Director Matt Sukkar is probably best known for the acclaimed documentary short, Durango, but he has recently turned his eye to features. In Sukkar‘s debut, The Deputy, viewers follow Toby, a very unprepared small-town lawman. Over the course of an endless night that starts with a missing dead body, he gives up his pajama pants for a badge and a uniform. Led by Duke Nicholson and with a cast that includes William H. Macy and Tiffany Haddish, the film has some impressive character growth, grit, and of course, conspiracy.
It was no easy job for Sukkar to bring the small-town Mississippi conspiracy to life. The director and his crew had a breakneck three-week schedule with difficult night shoots and even some real-world research at the Southern border. Over Zoom, Sukkar sat down with me to talk about Toby’s growth and what stood out to him about the character. He shared what it was like pulling off some ambitious indie stunts, and the reality of filming in smoke-filled mechanic shop turned deputy station. Read on for our full conversation.
The Interview with Matt Sukkar of The Deputy
Ayla Ruby: Lovely to meet you, and congratulations, because this was fun, and I was really rooting for Toby, however weird that sounds throughout this, so great job.
Matt Sukkar: Thank you so much.
Ayla Ruby: Can you talk a little bit about how you first came onto this project and what made you want to do this, and what made you want to do this as your first feature?
Matt Sukkar: Yeah, so it really was the character. I thought that Toby was such an unlikely hero, and I thought that it allowed for a lot of fun. He’s definitely not perfect. He’s completely unprepared for what happens to him at every turn. He’s seemingly just making bad decision after another until his relentlessness ends up being the driving force of his survival.
And I think he actually learns a lot about himself through this night, because he starts to fight for what’s important to him. And I think that it’s really, that’s his heart, and that’s the core of the character to me. Yes, he’s messy, flawed, dumb, but he’s got a great heart, and he’ll never stop trying. And so, he does actually succeed in the end, which is a great lesson to learn.
Ayla Ruby: There’s a moment that almost encapsulates that, I feel like. He actually puts on the uniform instead of having his pajama pants and shirt, and just that was very cool as an audience member to see. What went into that? Was that in the script? Because he’s putting on clothing, how do you process it?
Matt Sukkar: Right. So, I think starting out with this cop and sweatpants idea was really fun, but I think Duke and I both really agreed that Toby actually does care. And so, the moments where he’s changing clothes and putting on the uniform and looking in the mirror are really there to signify his own personal growth, because there’s several points in the film where he looks in the mirror, and each of them is supposed to show him checking in with himself to evolve as he goes through this journey, from man-child into man.
Ayla Ruby: On that, can you talk about finding your actors? I read in the press kit that you called up Duke [Nicholson], the actor who plays Toby, when you were reading the script. Can you talk about that?
Matt Sukkar: Well, we’ve been friends for years, Duke and I, and had wanted to do a film together. And I just really strongly felt like he was Toby from reading the script really early on, like, this is Duke. I pictured him clearly. And so, he was the first person I talked to. I was like, “I think I found a movie for us to make.” And then from there, started to build out the cast around him. And so, yeah, that was essentially how it started.
Ayla Ruby: Now you’ve got William H. Macy, you’ve got Tiffany Haddish. How did that all happen?
Matt Sukkar: I wanted the cast to feel unexpected, and I wanted all of the energies and personalities to be all over the place, but meeting in this weird small Southern town. And so, yeah, I started to go down the list and think about who would be the dream and reached out. Bill Macy, I wrote a letter to him really early on, and after he signed on, we had some momentum to get some of these other actors excited, and that was essentially how we approached it.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, that’s wonderful. Can you share what was in the letter, or was it personal?
Matt Sukkar: He’s been a hero of mine forever. I grew up watching his movies, and so I’m sure I said something about that and talked about why I thought he’d be a great Krueger, which is essentially that he feels trusting. And so, I believe that Toby would trust Macy’s version of Krueger, as would the audience, which allows for the character to feel, I think there’s a lot of danger when you trust someone, it allows them the opportunity to lead you astray.
Ayla Ruby: That’s a good way to put it. Okay. So, I want to back out a little bit to prep and research, because I read that there was a lot, I think I saw you went to the border to understand human smuggling. Can you talk about that experience and how that worked and what did that mean for the film and just you as a person?
Matt Sukkar: Yeah. Well, I’m a natural adventurer and explorer, and I wanted the film to be accurate in every sense, even with these made-up characters. So, I spent time in Mississippi trying to understand how things felt there and try to bleed some of that into the story and onto the screen.
And then because we were dealing with these Latin American characters, I wanted them… They’re definitely going through it in this film, and I wanted them to be represented properly and accurately. And so, I went to the border a couple times and just explored, talked to people who smuggled people across, talked to migrants, and just to take in some of the details.
Ayla Ruby: Okay. So, you mentioned Mississippi, this takes place in Mississippi, and I read that it took place… Filming was three weeks in Natchez?
Matt Sukkar: It was three six-day weeks of night shoots that was very difficult, of course, but also we were running on adrenaline, so that… Yeah, we would have Sundays off, but other than that, we were grinding and not sleeping very much. And we started to just joke around about how our experience as filmmakers started to really resemble Toby’s night, where every day became about solving the problem while two others popped up.
Ayla Ruby: Well, that sounds like very much the essence of filmmaking.
Matt Sukkar: Exactly, exactly. The crew was starting to see themselves in Toby, which created a great energy for us to root for him and keep the movie going.
Ayla Ruby: That’s fun. So, it sounds like there were some challenges. Was there anything that really sticks out as being like, you’re not sure that you can get through this, that you did overcome it? Or anything that was fun?
Matt Sukkar: Every day I would learn that we wouldn’t have time to finish the day. Shooting this movie in three weeks is ambitious. The story deserved more resources, but you know what? These are the limitations we had. That forces you to decide what really matters in your story and highlight those moments. And it just became about… The filmmaking challenge was like, how do we make this make sense? It’s like, we’re not going to be able to shoot a scene with the amount of setups that the scene deserves.
So, how do we just get the bare minimum and move on? Because everybody has to move quick, we got to be prepared, we got to trust one another, and just keep going. That was really the challenge, because every single day we wouldn’t finish, and I’d have to really, really think closely, what is the scene that’s being cut, or the multiple scenes that are being cut? What are they about? What are the key moments that we need, and how do we just instead bring them into the scene that we have time to shoot?
Ayla Ruby: They say sometimes you have to kill your darlings, right? Was there anything you really, really wanted to include but you couldn’t in all of that, or just it didn’t work?
Matt Sukkar: There was one stunt that looked corny that, unfortunately, I lost a really good performance from an actor because the stunt was just… We just didn’t have enough time to cover the stunt properly, and so I had to cut it in the edit. But other than that, I tried not to be very precious and just understand that the goal here is to make a movie that makes sense and is entertaining and get through it, and hopefully for the next one have a little more time.
Ayla Ruby: So, you mentioned the stunts, and there were some really interesting stunts overall on this. There’s car action, there’s a lot of gun stuff. How do you prep for the stunts? What does that mean for you directing? What’s that world like?
Matt Sukkar: That was pretty new to me, the stunt world, but I worked with Cory DeMeyers, my stunt coordinator, who was unbelievable. He’s a pro, and he made me feel really comfortable, really collaborative, understood that I was less experienced in that department, but I also just needed it to be good. If we didn’t nail the stunts, I think the movie would’ve been corny.
So, I was really relying on Cory to help deliver there, and he totally crushed it. I think all the stunts are great.
Matt Sukkar: We had Ben Smith-Petersen, who plays Derrick Jordan, he’s a stunt actor, he’s super talented. And then Duke did his own stunts for this, for the most part. He had a double for a couple moments, but he really, really worked on learning stunts and getting into that world and prepped a ton and choreographed a ton, and it was awesome how much effort they put in.
Ayla Ruby: There’s a lot of physicality in getting beat up, so that’s very cool.
Matt Sukkar: Yeah, no, he was getting mopped left and right.
Ayla Ruby: And you mentioned night shoots, but it also felt like… And I wasn’t keeping track, but there were a lot of really interesting close interior shots. I don’t know if I’m using the right terminology, but stuff happened in the jail, in the sheriff’s office, and in a small space. How does that work for you?
Matt Sukkar: I mean, I think that the sheriff’s station was its own character in the movie in a sense, because in the beginning of the film, it’s clean as it can be, rather, and things are operating smoothly, and by the end, it’s completely trashed, lit on fire. It’s just deteriorated in a sense… We shot the whole sheriff’s station in one week and then moved out. But the day that we wrapped, it was also just gross by the end. It was hard to breathe in there, and we lit so many things on fire, and it smelled… It was actually a mechanic shop that we just built into.
So, it was just a bizarre experience. And when we wrapped in there at the end of our first week, we had a big party in it. That was so much fun. It was a real highlight of the project.
Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. I know we’re just about at time, but was there anything else that was surprising to you or that you want people to know about yourself or The Deputy?
Matt Sukkar: I hope that people really enjoy it, and that I think this is a film that, underneath the missing body and the conspiracy, it’s about a guy deciding whether to do the right thing or not, and whether it’s worth it, what it might cost him. And I think that that’s a valuable thing for people to reflect on.
Ayla Ruby: Well, it was awesome. So, again, thank you so much for chatting. This is great.
Matt Sukkar: Thank you.
The Deputy is now in limited theaters.
Learn more about the film at the IMDB site for the title.