Glen Powell once worried he ruined 2016’s Hidden Figures.
According to Deadline, while appearing on a recent episode of the Therapuss with Jake Shane podcast, Powell recounted watching a rough cut of the film for the first time. He confessed that he was not satisfied with his performance, and worried that he ruined the film.
“I remember watching [Hidden Figures] for the first time on the Fox lot – and this was before all the effects were done, the music was in [and] the sound design – and I literally left the movie, and I puked in the bushes,” Powell said.
He continued, “I thought I ruined this movie. I was like, ‘All these women put in these great performances and it’s like the legacy of these women – I was like, ‘I literally ruined this movie.’ It feels like the most atrocious thing you can do as an actor is just be terrible in a movie about real-life people that need a real-life story.”
Powell played astronaut John Glenn in the Oscar-nominated movie, that told the untold story of the black women who helped launch Glenn into the Earth’s orbit. Octavia Spencer, Taraji P Henson and Janelle Monáe led the movie, portraying Dorothy Vaughan, Katherine Goble Johnson, and Mary Jackson respectively.
Powell’s opinions started to shift when he watched a completed version of Hidden Figures.
That can change, though, when other elements are added.
“But once the music gets in there, it starts being polished a little bit,” he said on the show. “We all want to be good… and nobody wants to be the weak point in a movie, especially when you’re talking about real-life stories.”
Hit Man, Powell’s latest project, hits Netflix soon.