Voyagers Stars Lily Rose-Depp And Tye Sheridan Admit Being Locked In A Spaceship Wasn't Easy - Exclusive Interview

In the not-too-distant future, the Earth is running short on time — at least insofar as it being able to continue supporting human life. And while most of humanity will have to content itself with persisting for whatever time it has left, there is a plan by a scientist named Richard (Colin Farrell) to give the future of humanity new life on a new world. That's the starting point for the sci-fi adventure Voyagers, which focuses on the young adults who've been selected to make the long voyage to a new habitable world. There's just one catch: none of them will live to see humanity's new home. Everyone on the ship is an intermediary — they are the humans who will live and procreate on board their ship so their progeny can rebuild civilization anew. And as you may have surmised, not everything goes according to plan.

Looper sat down with stars Lily-Rose Depp and Tye Sheridan to talk about what it felt like to be in the close quarters that approximated that claustrophobic spaceship and what made this a story worth telling for them.

Voyagers is very intense — a lot of tight spaces, people really in each other's faces. I'm always interested, as a performer, what ends up being the most challenging thing to deal with?

Lily-Rose Depp: I think that anything that can bring you closer to the actual experience that your character is supposed to be having is a good thing. And so I think that the fact that there was kind of that parallel between how tight the spaces are supposed to feel and how claustrophobic you're supposed to feel a little bit watching it, it was nice to have that parallel between that and then how tight the spaces actually were when we were shooting. And then we were all kind of moving around each other like that. And I think in terms of the emotional intensity, I know those are my favorite scenes to shoot because I feel like everybody likes the meaty stuff to get into. And I think the hope is always just that you're going to be surrounded by a cast and crew that you trust and feel comfortable going there with, and I was really blessed in that regard on this one, so it was great.

That's great. Tye, was it the same for you?

Tye Sheridan: Yeah. There's a nice ebb and flow to it. It wasn't a short shoot. I think in a lot of ways, it was a complicated movie to make. We were on the same sets every day inside a stage. So it felt a bit like every day going to work, you were entering another world. So it was good in that sense. It keeps you in the world of the film, but yeah, you are working in tight spaces and close proximity and a lot of the shots are really complicated and the movie has this very chaotic kind of momentous nature.

And so sometimes you have to be really patient with that because I think as quickly as it happens in the film, sometimes those things are the most complicated to shoot and it takes time to get right. So I think on this, there definitely was that, but there were also really fun scenes to explore and to play that really tap into the natures of these characters and their deaths.

I'm curious what, when you were looking at this and getting into the movie, sort of made you connect to it? What was relevant about it for you?

Lily-Rose Depp: I think that what was relevant and I think what's interesting about these specific stories are that usually you're building on your character's backstory and their experiences before you meet them in the movie and what those could have been, and how they would have affected how you find them in the movie. And I think what's interesting about these ones is that there isn't that, because these kids have been created specifically for this mission. And so there isn't that kind of backdrop to kind of nourish the character. I think the most important thing for me in connecting to my character in particular was just really going to the core of her humanity and the very kind of human and sensitive questions that she is asking herself and thinking about. And I think that those were kind of ponderings that we can all be brought to think about, especially in this time, when this past year we've had a lot more time to sit with our thoughts than maybe ever. And so I think that those kind of very human questions that she's thinking about are the things that I wanted to connect to the most.

Voyagers is out now in theaters.