Ponyboi star Dylan O’Brien has never minced words about the type of work he wants to make.

In an era where actors of his generation are expected to pursue franchises with superheroes and Jedi, O’Brien has repeatedly established that he generally has no interest in such roles. O’Brien previously got a taste of the IP world as the star of three Maze Runner book adaptations, which grossed more than $900 million on a combined budget of around $150 million. Since then, he’s opted to help provide a platform for newer indie storytellers, and Ponyboi star-screenwriter River Gallo is the latest example of that intention. 

“The last ten years of my career has been reboot mania, and the current nature of the industry tends to regurgitate,” O’Brien tells The Hollywood Reporter. “So, if we, as artists, have any remote effect, it’s really important that we champion original stories that we are not seeing and champion new voices that we’re not hearing from every day.”

Written by Gallo and directed by Esteban Arango, Ponyboi chronicles the struggles of an intersex sex worker named Ponyboi (Gallo). He becomes the victim of terrible circumstances, forcing him to flee New Jersey before his volatile pimp (O’Brien’s Vinnie) and a mob family can do their worst. Vinnie is O’Brien’s first full-fledged villain, but he hesitates to embrace that label in a traditional sense.

“I never saw him as unlikable. I really appreciated that this guy was really charming and hilarious, but also a master manipulator and a total fucking piece of shit,” O’Brien says.

Below, during a recent conversation with THR, O’Brien also discusses another upcoming indie passion project, Twinless, as well as the “zany” big swing of Sam Raimi’s Send Help.

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From Ponyboi’s chinstrap beard to your current mustache, you’re really running the gamut of facial hair lately. 

(Laughs.) Why not, right? If you’ve got it, carve it up and flaunt it.

Ponyboi is the first time I’ve absolutely despised a character of yours. Your Not Okay character was pretty scummy, but I wouldn’t call him the villain of that movie. Do you consider Vinnie/Vincenzo to be your first proper villain?

Thanks for the Vincenzo shout. That was my specificity on the shoot. But I guess [he’s my first proper villain], yeah. It’s really for other people to decide. Like all things in this industry, there’s the notion of subjectivity, but it’s pretty hard to deny that he’s absolutely the villain of this story.

Knowing that you usually play likeable, sympathetic characters, is that why you took such a left turn?

Well, I never saw him as unlikable. He’s certainly detestable. He’s violent. He’s a manipulator. He’s a liar. He’s a real piece of shit. But as far as being an entertaining character, both things can coexist. I also found him quite hilarious, especially in the beginning. I love even more so the arc and the havoc he ends up wreaking as the scumbag that he turns out to be. But it’s jaw-dropping and shocking, especially from how you first meet him and the charm that he has. Those are the aspects that were exciting to me about it. I like a really colorful villain, not a straight villain, where the character has all sorts of elements. So I really appreciated that this guy was really charming and hilarious, but also a master manipulator and a total fucking piece of shit and an idiot. I like all those elements in the writing.

Some actors say that they have to defend their character no matter what. Do you subscribe to that philosophy based on what you’ve just said? Or would you not go that far?

No, I don’t subscribe to that. I don’t personally operate that way. I’ve colored in a whole background for this guy, and I certainly have an idea of how he grew up and how he got here and how he became this way in terms of behaviors and choices. But I wouldn’t defend him to the grave. What he does is totally irredeemable, and we could spend all day unpacking his violent childhood that led to him creating and running his own toxic environment that’s spiraling out of hand. So I have empathy for everyone, but that doesn’t mean I forgive him either. 

Your name increases the odds of a movie getting financed, and it seems like you take pride in helping indie storytellers like River Gallo, James Sweeney, Celine Held/Logan George and David Stassen get their films made. Am I reading that pattern correctly? Do you like helping people get on the board?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s super important in this industry. I am somebody who really loves to hear from new voices. I don’t want to hear from the same storyteller every day. I don’t want to hear from the same perspective every time out. I get a little tired of watching the same shit over and over again, and this industry has a habit of falling into those consistent tropes as a reaction to whatever is working at the time. So it’s up to us to constantly forge against that and do what we can to keep the pendulum swinging, especially right now in the industry. The last ten years of my career has been reboot mania, and the current nature of the industry tends to regurgitate. So, if we, as artists, have any remote effect, it’s really important that we champion original stories that we are not seeing and champion new voices that we’re not hearing from every day. 

Ponyboi is set in New Jersey, which is where you spent a decent chunk of your childhood. Do you still feel at home in that state?

Yeah, nothing will ever make me feel more at home than New Jersey-New York. This region has special nostalgia for me in my life. My whole family is from the Long Island-Jersey area, and I grew up there until I was 12. That’s enough time for it to be my place and my city. It’s the city that I grew up idolizing. It has the teams that captured my heart and that I root for. I never spiritually left New Jersey, especially leaving at that age. You have a tough time adjusting to wherever you move, although I eventually developed a different type of love for L.A. in its own right. But it’ll never be what the East Coast is to me. It’s just not the same. 

There’s a moment between you and Victoria Pedretti that’s utterly horrific. Were you both dreading that day the entire shoot?

Yeah, that’s a great way of putting it. People don’t always realize that those scenes are not easy to shoot. There’s a degree of it that is hyper visceral. As an actor, when you’re performing scenes, your brain can know that something isn’t real, but your body will have a tougher time catching up to that. It’s a real thing. So you can endure something on set for a certain amount of hours, and then you’ll find yourself upset or in some type of sour, down or angry mood. It’s hard to remember sometimes that your body is going through these things that you know are pretend. So you have to give yourself some grace and tell yourself, “I’m having a hard time today because my body is under duress due to the content of this scene and the nature of what I’m having to do here.” Even if it’s something as physical as just yelling or something like that, you’re triggering a response in your body. You’re playing tricks on it in a way, and you will feel the effects of it, interestingly enough.

I’ve chronicled the Dylan O’Brien-Sarah Ramos Social Network collaboration in great detail, but I’ve yet to follow up on your encounter with Andrew Garfield last year at TIFF.

Yeah, we totally hung out. That was the most time we’ve spent together other than just brief interactions, and it was cool. I enjoyed speaking with him. We talked a lot about our work and navigating this industry and how we feel about balancing life and not sacrificing the entirety of it for this industry. We also talked about trying to preserve privacy and a sense of normalcy for yourself, while also engaging in this career in a way that feels natural and honors what you want for your life. So we had a fun night. We drank wine a little bit, and we just fucked around. Our groups merged and talked star signs and Chappell Roan. He was really into Chappell Roan at the time, and he was playing her in the car. So that’s the update on that, and he did bring up the Social Network video again, which I found hilarious. 

[The next question/answer contains spoilers for Caddo Lake.]

The why of your Caddo Lake character’s death is something I pondered a lot at the time. I suppose his ultimate purpose was to get the young version of his mother to safety, but would his own survival have caused too much complication for the present-day version of the family? 

That’s a really interesting point, and I think it’s something that people would have two minds about. I don’t want to speak on Celine and Logan’s behalf, but I will say that there’s a bit of a conceptual closing-of-the-loop aspect to it in terms of playing with time and how that concept specifically works in that particular world. It was a big debate for them as writers when they were crafting the movie. So you brought up an incredibly relevant point to the story, and it was very much debated by the storytellers. I’ve definitely heard them speak about it before, and it’s something we all inquired about at one time or another. It has something to do with closing the loop, but I don’t want to say that for sure, though.

How was Sam Raimi’s Send Help?

Crazy. He’s an absolute character. I really adore the guy. I don’t know if you’ve ever spoken to him. 

I have, yeah.

He’s a wholly unique person, and our senses of humor really aligned. So I felt very comfortable with him out of the gate in terms of collaboration and just getting each other. We could talk all day about the work, but we never carried on with an air of self-seriousness that could be a downer. So it was really fun, especially because it’s a really zany swing, and I’m really excited and curious to see how it comes out. If it works, it can be so cool and weird and wacky and funny and murderous and all of these things that made it really exciting to jump aboard.

Rachel [McAdams] also became such a huge piece that I’ll hold with me forever. She’s such a special human, and I really loved getting to work with her. I loved getting to know her and her family, as well as who she is and how she operates. We’re so polar opposite in the way we approach our work, but that ended up being a real marriage. We both, at least I hope, really admire and respect one another, and even though we approach the work differently, our differences make each other really laugh. I just felt really seen by her and understood in terms of our collaboration and her being my primary scene partner. So we learned a lot from each other, and that’s the best. That’s the goal, and it’s all while doing something that you hope works. At the end of the day, if anything, it was a bold swing, and I’m happy to take that shot.

Twinless comes out in the fall. What itch did that movie scratch?

There were so many itches. Twinless represents so many things for me. In terms of my life and this point in my career, it was something that I always believed in and never gave up on. I stood by and stood with James for many years, and I’m very proud of that. It means a lot to me because everyone in town passed on making this movie. And for years there were a lot of times where we were forced to question whether we were wrong about what we saw in it. Rejection can make you feel that way, sometimes, if it mounts up high enough over a long enough time. So it was a big lesson in sticking with your gut and going with what you believe in and not wavering when something speaks to you and paying attention to that. 

Maybe it wouldn’t have worked for another pair. Maybe it only would’ve worked for me and James in the way that it did, but that’s this medium and this art form and art, in general. It’s amazing when a story speaks to you and you feel a connection to where you want to create it. I then met James, and we wanted to create it together. We formed this relationship, and we made the movie and each other better. It’s finally taken form, and it’s taken such a form that we’re both blown away that we even did it. It feels like lightning in a bottle for us.

I just couldn’t be more proud to stand by something and show it to the world, and we just want to get as many people to see it as humanly possible, obviously. [Movie releases] go by quickly when they happen, and they only come out once. So I may never be prouder of anything I ever do, so I want to just soak it up the moment and stay present.

Lastly, we talked a few years ago about the death of the baseball movie. Is there still no sign of life from where you’re sitting? 

With everything in this business, it’s all based on what’s working and what’s making money. There was a brief chance a couple years ago when the Lakers show [Winning Time] was first out. I’d heard some rumblings about an ‘86 Mets show coming together, and I’m not sure what happened with that. I met on it at the time with Rei Marcus Green, who had just done King Richard at the time. He’s a huge Mets fan, and we had an amazing call just bro-ing down about the Mets a little bit. Bro-ing down about the Mets is always just commiserating about the Mets, but luckily that has changed. 

In terms of the ‘86 story, I still think there’s something really cool there that could be had one day. I actually just touched base with Rei again. He was on the Sundance jury this year, and while we had a little text exchange, I didn’t want to ask him what was going on with the show. So I still think there will be room for it at some point. It’s just going to take the right timing for whoever decides to vouch for it, and maybe it will be me. We’ll see. 

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Ponyboi is now playing in select movie theaters.