Elliot Latner Refused to Play a Stereotype in “Evil Genius”: “I Wasn’t Looking for ‘an Addict,’ I Was Looking at a Person”

British actor Elliot Latner had almost nothing tangible to go on when he played Robert Pinetti, the real man behind one of America’s strangest crimes. That’s why he had to find the man behind the papers.

Latner stars in Evil Genius, a true-crime thriller by Courteney Cox based on the popular documentary series about the famous ‘pizza bomber’ case of Erie, Pennsylvania. Alongside Latner are well-known actors David Harbour and Patricia Arquette. The film’s world premiere was planned for September 12th at the Toronto International Film Festival.

In an exclusive interview with Where Is The Buzz, Latner said his preparation began with the script.

“The script was the first thing. I could simplify everything by looking at the events and the timeline of Pinetti’s situation. It was brilliantly written by Courtenay Miles, and I put my main focus on the scenes and what was actually happening in Robert’s life during this incredibly turbulent time. From there, I started looking for the human being behind those events,” he explained.

Since there is practically no reliable information in history about Pinetti, Latner prepared for the role by researching addiction and behavior, talking to residents of Skid Row, whose testimonies appeared on the YouTube channel ‘Soft White Underbelly.’ The channel drew criticism from some people because it is perceived as exploitation, and praise from others because it brings to light the lives of people society has written off. Latner understood it.

“I can see, for sure, both sides of the argument. For me, all I could control was how I engaged with the material and what I could take from it. I wasn’t watching those interviews looking for somebody to imitate. I was trying to better understand the reality of addiction from people who had actually lived it, because the last thing I wanted was to give was a stereotypical version of an addict,” he said.

Instead of broadening his knowledge, Latner focused on a few people and followed their stories over time.

“I specifically focused on a small number of people and followed them across more than one conversation where I could. I wasn’t looking for ‘an addict’; I was looking at a person, someone who could be funny, intelligent, difficult, vulnerable, and contradictory. That was much more useful to me than copying a particular physical behavior or mannerism.”

He also understood the ethical side of using testimonies of people who did not agree to share them with Latner.

“I get there is obviously an ethical complication because those people didn’t tell their stories for me to use in a performance, and I think there has to be a boundary there. I wasn’t lifting someone’s story, voice, or specific trauma and putting it into my performance of Pinetti. I was trying to listen and learn from their experiences,” Latner said.

Since Pinetti is a real person, Latner had to prepare more seriously for the role.

“As Pinetti is real, it just added another responsibility for me. So my job wasn’t to judge him or sensationalize his addiction. It was to try to understand the human being underneath it. If anything, watching those interviews made me more protective so I could serve that.”

TIFF calls the movie ‘darkly funny’, and Latner’s co-stars say it is a dark comedy. Pinetti died of a drug overdose, and Latner says it influenced his entire performance.

“With a dark comedy, not everything is about a laugh; it’s a brilliantly written and directed story, so the calibration was really about never asking for the laugh, but that’s how good comedy is. Pinetti was a real person, and he died very young, so I couldn’t approach him as a comic character. I had to play his circumstances completely truthfully,” he said.

The moments in between the big moments carry both the tragedy and the comedy.

“It’s the moments in between that can be tragedy and comedy. The interesting thing about dark comedy is that the laugh can happen because something is uncomfortable, absurd, or painfully human. If you start indicating that, I think you lose both the comedy and the tragedy.”

Latner’s job was to remain in Pinetti’s reality.

“So my job was to stay inside Pinetti’s reality. He doesn’t know he’s in a dark comedy. He’s trying to get through the moment in front of him. If the audience laughs somewhere around that, that’s okay, as long as the performance itself isn’t laughing at him.”

And taking the character seriously makes the laughs even deeper.

“And I actually think the more seriously you take someone like Pinetti, the more complicated those laughs become. You can laugh at the situation and then, a second later, realize there’s something very sad underneath it.”

Pinetti’s mother talked about her son openly in the Netflix documentary series, and his death caused many conspiracy theories for years. Latner decided not to contact anyone who knew him personally.

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t feel it was appropriate to intrude on his family’s life. I worked from what was publicly available and as a series of events unfolds and is told I just tried to give Pinetti as much humanity as I could,” he explained.

“Evil Genius” is Cox’s second feature movie as a director. Latner admits that it was obvious how much Cox wanted to work on this project from the very beginning.

“I just felt incredibly fortunate to have been cast by Courteney in this role. She told me that she loved the character of Pinetti, and it just added so much excitement for me to really give 100 percent. The level of work Courteney did was incredible, and she’d been working on it for so many years, and you could see it in every detail of her vision,” he explained.

Latner remembers how nervous he was on his first scenes, but Cox helped him calm down immediately.

“My first scenes were actually, maybe at least for me, the hardest days, so I came in very prepared and a little nervous. But Courteney immediately came over and said, ‘You fooled us! We had no idea you were British!’ She told me how excited she was for me to play the part and then would give me insightful facts and notes about each scene. I was also in good hands with my scene partner, Michael Chernus, on that day. Courteney let me play within the scene and also gave me freedom to find things for myself; then, if I went slightly off, she would just guide it back to where she wanted it. She was an incredible director, and what really was amazing was her passion for every scene and moment of the story. Her curiosity and knowledge made it really exciting. I can’t say too much about the scenes, but through her notes I learned a lot more about where Pinetti fitted into the larger story arc of the movie.”

Latner played Constable Peterson in James Wan’s “The Conjuring 2” (2016). Latner says his life has been full of events over the past decade, although his CV didn’t always show it.

“A lot of life, really. We also moved back from L.A. to New York,” Latner revealed. “With my son born just before The Conjuring, becoming a dad completely changed my perspective on what success meant. I was still pursuing acting, still training and working whenever I could, but I was also raising a child, being a husband, and building a life and also a business that could sustain raising a child in Brooklyn.”

He adds that he gained career momentum in theater before the pandemic.

“I was in 2017 building some momentum with theater and had a six-month run Off-Broadway with Irish Rep, but as that run ended and I was close on some jobs, COVID happened,” he says. “After that there were also years where I was constantly getting very close, checks and pins for shows like The Diplomat, The Boys From Brazil and The Gilded Age, so I always felt like I was knocking on the door, even when the credits didn’t necessarily show it.”

Latner says those years changed a lot about the actor he would be on set.

“So when something like Evil Genius comes along ten years later, I’m probably a very different actor walking onto that set, because I’m a very different person.”

Latner founded BK Actors Self Tape, a Brooklyn studio where he coaches actors through the audition process. Latner taped and auditioned Evil Genius at his studio.

“I did, yeah, I taped for it at my studio. And I also did the callback there as well over Zoom. Coaching other actors has definitely made me much better at auditioning. It’s the amount of hours you put into something. I’ve worked with actors at the very top as well as people doing their first auditions, and you learn from everyone!” he explained.

But he also understands that coaching does not make him immune to nerves.

“The funny part is I’m very good at giving that advice to everybody else, and then, when it’s my own audition, I can still overthink it like every other actor! So sometimes I have to remind myself to follow my own advice.”

Latner describes his studio as one of the most rewarding things he has.

“But the studio has been an incredible education and also my pride and joy. I love seeing other actors thrive and succeed. I’ve watched thousands of auditions over the years, and you learn a huge amount about what works, and probably even more about what gets in the way.”

Latner was born in Essex, England, just outside East London. His father was a market trader, and his mother stayed at home. Unexpected participation in the school production of “Dark of the Moon” pushed him toward creativity, leading him to take part-time classes at the Sylvia Young Theatre School and Anna Scher’s, as well as a youth theatre program at the Kenneth More Theatre.

Latner notes that his childhood greatly influenced his interpretation of an unemployed pizza deliveryman from Erie.

“Probably more than you’d think. I’ve lived in the States for 25 years now, and although Essex and Erie are obviously very different places, there were things about Pinetti’s working-class environment that felt familiar to me,” he explained.

The people he grew up with are a huge pool of inspiration for him.

“I grew up on a council estate in Essex, my dad was a market trader, and I was around working-class, larger-than-life characters all the time. There was an honesty and directness to them, but also what we’d call being ‘streetwise’ in the UK, learning to think outside the box and find ways to get what you want, even when your circumstances are working against you. Pinetti was living through difficult circumstances, and there were things in that frustration and in trying to find your way through life that I could draw on.”

To form Pinetti’s voice, Latner paid attention to regional accents.

“With the voice, I listened to as many people from the Erie area as I could find and watched the documentary several times. I recorded my audition three or four times and listened back specifically for mistakes until I felt confident I could pass. I tried to absorb the rhythm and placement rather than make the accent the performance,” Latner explained.

He emphasizes that this is never the purpose of the accent.

“The accent had to serve the character rather than become the character. And thankfully, I think it paid off.”

A dual citizenship holder living in New York, Latner trained for many years in Wado Ryu karate before moving to boxing, kickboxing, and jiu-jitsu. He recently finished his work in the Second City Grad Revue in Chicago, performing sketch comedy. His biggest creative inspirations are Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan.

Besides acting, Latner ran the New York City Marathon, supports West Ham United, and enjoys memories of his trips to Japan, Thailand, and an African safari.