My guest on today’s episode is actor, writer and all-around fascinating human being David Dastmalchian, whose beautiful debut graphic novel Through was just published.
One of the big reasons I wanted to talk to David is that we’ve known each other – kinda – for more than a decade. He first wrote for Talkhouse back in 2015, when he’d established himself as a gifted and complex character actor, with standout roles in The Dark Knight and Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners.
Since then, his star has only continued to rise and rise: he played one of Paul Rudd’s sidekicks in the Ant-Man movies, he appeared in the Denis Villeneuve films Blade Runner 2049 and Dune, and has been doing DC movies as well as Marvel, as James Gunn cast him as the Polka-Dot Man in The Suicide Squad. In the past few years, he’s starred in the brilliant breakout horror hit Late Night with the Devil, had a key role in Christopher Nolan’s Oscar juggernaut Oppenheimer and has been crushing it on the small screen, in both Murderbot and One Piece!
Parallel to Dastmalchian’s Hollywood career is his remarkable work in independent film, and particularly the companion piece movies Animals and All Creatures Here Below, both of which he wrote and starred in. Twin portraits of doomed couples living lives of quiet desperation, these films are marked by the striking empathy and compassion that Dastmalchian brings to each, both as a writer and an actor. In a compelling Talkhouse piece, David shared how he’d mined his past trauma, including his time as a heroin addict, in order to write those two films.
Since then, Dastmalchian has expanded his scope as a writer to comicbooks, working not only with Darkhorse and Image but also DC (on their DC Horror Presents series) and Marvel (Venom). When I was in L.A. last month, David and I hung out and he told me about his new graphic novel, Through – a dark modern-day fairytale about a young woman with a traumatic past caught between two realities – and it seemed like the perfect prompt for us to sit down together.
As David is so thoughtful and open, I knew this was going to be a really good conversation, and I was not disappointed. We dug into some intense stuff, such as David’s fascinating (and impressively genre-tinged) recurring nightmares, his mother’s emotional supernatural encounter with her first love, his childhood fear of hell, how “doing the work” led him to write Through … and much more, including why David insisted this episode be titled “Pedal to the Metal.”
N.B.: The following episode includes discussions of drug addiction and attempted suicide. If these topics are sensitive to you, please proceed with caution.
David’s graphic novel Through is out now through Z2 Comics and is highly recommended.
Also, go check out David’s podcast Grave Conversations where he interviews celebrities while both of them are lying down in coffins. It is genuinely one of the best podcasts out there!
This episode was produced by Myron Kaplan and the theme music is by The Range.
Featured image of David Dastmalchian is by Joshua Spencer / Collider is used here with permission.
