Austin Butler dishes on 'The Bikeriders' prep right after villainous role

Austin Butler, after his roles in Masters of the Air and Dune: Part Two, is now starring in Jeff Nichols' highly anticipated crime drama, The Bikeriders.

In the 1960s-set film, Butler played Benny, a reluctant leader who refused to take charge of his Chicago-area motorcycle club as it descends into organised crime.

Interestingly, Benny is based on a real-life figure not interviewed or photographed for Danny Lyon's book, which inspired the film. This allowed Butler to creatively fill in the gaps and bring the character to life.

The Elvis actor dished on how he braced himself for the Bikeriders during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

“The thing with stoic characters is they might not say much, but it’s not because there’s an absence of thought or an absence of opinion,” Butler told the outlet.

“So I wrote out all his thoughts in those silent moments, and that way, I knew what his opinions were. His life needed to feel rich even in those moments of silence.”

While preparing for his role as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in Dune: Part Two, Butler also had to get ready for his role in The Bikeriders.

Since his Dune character is bald, he agreed to wear a bald cap for the role. Juggling both roles, he found himself preparing for the contrasting characters of Benny and Feyd during consecutive shoots in Budapest and Cincinnati.

“I was getting used to those old motorcycles as I was doing the knife training and stuff for Dune, and then I put Bikeriders on hold for a bit as I got closer to Dune,” Butler said.

“I shot for a month, and then I had two weeks off, and then I shot [Dune] for another month. So, during those two weeks off, I went and did motorcycle training [in the States], and then I went back to Dune.”

Butler's impressive lineup of filmmakers includes Ari Aster for the upcoming A24 film Eddington, where he stars alongside Joaquin Phoenix, Emily Stone (also known as Emma Stone), and Pedro Pascal.

“I’m a huge fan of Ari and Joaquin [Phoenix] and Emily [Emma Stone] and [DP] Darius Khondji and everybody involved. I don’t want to give much away as far as the story and character go, but it was a wild adventure that I got to go on. I got to play a character who’s very different from anything that I’ve done,” Butler shared.