Ray Nicholson is fighting his demons — and winning.
“I just have the saboteur in me,” Nicholson, 33, exclusively tells Us Weekly while discussing his latest project, Borderline. “You know, I think that all of us are in our own struggle. And part of it is coming to terms with who you are and what you are. And I had the saboteur and I’ve worked on it so hard and now I see that even when I say that I’m nervous, what I was actually communicating was the first tiny action towards saying, like, ‘I’m gonna screw this up. I am not good enough.’”
That “saboteur” was working overtime on the set of Borderline, a dark comedy that features Nicholson as Paul, an escaped mental patient stalking a pop star (Samara Weaving) in hopes of making her his bride. The gritty film sees Nicholson in his most dynamic role yet — and while, when watching him, it’s hard to believe there was even a moment of doubt, Nicholson insists that the table read for the project was nothing short of disastrous.
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“When we first started, we did this table read that I totally tanked,” the actor recalls with a laugh, revealing he had to go to the bathroom to do “jumping jacks” in order to get through it. “I totally tanked this table read. And I was looking at Samara look at her husband, [director Jimmy Warden], being like, ‘Oh my God, this kid is gonna ruin your movie.’”
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Luckily for Nicholson, he had costars in his corner. “Eric [Dane, who plays security guard Bell], came to me after and he was like, ‘Hey, wanna grab lunch?’ And I was like, ‘Yes!’” Nicholson says, the gratitude still lingering in his voice. “He was so kind and loving and supportive.”
Calling Dane, 52, one of his “favorite people to work with” and an “empowering and giving scene partner,” Nicholson remembers telling the seasoned star he was “most nervous” to work with him. (The duo open the film with a hilarious if not unhinged one-on-one scene that immediately sets the bar for the rest of the movie’s 94-minute run.)
“I was like, ‘Dude, honestly, I’m so nervous. Like, I’m most nervous to work with you, you know, because you have all this experience with all this tape,” Nicholson recalls saying. Dane, however, surprised him with his response. “He’s like, ‘No, dude, I’m nervous to work with you!’ And it was this sweet moment. It was like he was just somebody that I could lean on the whole time. I really love him a great deal.”
With first jitters behind him, Nicholson geared up for filming — but found himself up against another, slightly more urgent, complication. The opening sequence required Nicholson to gobble down a series of Hot Pockets — famously known for their gooey cheesy filling — take after take despite being “lactose intolerant.”
“I told [our director] Jimmy, I’m like, ‘Jimmy, do you have to have me eat these Hot Pocket things, man? We got into a funny little spat about that, but it was that opening sequence and we just were trying to do it so many different ways. And he’s like, ‘I’m gonna keep cutting back to the Hot Pockets.’ So I ended up eating, like, eight Hot Pockets that were all really hot and it was mostly just cheese and pepperoni, but they were insanely hot. And I was just scarfing them down. I felt so sick.”
Eventually, production had to take a pause. “We actually ended up having to go into overtime, because I, you know, I went 10-two [the shorthand on set for longer bathroom break]. So the whole entire casting crew had to get paid like two extra hours and all of production was so furious at me. And I was like, ‘Well then don’t make me eat these Hot Pockets I’m allergic to!’” he tells Us, insisting: “This is a true story.”
With the Hot Pockets debacle literally behind him, Nicholson can now look back on his experience with a new perspective.
“What I love about this job is it’s the thing that tests me the most. After that table read, I learned something about myself,” he says. “It’s like I don’t have the power to examine myself, but somehow, with every job, with every character, it requires something new. It requires something that I didn’t know that I had.”
The son of Oscar-winning actor Jack Nicholson, Ray’s journey to defeating his “biggest fears and insecurities” go much farther back than Borderline. He says he spent years wondering if he measures up to his father, who he calls his North star.
“Do I have that pressure? I don’t know. Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? It’s all of these things,” he says while questioning his “nepo baby” status. ”Ultimately I do know, by going step by step on this journey, I begin to understand [my dad] more. And in a weird way, he becomes more human to me. I understand him more and it makes me love him more, even if we don’t necessarily talk about it.”
It’s not as if the actor hasn’t been able to make his own path, despite the duo both having an affinity for portraying complex villains on screen. In just the past few years, Ray has starred in a multitude of notable projects, from 2021’s indie hit Licorice Pizza to this year’s Novocaine opposite Jack Quaid.
He also appeared in last year’s Smile 2, a follow up to the 2022 horror film, in a role that required him to pay subtle — but unmistakable — homage to his father’s iconic performance in 1980’s The Shining. The unplanned moment ultimately led to the actor gaining a new perspective on being seen as his father’s son.
“I’d been trying to craft my own image and this or that and the other,” he explains. “And then once I saw [Smile 2], I was like, ‘Oh my God, dude, what were you wrestling with? It’s OK that your identity is that that’s your dad! You’re your dad’s kid. That’s OK.’”
He adds, “It was almost like the Alchemist type of moment where it was there the whole f***ing time, you know? I was just too dumb and proud to see it. I definitely had that moment where, like, someone did for me what I could not do for myself. And it was just like, ‘You’re so silly for trying to do something that’s impossible and so unnecessary, too.’”
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Defying “nepo baby” norms or not, Ray is just happy to get to do what he does. Much like with Borderline, he’s committed to rising above his own fears and obstacles — of the bathroom variety or otherwise — in order to provide a few hours of solace in an often brutal world.
“Being on set is like, ‘Today I will not lose to my demons. Not f***ing today. Because other people are relying on me,’” he tells Us. “I’m an entertainer, this is [a] service. People’s lives are really f***ing hard. People are all going through the same thing that I am, and hopefully I can tap into some truth that other people identify with and it helps them see their s*** because they can’t see it in themselves. That, to me, is the whole job and is the whole industry, I could just expound on that point for forever.”
Borderline is on demand now.
Us Weekly
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