Like if you take away all the funny from John Reilly, he becomes like powerful and strange, which he always is, even when he’s being funny. But it was incredible. He made me cry a lot. You know, I really believed in the friendship between the two of them. And John and I became really close friends, and we did a lot of singing together. We’d hang out and… and we like the same kind of old country music. So we would just like sit and sing and play guitar, which is fun.
When the town gets quarantined, I think it’s something everyone’s going to be able to relate to after COVID. In terms of your performance, did that help you get a better understanding of the fear and the paranoia that Jacob and his people are experiencing, having lived through that?
Yeah, absolutely. It’s not something… I mean, for all of us now, like, you know, within our lifetimes, it’s never been something that we’ve had to deal with. And then the fear and the, you know, the kind of like the blind leading the blind in terms of, you know, government policy and people breaking the rules when things get too crunchy on a personal level or whatever, you know—it’s all stuff that we now know about. So yeah, that was helpful. And then I guess to then think about what it would be to be in a very isolated town and the obligations… kind of, you could really keep it contained if you didn’t open the border or shut the train down or whatever.
And this is before they have the concept of vaccines for these things—theories… certainly vaccine came like 30 years later. So there were all these epidemics that swept through and killed thousands, millions of people. And to imagine that is terrifying. And, you know, different communities would deal with it in different ways. And Jacob, my, you know, my character’s obviously… it’s his sense of responsibility to do it in the most responsible way for his people and his community. And then the next town along is going to do it in a different way. And it’s like how quickly things descend from civilized behavior into kind of martial law and each for their own and everything. You know, it was an interesting kind of thought journey to go on.
A Prayer for the Dying opens in theaters on October 9.