My personal tolerance for insects, arachnids and other kinds of bugs is so minimal that I don’t even like thinking about them, lest I conjure phantom sensations of them crawling on my arms and legs. Clearly I am not cut out to be an actor who would potentially have to perform a scene in a film with any number creepy crawlies – but I suppose that means I have a special admiration for Michael Cera, who found a fascinating way to think about the creatures while handling them in the making of The Phoenician Scheme.
In the new Wes Anderson movie, Cera plays Bjørn Lund, a tutor and administrative assistant to Benicio del Toro’s Zsa-Zsa Korda with a background in entomology, and an expression of the character’s specialty in the film is that he is frequently featured handling various insects and spiders. I asked him about the experience late last month during the virtual press day for The Phoenician Scheme (paired with del Toro and Mia Threapleton), and he noted that he did have a bit of fear at the start, but he became for comfortable when he changed his mind set about them:
It's kind of okay. At first you're kind of, you know, a little nervous about it. But after a few minutes holding the creatures like the praying mantis for instance, you kind of feel very responsible for them. They're very delicate and they're very nervous. So you're their like caretaker in that moment.
If I step outside of my phobia temporarily, I suppose I can recognize the vulnerability of the insects. They can be fast and venomous, but they are also tiny and fragile. We have the expression “squashed like a bug” for a reason. On film sets, they have special handlers who are employed to ensure their care, so Michael Cera’s feeling of responsibility toward them while they are in his hands makes sense as well.
It certainly also helped the actor that his scenes in The Phoenician Scheme don’t feature him getting swarmed or covered; he handles the different bugs in the manor of a scientist/tutor. There’s a sequence where he handles a tarantula (the ultimate “no way” for me), but Cera intimated that he was calm because it was calm:
And the tarantula... they didn't give me like a Johnny Carson tarantula that runs up your [arm].
Mia Threapleton went as far as to call the tarantula “quite sweet” and remembered that it had a name – but couldn’t recall exactly what it was.
If you haven’t yet seen Michael Cera’s bug handling for yourself, The Phoenician Scheme is now playing in theaters everywhere – the film featuring an outstanding cast that includes not just Cera, Benicio del Toro and Mia Threapleton, but also Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Riz Ahmed, Jeffrey Wright, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson, and more.
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