There are two types of transcendent leading performers: Those you love to observe and those you can’t help but feel for. And in the contemporary landscape, the latter has become the hardest to find.
“There’s a real hole in the marketplace of actors,” says Robert Olsen, co-director of Novocaine. “If you’re looking at the next generation, Glen Powell fills the Tom Cruise slot, Timothee Chalamet is the next Leonardo DiCaprio, but where’s the Tom Hanks? Where’s the everyman?”
And without an everyman, a lot of movies just won’t work. Tom Hanks is needed for a role like Castaway, just as Jimmy Stewart was for a role like It’s A Wonderful Life. For Novocaine, an action comedy about a man impervious to pain, Olsen and his co-director Dan Berk needed to find their own.
“At the time, we were watching the series The Boys, and we just started writing the character in Jack Quaid’s voice, never even thinking we were going to be able to actually get him for the movie,” says Berk.
“We really do think he’s this generation’s Tom Hanks. He’s funny, but you wouldn’t call him a comedian. He’s handsome, but not intimidatingly so like Brad Pitt. And everyone – man, woman, young and old – is charmed by him,” says Olsen.
To say that Jack Quaid was made in a lab to be the perfect everyman would only be a slight exaggeration. After all, he’s the son of actors Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid. And in an era of 'nepo baby' backlash, Quaid has stayed in the public's good graces by acknowledging his leg up with candor.
Quaid became aware of his everyman qualities on the set of The Boys, playing a normal guy caught up in a world of superheroes and assassins. The show, which began as satirical counter-programming to the glut of Marvel and DC fare, has become a cultural juggernaut, with season four garnering 55 million viewers in its debut month last July – setting Quaid on a path to becoming a household name.
“I don’t think you can train to be an everyman. I can’t go to the tape and learn how to do it. It’s just a quality you have and I’m lucky to have it. Some people find out they’re going to play jerks for the rest of their life – and I also do that, come to think of it – but I’m glad I can do this as well,” Quaid tells The National.
Quaid has been in the industry for more than a decade, getting his start on the first Hunger Games movie in 2012, but now that his leading man moment is finally here, he’s not exactly sure how to play it. “It’s very hard for me to take a compliment,” Quaid admits.
But as hard as it is for him to admit to himself how well everything’s going, it’s undeniable at this point. Novocaine, which releases on March 27 in the UAE, just topped box offices in the US with strong reviews, only weeks after his sci-fi thriller Companion found success critically and commercially. And stars are joining his projects just because he’s on board.
“To be honest, the thing that drew me to this was working with Jack. I love everything he does. I’ve been waiting to work with him for literally years – his name is why I said yes,” says Novocaine co-star Amber Midthunder.
Quaid thought he’d end up doing comedy – he got his start in sketch and improv – but being an action star is new to him. And as much as he excelled in it – he’s not sure if that is his true path.
“I’m really quite lanky,” Quaid says. “I’m probably the floppiest boy in the world. But I had to get in the best shape of my life for this movie,” he says. “That’s all gone now. It’s out the window. I went back to candy immediately after it wrapped. They said 'cut' and I said 'hand me some Sour Patch Kids'.”
And while he’s now more adept at stunts after pushing himself further than before, he’s having trouble unlearning the most challenging aspect of his Novocaine role – playing a man who can’t feel pain.
“It’s completely ruined me for every other fight scene I’m doing,” says Quaid. I’m shooting The Boys now, and I had one scene the other day where I got punched in the face, and I had to remind myself to show pain. It’s too in me, now.”
Quaid hasn’t mapped out the kind of career he wants for himself – “the world is too chaotic for that,” he says – but he does know that he’s not going to take any shortcuts, trying to land roles with the biggest filmmakers or franchises in Hollywood.
“I love being on the ground floor with filmmakers like [Novocaine directors] Dan and Bobby, or Drew Hancock who did Companion. I want to work with people who are coming up – to see them take off and work with them as they’re doing it. I want to find incredible filmmakers at that stage and just keep those relationships going,” he says.
There is one pet project he’s dying to do, however, that doesn’t fit this mould. He played the real-life scientist Richard Feynman in the Academy Award-winning Christopher Nolan film Oppenheimer (2023), and he still hasn’t gotten the role out of his head.
“I’m trying to make it happen. This world is insane and Hollywood is weird, but I’m trying to figure it out. I just fell in love with the guy while researching him for Oppenheimer. It’ll be the Oppenheimer cinematic universe – also known as the real world.”
Novocaine will be released in cinemas across the Middle East on March 27
