Habit, out August 20 on digital and August 24 on Blu-ray, is a wild ride of a thriller that's both irreverent and hysterical. From first-time writer and director Janell Shirtcliff, the film follows L.A. party girl Mads (Bella Thorne, The DUFF) and her friends as they turn to Jesus after a drug deal gone very wrong.
When Mads loses the stash and money she got from her friendly neighborhood drug dealer Eric (Gavin Rossdale, Constantine), she and her friends decide to pass as nuns while trying to recover what they've lost. Unfortunately, Eric is far from the most dangerous person involved in the situation, and they're soon on the run from more enemies than they can imagine.
Rossdale, who has also made music with his rock band Bush since 1992, spoke to Screen Rant about his approach to acting versus music as well as his love of playing onscreen baddies.
Screen Rant: Were you approached for Habit directly or were you looking for a role and then found the script?
Gavin Rossdale: No, they came to me. I stopped acting because I was doing a lot of auditions, and stuff was being offered out of L.A. I didn't want to leave, so it was awkward. I was touring so much, and I couldn't do that. I just stopped until Sofia Coppola asked me to be in The Bling Ring. I was like, "Hell yeah," and then Janell asked me to be in this. I follow my invitations, but I don't audition much.
I've done a few auditions recently and didn't get them, so that's frustrating. But I'm always looking to do stuff that's interesting and fun. This is a wild ride, and it went through a journey. They had some setbacks; they began production, and there was a problem, and they changed the lead actress. I wouldn't say it was all over the place, but it was slightly.
It's so beautiful how it's come together, and the reaction to the film has been really great. But I'm just a tiny part of it.
What was it specifically that called you to the script? What did you like most about the story or made you excited to be part of it?
Gavin Rossdale: I liked the writing. I like the fact that I was offered a role of a guy who had good dialogue and good action in the movie. And I thought, "Yeah, I can bring something to that."
Sometimes I get things... I got one the other day from my agency, and it was literally like a stepping stone. Actually, I think it was with Mark Wahlberg. I went for it, but I don't think I got it. Literally, I'm like a stepping stone. He's stepping on my head to another bit in the movie.
But I think [Habit] just had value, and I really liked the cast. Bella Thorne's exciting and interesting, and Jamie [Hince] from The Kills is incredible. Paris Jackson is one of my favorite people, so it was a bit of a no-brainer, really.
You just dive in and hope it's good. And the thing about movies is that if they're really s***** no one sees them.
Eric and Mads have a really fun dynamic, and most of your scenes are with her. What was it like building that backstory? Because we get the story as it's already in progress.
Gavin Rossdale: Especially on indie movies, you just sink or swim. I remember when Bella arrived on set, with the glam because she's obviously the big star of the film, it was like Moses arriving. She's incredibly charismatic, so when she arrives, she arrives like a superstar.
I hadn't met her, but we had quite a lot of stuff together. And I remember that she crossed the driveway to give me a hug, because she was like, "We've got a lot of stuff going on later today, so we're gonna break that moment." She gave me a hug, and then we basically did our scenes about that. It was only later after work that we sort of hung out. And I did think to myself, "We could have benefited by us hanging out a little bit more before we shot," but we just did it as it was given.
She's really, really good. And it's much easier to act with someone who is honestly great at what they do. Because then you're in it. Like, I knew I was boring her with my drug dealer speech. It was torturous. She's a beautiful young girl, and nobody wants to be boring a young girl like that. Nobody wants to bore a superstar - it's the one time you get to sit with Beyonce, and you tell a terrible story or something like that.
That was good. I just felt her disdain for me, and I knew the voiceover would be, "Why is it drug dealers always want to talk? They think they know everything." Yeah, I loved it. And it was a lot of fun.
This is Janell's first feature film. What was that collaboration process like with her, and how did it feel to be part of her first big project?
Gavin Rossdale: I was so happy to be part of it. We've become really close; I call her my boss, and I just love her. And we have a great rapport. I'm doing another movie with her - that's pretty exciting. It's called The Edge of Nowhere.
She's just incredible, and she has that mixture of knowing exactly what she wants and being quite fluid with it. I think for a first time, it's a lot of things going on with a lot of moving parts. And she just effortlessly always looked really inspiring in a fantastic pink suit - she just always looked amazing and looked like her photographs.
I think that having a female cinematographer as well meant there was a lot of great female energy on [set]. It wasn't dramatic and loud. It was just getting there with just smarts, and that's how we got there. Indies can be tricky because there's obviously limitations on time. But it was a lot of fun to shoot, and I'm happy to see the reaction to it.
For us, it's weird. I'm just this really small part of it, so I don't even know what part of what I did ended up there. I shot a lot of footage, so I don't know what's in there.
One thing that's definitely in there is you being tortured. What was it like, practically speaking, to go through that process onscreen?
Gavin Rossdale: Well, I always seem to suffer in some kind of way. I make music about the suffering of humanity, and I seem to be [in] movies playing bad guys, losers, drug dealers, devils adversaries - whatever it is, it's always the dark side.
I vowed never to do [a] romantic comedy, but I went to Canoga Park to meet the absolutely insanely brilliant Brittany Murphy. I walked in, and I wasn't ready for her to be there. When I met the director of Little Black Book, I was like, "I don't want to do a romantic comedy. It's so soft, you never come back." With bad guys, they kill you and you get other movies. With romantic comedy, everyone forgets about you - unless you're Ryan Gosling or something like that.
I remember going in, and she was like, "Please be in this movie with me. Please be in this movie with me." I was like, "Okay!" I just rolled over. And we got such a good vibe that when they did testing - she told me this - there was too much energy between us. We had a great rapport in our scenes, and then they cut them all out. Because people were saying, "Why doesn't she end up with him? Why'd she end up with Ron [Livingston]?" There was that tension, apparently. I don't know, or maybe I was terrible. All I do know is that I got blooded.
I've done like seven or eight movies now. If you hit the cutting room floor in one project, you lick your wounds and you move on and you try to get better for the next one. But I like to play a bad guy. I prefer that; it's more interesting.
You mentioned singing about suffering there, and your music itself is a form of performance. How differently do you approach musical performance from theatrical? What mindset do you get into for both?
Gavin Rossdale: Apart from the movie I'm writing, I'm generally interpreting someone else's words and trying to put life into them. When I'm writing my own songs, they're just words and ideas that have resonated with me enough that I want to sing about them.
It's just about finding the magic that connects you to either a listener or an audience watching. There's a real clear line between connecting and not connecting, no matter whatever the form is. Whether it's a song, whether it's a movie or a TV show, the question is: is it connecting? Are you connected to the person that you have an exchange with? Is it real?
There should be no wasted words in movies; that's what I love about movies. No word is without a function. Every word has to have a function, or else what is the point in saying it? No point. Everything is pushing you in some way - as in every written word, of course.
It's just fun when you feel you've crossed the barrier. I kind of prefer these self-tapes as auditions, because sometimes you go and do an audition and you might do the first take... and it's nerve-wracking. You do a s**** take, it's stiff as a board, and you haven't gotten into your whole backstory. "I was so much better in my house." Now you can self-tape, and you can just wait. You see the takes, and you go, "No, that's not it. I do not believe that all." And then you see it, suddenly. It's now elevated; it's now left the page, and there's a whole reasoning behind it.
I just think that it's when you cross that line into it, and it elevates you in some kind of a way. That's when it starts to happen. That's the connection that I see. And when I'm on stage, I go to lose myself in the songs and singing, so that people are just mesmerized by you. You can't just be on stage with no energy. We talked about Bella's charisma - and charisma is the ability to emit emotion without having to do too much, or doing a lot. It's whatever you decide, but something has to be happening. Something has to be changing for people.
That's how I see the link between both, when it becomes good.
You like to play the bad guy, but I do appreciate that Eric is more lost or flawed than bad. How do you view the life he lived before Habit started?
Gavin Rossdale: Yeah, I don't believe in portraying people as [one way]. People aren't all bad. You play a bad guy, and you're not looking to sympathize in any kind of way - because that's nonsense. But the way that I think people connect with bad guys is when they can identify.
That's such a wide term: bad guys. Eric, as you say, is just a lost guy. Most people that are bad are lost. There's a reason, there's a genealogy, there's a genesis of why they're so crazy or so violent. It's finding ways and cracks in that hard exterior and seeing things inside.
When you consider it, he's just lost, and he really wants to be an actor. He really wants to be a TV guy; he does not want to be selling cocaine. It's only by doing the cocaine that he can convince himself this is where he wants to be. Because you know that when he comes down from that coke, he just wants to kill himself.
That's the side I saw in Eric and the fact that he's so paranoid. Because he's not violent; he's not a gangster. I think that people can find themselves in those positions of just literally taking all those wrong turns, and suddenly they're in the worst place. People, we're all layered. We do good things, do bad things, make good choices, bad choices. And that's the composite of humanity.
You've got to beware the false prophets, you know? People that totally think they've never made mistakes and never screwed up, and they're all perfect. They're the sinister ones you've got to be most scared of.
Finally, Habit has been billed as having an early Tarantino vibe. That being said, what is your favorite Quentin Tarantino movie?
Gavin Rossdale: Wow. Maybe Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the last one. I mean, there isn't a Tarantino film that I haven't loved. Ask me to find one I don't like, and then I have no answer. I mean, he's a king.
Habit arrives in select theaters and on digital August 20, as well as on Blu-ray August 24.
Key Release Dates
-
Habit
Release Date:2021-08-20
