The Pale Blue Eye marks the third collaboration between director Scott Cooper and Christian Bale, who plays detective Augustus Landor in the chilling gothic tale set in West Point in the mid-19th century. In a conversation with Krista Smith on a new episode of the podcast Skip Intro, the two reveal the secret to their chemistry: a rare creative shorthand and a little bit of shared single-mindedness.
“We do have, by this point, a good lingua franca between us,” Bale says of Cooper, who first cast the actor in Out of the Furnace in 2013. Since then, the two have worked together on 2017’s Hostiles, and now The Pale Blue Eye, based on the Louis Bayard novel of the same name, which drops Landor in an investigation aided by none other than a young Edgar Allan Poe (Harry Melling). “I like how relentless Scott is in pursuing answers to questions. We all want to work with people who are obsessed. I think in this profession it’s an essential element.”
The feeling, according to Cooper, is mutual. “He’s the finest screen actor working, and I am so incredibly thankful to have that partnership, to be able to write for someone,” Cooper replies. “Christian and I have a friendship outside of work. [We] travel together, spend a lot of time together, I see Christian more than probably anyone. We all are searching for something out of our actors that serves the story, that serves the character, but when you have someone like Christian, [he] can take what’s written on the page and then take it to places that you can only dream of.”
Still, Bale points out that there is one big difference between the two. “I am a sloth, Scott is a cheetah,” he says. “He writes scripts quicker than I [can] read them.”
The Pale Blue Eye is now streaming on Netflix. For more great celebrity interviews, check out Skip Intro on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
