Mercedes Kilmer stars in Paydirt alongside her father, the Top Gun and Batman Forever star, Val Kilmer. An indie crime thriller from writer/director Christian Sesma, Paydirt follows a relatively jolly band of thieves led by Luke Goss and the ruthless disgraced lawman (Val Kilmer) pursuing them in hopes of a shot at violent redemption.
While Paydirt marks Mercedes' feature film debut, she has been acting in theater and short films for years. When the opportunity arose to play the daughter of her father's character, she jumped at the chance. Though she has a scant few scenes in Paydirt, the younger Kilmer leaves a strong impression, and her emotional chemistry with Val is emotionally gripping, even within the context of a tap-dancing crime movie influenced by the works of Steven Soderbergh and Guy Ritchie.
While promoting the release of Paydirt, Mercedes Kilmer spoke to Screen Rant about her work on the film and her budding career as a young Hollywood talent. She talks about her aspirations for the future and how she's dealt with the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic putting something of a damper on her ambitions for 2020. She also discusses how proud she is to work alongside her father, a cancer survivor with a tracheotomy tube, and how important it is for actors with disabilities to have opportunities in Hollywood.
Paydirt is out now in theaters, Digital, and VOD.
I'm sure you've been asked this a million times this week, but can you tell me about what it's like to act with your dad?
I've consciously and unconsciously tried very hard to separate my work from my parents, just for, you know, to develop the best art possible. To really be able to draw from my individual experience, it was necessary for me to do that. I've also tried to be private about my acting. This gave me a really good challenge, to attack that value system I'd set up for myself, and to challenge myself to integrate the reality of the fact that my parents are actors to my own work. It was a very rewarding experience, creatively, not only to work with my dad, but to literally play my dad's daughter. For my character to be the daughter of my father's character. There were so many meta levels and it was exciting for me, as an actor.
I've interviewed a handful of people who are the children of other famous people, and normally I try not to ask about that sort of thing, because it's probably all you get asked about, "What's it like to be so-and-so's son or daughter," whatever. But I figured I'd get a pass here since you're in the movie together.
I think that has been a challenge, historically. As an artist, you want to draw from your own individual experience, and it's hard if you don't get to have one. But now that I'm older and I have a much more secure awareness of myself as an individual, it's actually a source of potential inspiration, as this movie shows. We were able to use real life facts about our relationship to deepen the script. I'm really excited by that. I think we live in a culture, America, which is such an individualistic culture, especially about career. We don't come from a culture that values family tradition within the arts. Other cultures at other times, you pass a craft down through the family. But I didn't really grow up in that culture. I think it's actually really cool. Now that I'm older, I really love that my family are actors, and it's cool to allow that to enliven my own work instead of to stifle it.
And not just acting, but music, as well. You've been in bands, and your dad is pretty famous for his own music, as well.
I love music. I haven't really deeply pursued it professionally. I don't think I'm really, like, a "real" singer, naturally... But I can imitate people and I love to sing! What I would really love is to play a singer. I have a love for music, and I would love to be able to sing in a film and play a singer.
That would be cool. You've done short films before, but Paydirt is your real feature debut. Is acting the thing you want to pursue? Is it your path?
I think it always has been. I just wanted to have my 20s in peace. (Laughs) I didn't really feel like I could handle the public world of acting. Always, since I was a child, I knew it was what I wanted to do, and I wanted to find a way to do it quietly for a while, and focus on theater and working with a live audience, that's what I've been doing. But now I really want to do more films. I am doing them, and I think that's what my career is moving towards, now.
I'm sure the Coronavirus has put a little bit of a damper on whatever your plans were for this summer. But are you holding up?
Yes. I've done maybe over 40 plays on Zoom. I'm in this group and I have a lot of friends who are actors and we're trying to stay busy and allow the limitations of this time to inspire new ways of working with technology and trying to see how we can adapt theater to total isolation.
In a weird way, it is heartening that even though so much stuff is shut down, humans don't stop. We find other ways to do what we do, right?
Yeah, totally. It's made me focus on... I've realized I really want to do audiobooks. I really want to do more voice work, and I think if this keeps going, and it looks like it is going to, I'm trying to think of how we can continue to act without having to be physically present anywhere. So yeah, it's been cool, but I can't wait for it to be over.
Me too! I recently lost my dad to cancer, so I feel like I can imagine, a little bit, what you and your family went through when your dad got sick and had his operations and all that stuff. You know, speaking of adapting, he's someone who doesn't have the same voice he had, and he's dubbed in the film. Can you talk a bit about being supportive, being there for him, and how he kept strong through that? I apologize if that's too exploitative of a question.
No, first of all, I'm sorry to hear that about your father, that must have been so difficult for you. Thank you for asking, because it's an honor, and I'm proud to be involved in a historic film that has a lead actor with a disability as severe as my father's is. Working on it was a challenge. It's something I was already conscious of, but it really, viscerally illuminated to me how narrow my own training had been. I was like, I cannot believe this is the first time I'm working with a disabled actor. We don't learn how to do that, and I think that's appalling. It's also such a loss for me as an actor, because my dad had incredible faculty and training for speech and physical communication as well as vocal communication. Watching him work and how he's able to circumvent this restriction on his speech was so educational for me as an actor. It made me realize how terrible of a loss it is for everybody not to hire disabled actors, especially, obviously, for the actors themselves. For my dad being so well-known and starring in this film and having so publicly had this disability with his speech that's so central to acting, I think it's going to open the door for more actors who are not as well known to be accommodated on set and to be hired. I'm so grateful for the challenge, personally, to help me grow as an actor, and I'm also just so honored to be involved.
Paydirt is out now in theaters, Digital, and VOD.