The following story contains spoilers for Companion (2024) and Scream (2022).
WHEN JACK QUAID saw John Wick: Chapter Four, he had “a religious experience,” he says. The 32-year-old actor has always been a fan of action movies like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, but sitting in a theater and watching Keanu Reeves don that iconic black suit for the fourth time awakened something in him—mainly, that he knew that he wanted to eventually make his way into the action movie space. But first, he had to really sit and acknowledge just how special what he was seeing on screen really was.
“Give Keanu Reeves an Oscar for that role,” Quaid says over Zoom. “What he does with his physicality is so specific, so amazing, and so technically incredible. We’re always giving Keanu his flowers, and he deserves it, but we need to do it even more.”
Seeing Chapter Four planted the seed in Quaid’s mind that, eventually, one way or another, he wanted to make his way into a story where there’s a whole lot of ass-kicking. He’s best known these days for his work in the genre world—leading Prime Video’s superhero satire The Boys, along with more sinister work in films like Scream and Companion—so leaning into ’80-style action isn’t the furthest thing off. Still, it took finding the right project to dive in head first. Luckily, that project showed up in the form of Novocaine, where he plays a mild-mannered dude with one particularly notable quality: He doesn’t feel any kind of pain, ever.
“I’m not a guy you think of as an ass-kicker, but it’s not about that. It’s not about how much I can kick ass, it’s about how much my ass can get kicked,” he says. “And I just think that was really perfect for someone like me, who doesn’t necessarily remind you of a Keanu Reeves.”
Quaid may not normally remind you of Keanu Reeves, but in Novocaine, he moves very much like someone in his world. That required a ton of training—and Quaid was up for the task.
“I had to get in some of the best shape I’ve ever been in,” he says. “It’s all gone now, but just to keep up with that rigorous schedule of constantly rehearsing, or training, or doing an insane fight scene, and then working with the stunt coordinators to craft these scenes that were fun, and also specific for that character.”
Part of what makes the film so much fun is that it has this very specific concept—the man on a mission who feels no pain—and does its best to execute exactly what audiences want to see out of it. This guy doesn’t feel pain? Stick his hand in a deep-fryer! Hit him with a medieval booby trap weapon! We want to see what will happen, and the movie shows us.
For Quaid, the challenge there was learning how to not react to these things, something that goes against one of the pillars of doing stunts he learned long ago: sell the pain. So it just meant over, and over, and over, and over again, un-learning everything he’d previously taught himself. He did unlearn—and that means that now, once again, he’ll have to re-learn.
“It’s ruined me for other things,” he says. “I was on the set of The Boys, doing a fight scene, and I did get punched in the face. I had to be reminded that I could feel pain.”
In Novocaine, Quaid’s Nathan Caine does things audiences haven’t seen him do in any project before. The movie is full of fights, blood, and violence, but there are also rom-com elements in there as well, with Quaid’s likeable everyman charm managing to hold it all together, even when things get particularly gross and gnarly.
Quaid in Novocaine.
Men’s Health had a chance to speak with Quaid about the movie, his various hero and villain roles, and the most surprising (and hilarious) experience he had with Christopher Nolan while shooting Oppenheimer.
MEN’S HEALTH: We last spoke three years ago, and your streak of always being covered in blood continues to this day.
JACK QUAID: It did not end in the last three years. I’m keeping the streak going, and somehow, I have a few other movies coming out this year, and there are moments where I’m like, “I didn’t think I would get blood on myself in this one…” but it just never ends with me.
MH: Well you’ve got four different productions now—Novocaine, Companion, The Boys, and Scream. Is the blood application different from project to project?
JQ: What’s really great is that it’s more or less the same, and I feel like such an expert in it now. Shaving cream, Head & Shoulders shampoo, Dawn soap—those three things will get blood out better than anything. It’s so funny; my shower in Toronto, in the apartment I’m renting there, while we’re shooting the fifth season of The Boys… it’s all the normal things you would have, and then those three things just in a little caddy. I live a very interesting and specific life.
MH: You keep going back and forth between heroic and more sinister roles. Is keeping audiences on their toes something that’s important to you?
JQ: I like to show different sides of what I can do. I don’t want to play the same character over and over again. Playing the villain is really fun, because you’re unburdened by the idea of ‘likability.’ The point is not for the audience to like you, and I think with Companion, I remember watching the premiere with a full crowd, and the crowd was booing me, was cheering when I died, and that was the greatest feeling on earth. I never thought I’d have the biggest smile on my face while people were booing me, but I was like, ‘I did my job. This is exactly what I wanted.’
With Novocaine, playing more heroic characters, that’s a really interesting challenge too. It’s also fun in its own right. The challenge is to create a character who audiences will hopefully empathize with, but it depends on who the character is, too. With Nate, he is so specific. He has this condition, but he’s also an every day guy, and I think to contrast how gory, and how gnarly this movie is, I wanted to make sure that Nate was a sweetie-pie. He’s just a cupcake of a man. Finding that in this movie was really fun, and I just like the guy too. He has made this disability he has into a superpower, for the right reasons—protecting someone that he loves. I would want to have a coffee with him.
Quaid with Sophie Thatcher in Companion.
MH: This might be a difficult question to answer, because you’re you. But if you weren’t you, and you were going into a movie and saw Jack Quaid, would you trust that character?
JQ: It’s complicated at this point! I can’t do that thing that I did… I did it in Scream, and I did it in Companion, where you come in, and based off of Hughie [in The Boys], I’d say, if you watched that show, you kind of innately trust me. And I’ve betrayed you twice. I betrayed you in Scream, and I’ve betrayed you in Companion. So, I don’t know if I can make that move again.
I would say if you weren’t me, and you’re going into a Jack Quaid movie, I think you can relax at this point. If I’m going to play a bad person, let’s say it’s advertised. But I’m always looking for ways I can play a role that is so different from everything else. That’s what I’m looking for for the future.
MH: You have a background in comedy. What is the biggest difference between doing physical comedy, and physical, John Wick-esque fighting?
JQ: Comedy helped me into the action. I think one day it kind of clicked for me; I watched a documentary about Buster Keaton, and he was known as the great stone face. And the whole thing with him was that there would be absolute insanity around him, and he would not react. That was the whole bit. Without being too hoity toity about it, Nate’s very similar. He does not react to the insanity happening to him, because he can’t feel it. So, once I started realizing I could use that for comedy, the action clicked a lot harder for me.
I do sketch comedy, and I have very long noodly limbs. And any opportunity I ever get to use them, I will. In fact, going forward, I want to do a project where it’s just all physical comedy. I would love to find something like that. We don’t really make those anymore, so I want to just lean harder into that if I can—it’s such an exciting thing.
MH: This movie has a great soundtrack for fans of pop music. Specifically, I believe this is the first theatrically-released movie to feature a song by Chappell Roan.
JQ: Is it?! Is it?!
MH: I believe so. What do you think of that honor? Are you a fan of hers?
JQ: Yeah, dude, who isn’t? I hope that’s true! That’s such an honor, oh my god. I just assumed she was in everything, because of how popular she is. But that’s unbelievable. OK, that’s huge. I did not know that until today, so thank you for that information—that made my day.
MH: The music can really make the movie sometimes. It’s true.
JQ: It really does. I remember one of the first albums I listened to back to front was the Boogie Nights soundtrack.
MH: Oh yeah.
JQ: It was just on a lot in my world. And I was a kid when I listened to the soundtrack, but then later I finally saw Boogie Nights, and it was this weird cognitive dissonance, where it was the soundtrack of my childhood over a movie about porn. Which was so strange. But soundtracks matter a lot to me, and we have a really good one, so I’m happy.
MH: What can you tease for the final season of The Boys? I’m assuming more blood, and the streak will continue.
JQ: A lot more blood. The streak continues, of course. It’s been really cool to play Hughie this season; the events of last season were really hard on him, but he has really grown up. There’s a maturity to him this season that I don’t think we’ve seen before. He’s truly come into himself, and one of the great joys of working in TV is you get to see a character through many stages of their lives, and it’s been very cool to see Hughie’s arc through.
MH: Since we last talked, you were also in Christopher Nolan’s Best Picture-winning Oppenheimer. Are you still in touch with the “Oppenhomies,” as they’ve been dubbed?
JQ: The group is still active! The Oppenhomies text chain is still active. It’s funny, the longevity of that is so insane. I remember during the L.A. fires, everybody was checking in on those who lived in L.A. Whenever any of us book something cool, or have a cool moment, there’s usually someone being like “Hey, shoutout to David Krumholtz!” It’s really, really cool. I never expected that to have the legs it did, because there’s so many of us. But maybe that’s the reason why. There’s an actor in that movie named Olli Haaskivi—I hang out with him all the time. He lives in New York, and he’s become one of best friends, truly. The long tail of the Oppenhomies is so incredible, and it’s such a joy.
MH: Are you getting any inside scoop on what’s going on with The Odyssey?
JQ: I really wish I was. I can just say as a fan, I’m really looking forward to seeing that. Like, who better to tackle that epic of a story than Christopher Nolan? I can’t wait.
Quaid played theoretical physicist Richard Feynman in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
MH: What’s something about Christopher Nolan that would surprise people?
JQ: I think the world knows this, but I was surprised by just how good of a sense of humor he has. He’s a very funny person. Very dry, very witty. He would always come to set wearing suits that I would love to wear for a red carpet, but this was just day-to-day for him.
One of my favorite moments from shooting was, obviously, I’m playing the bongos a lot. But I remember shooting the Christmas party scene, and it was incredible. I’m playing the bongos, and more of a glorified extra in that, but looking around the room, not caring about the size of my role at all, just looking around and getting to see, like, OK, there’s Kenneth Branagh, there’s Emily Blunt, there’s Cillian Murphy, there’s Matt Damon—and they’re all doing, like, the best work of their career, and I just get to watch it. It was unbelievable. But then the next day, we were shooting something else, and Chris stops everything, and just looks at me, and goes [Nolan impersonation] “I saw the dailies for the bongos—you really impressed me.”
And I just never in a million years thought I would get a bongo compliment from Christopher Nolan, but there we were. Really surreal, really weird, but so great.
MH: You’re probably the only one to ever get that compliment from him. I have to imagine.
JQ: God, I hope there’s no bongos in The Odyssey. I want that to be my legacy, man.
