How many of us grew up watching certain rock bands or icons performing on stage and thinking, “That’s going to be me one day”? And if you could never match the massive talent of said musical legends, you might have found yourself pretending you were up on stage, performing in front of thousands of die-hard fans. And hey, if you’ve grown up acting on stage and screen, at least you might have had the chance to play a rock god. That’s what rising star Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves) masterfully pulls off in his latest feature, a sci-fi musical called O’Dessa, directed by Geremy Jasper. Opposite Sadie Sink (Stranger Things), Harrison plays a fictitious musical icon named Euri who regularly performs in a post-apocalyptic society.
Euri’s antics may remind you of any number of celebs or characters from other hit films. MovieWeb recently spoke with Harrison to learn about any inspirations behind his new scene-stealing turn. “For the stage stuff, I was looking at Lenny Kravitz a lot. I thought about Prince, and then… I felt like that was a little too on the nose,” Harrison told us. “But Lenny had a nice balance of the masculinity that I kind of wanted to bring a little more out in Euri, because he’s so innately effeminate at times. And then I was looking at Edie Sedgwick for, like, the look and stuff like that.” Harrison continued:
“And then in terms of, like, the personality or the persona he wanted to portray as his defense mechanism. I kept thinking about Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted. That was, like, a big one for me. And so we played with all those things and threw it in the pot, mix it together, put the burner on, bam, boom.”
Related: ‘O’Dessa’ Review: The Reliably Fiery Sadie Sink Leads a Mostly Lively Rock Opera
Tapping Into the “Rock Thing”
Fans of Harrison’s already know he’s been around the block with musically-centered films, from Chevalier (2022) to Elvis (2022) and even Mufasa: The Lion King (2024). The BAFTA-nominated performer opened up to us about how O’Dessa stands out from the others:
“The sound was so different. You know, one of the things I’m always curious about when I’m doing a musical, is, ‘Can I hear some of the music?’ This is literally 50% of the movie. And so I was like, ‘Can I get a sample?’ And he played [it for] me, and I was like, that sound was so unique and specific to Geremy’s imagination of what [the film’s setting] Satellite City looked like. And that was something I had never explored before, and I was kind of nervous about it.”
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Harrison also shared with us an exciting little anecdote about working with O’Dessa director Jasper and finding his inner rock-god mojo. “I remember going in the studio with [Geremy], and the original track he had… I didn’t really see it completely for Euri. And so he said, ‘Go in there. Hum a little bit to this backing track that I made.’ And then I did that,” said Harrison. “And he said, ‘Go have lunch and come back.’ When I came back, it was new lyrics, a new beat, a new sound. And then it was like we were forming Euri in real time. And that rock thing that I didn’t know I could probably tap into… it was fun. So I was like, ‘Hell yeah, let’s do it.'”
Check out the finished product for yourself. From Searchlight Pictures, O’Dessa will begin streaming on Hulu March 20. You can watch it through the link below:
Release Date
March 13, 2025
Runtime
106 Minutes
Writers
Geremy Jasper
Producers
Dan Janvey, Jonathan Montepare, Michael Gottwald, Rodrigo Teixeira, Lourenço Sant’Anna
You can view the original article HERE.
