An investigative journalist of great repute may be in over his head in Confess, Fletch. A reboot of the film franchise based on Gregory Mcdonald's novels, the film centers on the titular character as he is framed for murder and tries to clear his name while also getting to the bottom of a mysterious art theft.
Jon Hamm leads the cast of Confess, Fletch alongside Lorenza Izzo, Marcia Gay Harden, Kyle MacLachlan, Roy Wood Jr., and John Slattery.
On the heels of the film's well-received debut, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with star Kyle MacLachlan to discuss Confess, Fletch, his character's unique quirks, parallels with How I Met Your Mother's The Captain and more.
Warning: SPOILERS lie ahead for Confess, Fletch.
Kyle MacLachlan Talks Confess, Fletch
Screen Rant: At the risk of aging myself, my dad showed me the original Fletch when I was a kid, and I loved it. It's still one of my favorite Chevy Chase movies, and when I heard that Confess, Fletch was in the works with Jon Hamm, my interest was piqued, but what about it really caught your attention to want to be a part of it?
Kyle MacLachlan: I liked the idea that they were going to go back and use the books as the template really to create this character, to sort of revisit Fletch. I thought Jon was a really interesting choice. He's got the kind of suave demeanor that I think the original Fletch had, also sort of a sense of bumbling inept on the side. He could also play charming, of course, so I thought, "Oh, yeah, that's a good choice." Then, Greg Mottola has been a friend for many, many years, we've always liked gone, "Oh, wouldn't it be great to work together on something," and he really just reached out and said, "Hey, I don't know if this is of interest. You want to come for a couple of weeks play this character? He's kind of fun." I looked at it and said, "That sounds [fun], what the heck, why not?"
I'd never been to Boston in all my years, which is weird to say, so I thought, "Ah, I'll go to Boston, we'll hang out with Greg and Jon and see what it's all about." I liked the character, too. I like all of the characters, but my character was great, because he's a serious art dealer and collector with some very strange quirks and I said, "Well, I can, I can do that." I think it makes him more interesting, and also challenging for me to present, the guy is a somewhat eccentric, offbeat kind of dude who then, at the end of the day, actually has to be a threat and be legitimately dangerous. So I said, "Okay, this will be fun." All those elements kind of combined, and I said, "Oh, this would be great."
When Greg pitched you the idea of the character in the film, did he tell you outright where the character was going to end up?
Kyle MacLachlan: Oh, yeah. So, I read the script and I saw that this is where he had to go, and he was actually going to be the villain of the piece. So I said, "Oh, okay, so I want to make sure that I present him in the beginning as not a suspect." I don't know if you felt that or not, but I really wanted him to be, "Oh, he's the last person that you would think of as a potential bad guy." That's a fun thing to be able to play and how you temper that as an actor.
Yeah, there were definitely a lot of great red herrings thrown out throughout the film to where I still always kept you in mind. But at the same time, I was like, "Ah, but he's just off enough that it might not be him."
Kyle MacLachlan: How could he pull it together? Yeah, exactly.
One of the funny things about your character's little quirks is his music taste and the dancing that you got to do with that. What was it like exploring that specific element of him?
Kyle MacLachlan: Well, it was interesting, because it initially said, "EDM," and I didn't know what that meant when I first started out, so I was like, "Okay." And then they said, "It's electronic dance music," and I said, "Oh, okay, great. I do love some of that. I like electronica a little bit." So then Greg said, "Well, why don't you bring me some suggestions of music that you like." [Chuckles] So I started listening to EDM and I don't even remember the name of the bands, but I was all over the place. I wanted something that was kind of, I guess the rationale for it was here's a guy who's very, very caught up in his head and plotting and planning, and the EDM is an opportunity for him to sort of forget about all that. It's basically just like playing a video game, it's his equivalent to a video game, so you just go mindless for a while and just do this crazy thing.
And I think it's practical in his mind, it's very good exercise, so these two things went together. It also sort of gives a kind of European weird energy to the character, like he spends time somewhere in some small German community dancing around with other strange people all wearing various types of clothing. I thought, "Okay, this is all working out very well." But, anyway, the research part of it was fun, and it was really more about finding where that quirk, that addition to the character, making it part of the character, not just something that you laid on, like, "Oh, here's three weird things that this guy is going to do." They all had to make sense within the character, so we found a rationale for it.
That's great that you found that. It certainly makes sense for your character. What was it like developing that rapport with the rest of your cast?
Kyle MacLachlan: We had fun, we were in Boston, we were together, it was very low budget, very independent, so we didn't even really have separate trailers or places to go when we'd finished the scene, just to go and kind of chill. There was one green room for everybody, so everybody kind of hung out together, we were in a beautiful location on the coast in Boston, just outside of Boston, where they had all the boat stuff, we did a lot of stuff there, then a few things in town. But it was really just kind of a big group hanging out, sitting around, drinking coffee, chitty chatting until we would do the next little setup. Greg was very easygoing, Greg Mottola, very easygoing, and he was a joy to work with. So, it just kind of happens naturally, you're also in a foreign place, so it's like, "Hey, you want to go to dinner tonight?" So, we'd go off somewhere together, we'd find a place to eat, someplace kind of fun, there was a lot of camaraderie.
Since you mention the boats, as someone who's enjoyed your work for quite a while, did you find any funny parallels between your character in this and The Captain from How I Met Your Mother?
Kyle MacLachlan: The character of the Commodore, and I forgot the name of the actor who played him, who comes up with a drink in his hand, and he gets shot at the end. I don't want to give it away, but you know, he gets shot at the end accidentally, he survives. He was kind of [slurring] talking like this, you know, I said," Oh, that's very close to The Captain." But it was kind of fun to revisit that, to be on the boat and have like that, like, "Oh, yeah, a little bit of a Captain reference."
I was trying to think of a way that I could lay in a little Easter egg somewhere as the character, but nothing really occurred to me, so I was like, "Well, alright." But there is something that happens when you're on a boat, and you play that particular kind of character, you almost become like Cary Grant, you want to be like, "Hello, it's my boat here. Yes. Take a look and see." You sort of get into this odd, upper crust, almost English, sort of throwback East Coast guy, so that that crept into the character for sure.
Well, I'm sure fans who love the show will love putting those two together.
Kyle MacLachlan: Yes, I hope so, that would be fun, he's a great character, too.
With legacy sequels, you never know how they're going to perform, you always hope they do well, but it's been great to see the really positive response from critics to Confess, Fletch, how's it been for you seeing the very positive feedback?
Kyle MacLachlan: Yeah, I think we were all not sure what the response was going to be to this for a couple of reasons. One is Chevy Chase, of course, originated the role, and put a very strong mark on it. But I think we all felt like that was fine, and that was his interpretation, but at the end of the day, it didn't resemble the character that was created in the original books. I'm trying to remember the name of the author, is it Greg Mcdonald?
Yes.
Kyle MacLachlan: Great, yes, okay. He wrote a number of books and the character that Jon, the way he played the character, is much closer to, I think, what the author intended in the original books. So, we thought, "Well, that's good, people are a fan of the books, and there's a number of them, I think they'll be hopefully pleasantly surprised that that's the direction that we went." So that was good. And then, just this kind of comedy, this is not a slapstick, people falling down, crazy, over-the-top comedy, this is something that you have to pay attention to, and you have really quirky characters, and you've got a wonderful cast of actors that create these characters.
There's some really funny moments, and Jon is kind of in the middle, kind of viewing all of this stuff and just going along as best he can and trying to figure this out. It asks for the audience to go on that journey with him, and it seems like a lot of people are doing that, which was pleasant, it was a wonderful surprise.
Confess, Fletch Synopsis
In this delightful comedy romp, Jon Hamm stars as the roguishly charming and endlessly troublesome Fletch, who becomes the prime suspect in a murder case while searching for a stolen art collection. The only way to prove his innocence? Find out which of the long list of suspects is the culprit—from the eccentric art dealer and a missing playboy to a crazy neighbor and Fletch’s Italian girlfriend. Crime, in fact, has never been this disorganized.
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Confess, Fletch is now in select theaters and on VOD.