‘Grateful for my anxiety’: Actor Lewis Pullman related to Thunderbolts* character’s struggles

NEW YORK – Lewis Pullman is still not sure if he is playing a hero or a villain in the latest Marvel movie Thunderbolts*.

“He’s very malleable and easily influenced because he hasn’t had a real, strong, reliable source of love in his life,” the American actor said of his character, a dark Superman-like figure known as Sentry/The Void – although his civilian name, Bob, is how you might remember him best.

Think what would happen if Superman were super-depressed. Also, Bob appears capable of vapourising people with a flick of his hand.

“There’s a contrast between being this all-powerful being and then having your greatest weakness and your main Achilles’ heel be your own self,” Pullman, 32, said in a video call from his apartment in Los Angeles.

He had just returned to the city, where he was born and raised, after a shoot in Vancouver, Canada, for the Netflix movie Remarkably Bright Creatures, based on American author Shelby Van Pelt’s enormously popular 2022 novel. That was followed by a whirlwind press tour that had taken him from London and New York to Los Angeles and Miami to back to Los Angeles, just in time for his brother’s wedding.

Pullman – the son of 71-year-old American actor Bill Pullman (While You Were Sleeping, 1995; Independence Day, 1996) – is the breakout star of Thunderbolts*, which has attracted praise for its candid depiction of mental health.

“What I love about this film is that it is so adamantly trying to rid our society” of the stigma around mental health, Lewis Pullman said. Like his character, he has an introspective bent, turning over every question in his mind before answering.

Although he had never read the comics featuring Sentry – also known as Robert Reynolds, shortened to Bob in Thunderbolts* – he was drawn to the profound sadness and isolation of the character, whose Mr Hyde-like alter ego is the Void, the darkness that lives inside Bob.

Struck by bouts of melancholy, Bob forges an unlikely friendship with Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, who was trained as a child to be a Black Widow assassin.

“She sees something of herself in him,” Pullman said. “She sees that they are both at the end of their lines.”

The role is a breakout turn for Pullman, who earned a supporting actor Emmy nomination in 2024 for his portrayal of a brilliant scientist in the Apple TV+ period series Lessons In Chemistry (2023). Before that, he played a pilot – also named Bob – in the 2022 hit Top Gun: Maverick.

“I should probably take a breather from playing Bobs,” he said with a laugh.

How did you first get involved in Thunderbolts*?

I got a phone call that was very vague and cryptic, and I was like: “I should meet Jake (Schreier, the director) and see what this is all about.”

He couldn’t give me the script, so he told me the story old-fashioned style, word by word. It was great to have that experience. You don’t get it very often.

I had only three days to prepare for the screen test and audition, which wasn’t as much time as I’d like. So, I tried to go as broad as possible, and then shrink it down and go as specific as possible in finding and discovering where it was that I, as Lewis, could relate to this character.

What did you pull from for the role?

What was so exciting and terrifying was how much I related to this character. In terms of the mental health parts of it, the anxiety and the depression, I have a dose of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), self-doubt and the negative self-talk that can paralyse you.

I’m lucky to have come from a great family that was very proactive and resourceful about helping me figure it all out. So, to try to inhabit somebody who didn’t have that – I was close enough to those alleyways to be able to see what it would have looked like had I not had those.

Have you had candid conversations with people in your life about mental health?

I was a social work major in college in North Carolina, so I have had many conversations about these topics. Coming into this project, it was obvious that it was a major theme. But it was never our goal to make this a PSA (public service announcement). This is still an incredibly fun, large-scale blockbuster film. But by shining a flashlight on it, it becomes more real.

In many ways, my anxiety is something I’m grateful for. It’s there as a protective mechanism. You don’t just make a movie about it and then the conversation’s over. I’ll be talking about it until I circle the drain. And that’s something I’ve come to be okay with and embrace.

Do you have personal experience with depression?

That’s something that’s less of a consistent force in my life. It comes in waves. But it’s something that’s deep in my marrow because, when you feel that, it’s very hard to forget. I was able to tap into that in a way that was safe, with therapy, and then friends and support.

I go about therapy in the same way that I go about acting. I assume that I never know anything, that there’s always something to learn. I did a lot of cognitive behavioural therapy in high school and now I’m in talk therapy.

I’ve realised that the times when you should stick with therapy the most is when you think you’re doing the best without it. That’s a mind game that I’ve fallen for a couple of times.

What would you say to people who feel like Bob?

It’s okay to not smile, it’s okay to cry, it’s okay to let all those feelings out, and to not bottle them up. You’ll find that, more often than not, there will be somebody there to catch you, if you’re vulnerable enough to let them. NYTIMES