In The Automatic Hate, Joseph Cross plays New York City chef Davis Green, whose life goes into a tailspin after he’s introduced to a cousin and a family feud he never knew existed.

Joseph Cross On ‘The Automatic Hate’

When Davis’ cousin Alexis (Adelaide Clemens) enters his life, he’s living an ordinary life in the city with his girlfriend Cassie (Deborah Ann Woll). After confronting his father (Richard Schiff), whom he thought was an only child, Davis learns that his dad and uncle had cut off contact over circumstances that neither will reveal. As he and Alexis try to get to the bottom of the family mystery, they realize that they have an undeniable attraction to one another.

Explaining what drew him to the picture, Cross pointed to the complexity of the screenplay and characters that director and writer Justin Lerner and his writing parter Katherine O’Brien created for The Automatic Hate.

“I thought it was just a very rich world that they had created. And I thought it was a very conflicted man, Davis,” Cross told uInterview exclusively at SXSW. “And I wanted to play that and when Justin and I first sat down together something that we agreed on very quickly was that you don’t need to like him. You don’t need to think you would do the same thing. You don’t need to identify with him and he can be ugly, and he can be strange, and he can be a liar and a cheat, and all those things and we wanted to embrace that.”

Though there are many ugly parts to Cross’ character, the actor doesn’t find Davis to be irredeemably unsympathetic. And if Davis were a more archetypical good guy, Cross admits he wouldn’t have been as interested in playing him.

“I don’t have too much interest in playing a character that is super sympathetic and that everybody can universally love and agree with. I think that we are complex,” said Cross. “People have their shadows and exploring that to me is more interesting than anything else.”

In addition to having a complex character to explore for The Automatic Hate, Cross also had the good fortune to work opposite up-and-coming Australian actress Clemens.

“A challenge of working with Adelaide Clemens is just keeping up with her. I mean she’s so talented and has so much energy and she’s so smart,” said Cross, who commends her ability to adapt. “The first scene where they [Davis and Alexis] talk to each other, when Adelaide shows up in her truck, was written completely differently and we were struggling with it and we all took thirty minutes to kind of figure out how it could be better and we changed it right then and there.”

“And that’s sort of kind of a good example of how Justin, Adelaide, and I would work together,” Cross added. “We would work together really closely and we wouldn’t shoot anything unless everybody was happy.”

The Automatic Hate will open in select theaters starting March 15.