VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Sharon Horgan On Working With Nic Cage On ‘The Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent’

Nicolas Cage‘s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, to rave reviews. In the film, Cage plays a fictionalized version of himself in a world where he’s stuck in a struggling acting career so he agrees to show up at a billionaire superfan’s birthday party for $1 million. When it all goes awry, Cage is forced to take on versions of his past characters to save his wife and daughter.

uInterview founder Erik Meers caught up with Sharon Horgan, who plays Cage’s fictional ex-wife, to discuss what it was like working with the legendary movie star Cage.

“I was around Nic every single day and I don’t think there was a single day where he didn’t refer to the fact that it wasn’t really him – You know, that he wasn’t really playing himself, it’s like the heightened version and we’re like ‘Yeah, no of course,'” Horgan shared. “I think he’d sort of worked out how he was approaching it and obviously, he’d spoken to Tom, the director and Kevin, the co-writer at length so I think he had a handle of how he was going to approach it, so it wasn’t quite as big a risk. People just love it and they love him embracing it like that, so I’m delighted the risk paid off for him.”

Horgan couldn’t help but share one of her favorite moments with Cage.

“He’s very serious about his craft and there’s no sort of messing around on set. I find it very hard to not laugh at funny things. I just do, and so does Pedro (Pascal), so I would often just crack up at him being the funniest man right in front of my face, and he would just wait for me to stop laughing and then do it again,” she said. “There was one moment where he brought a recording he made of himself the night before, I think it was him singing an Elvis song and he had really let loose with this recording and it was how he was planning on doing the piano bit. He was playing this recording that he’d made the night before and breaking out laughing at himself and this recording.”

“That was pretty meta,” the actress added. “That was watching Nic Cage laughing at Nic Cage doing a Nic Cage performance.”

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is now playing in theaters.