Ben Affleck knows audiences have expectations when it comes to the cast of his movies. He’s counting on it.
In casting Animals, Affleck — who directed, produced, co-wrote, and stars in the film — was careful to keep those expectations in mind. “I’m a big believer that the audience has expectations of me, of Kerry [Washington], of Steven [Yeun], of everyone,” he says. “I look for actors I think are wonderful and admire, who I want to work with, who are good collaborators and people I respect. Everyone in this cast fit that.”
Animals follows a Los Angeles mayoral candidate (Affleck) who finds his family trapped in the middle of a kidnapping scheme. His wife (Washington), his aide (Yeun), and a mysterious fixer (Gillian Anderson) all get wrapped up in the spiraling crisis, along with the family’s housekeeper (Adriana Paz) and her boyfriend (Luis Gerardo Méndez).
“What really drew me in was this question at the center of it that asked, ‘Who are we really, who are we when our masks come off?’ ” Affleck says. “There’s not really a classic hero protagonist; the audience’s opinions of everyone are shifting, and I wanted them to be just as engaged in the reveals about who these people are as in the plot itself.”
“You want to use [the audience’s expectations],” he explains, “and then drift away from it in ways that help tell your story.”
Below, you can meet the cast of Animals and begin to get a read on just who they are when their masks come off. Animals is now streaming on Netflix.
Mark Kimball is an independent candidate for Los Angeles mayor whose campaign is struggling under the weight of a tremendous amount of debt. With the election only days away, things take a dark turn when Mark gets a threatening phone call: His son has been kidnapped.
Two-time Academy Award winner Affleck knew upon reading the original script for Animals that he had to direct it; he wound up also producing, co-writing, and starring in the film as well. “This is a story about whether people have a real moral compass, or whether we just seek to do what’s in our best interests and then build a story that fits the moral compass we want others to believe we have,” Affleck says. “It had this really tense thriller core where at every moment you want to see what happens next, and the challenge was whether you could hold the audience’s interest that intently.”
Kimball, like Affleck, is a fluent Spanish speaker, a skill the mayoral candidate displays at campaign events across Los Angeles. “It’s authentic to LA and it’s revealing about Mark,” Affleck says. “He’s a guy who thinks that because he learned to speak Spanish — clearly in school or maybe a semester abroad — that’s a feature on his ‘perfect politician’s résumé.’ He’s done a lot of different things for a little bit of time, enough to stick them on the résumé or use them politically.”
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Abigail is Mark’s wife, a reluctant presence on the Kimball campaign but a loving mother to Denny. Both she and Mark have secrets they’re keeping from one another, although the looming specter of the election is delaying a true heart-to-heart on their marital issues.
But in-demand therapist Abigail also has her own issues to deal with. “When we meet Abigail, it’s four days before the election, which also happens to be Halloween, so it’s a stressful morning,” Emmy winner Washington says. “The election looms, their kid Denny is trying to figure out his costume, she thought he was going to be one thing, his dad told him he was going to be something else — a sign of the cracks in the marriage. We’re with this family on the day that turns out to be the most consequential day of their lives.”
This element of the film, even before the kidnapping plot begins, is what won Washington over. “One of the things Ben said to me was, for him, the film is about a lot of things, but one of the things it’s really about for him is a marriage,” she says. “I thought he was just saying that because he wanted me to play the wife. Then I read the script and understood what he meant. I saw how important the marriage dynamics are to what unfolds for this family.”
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Canny operator Dayle Burton is a fixer called in to help find a way out of the hostage crisis. She takes firm control of the Kimballs’ home and talks them through a quickly escalating situation — while also insisting on complete honesty.
Even two-time Emmy winner Anderson doesn’t quite have a handle on the inscrutable Dayle. “I’ve played a lot of enigmatic women in my career, and Dayle seems to take the cake,” she says. “I’m always interested in that: how to play somebody who shows so little — she’s so unemotional — and yet at the same time not make them boring.”
Dayle is also the character who introduces the central metaphor of the film’s title. “All of them end up revealing their animal selves in the course of the film,” Anderson says. “One of the things that’s so dangerous about Dayle is that she wears her ‘animal’ self on her sleeve.”
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Sam is Mark’s trusted campaign aide, dedicated to getting his boss elected at all costs. He calls Dayle to handle the hostage situation, having worked with her on a prior occasion.
Academy Award nominee Yeun played Sam as a man whose conscience has seen better days. “He’s probably a guy that, at the beginning and for the majority of his career, was fighting for a particular side or a particular perspective, perhaps a bit more righteous and binary,” he says. “But over the course of his career he began to understand the grayer aspects of how all of it works. He was confronted with situations in which he had to learn to make difficult decisions in order to get things done. This made him a bit more detached and calculating.”
Those calculations lead Sam to Dayle. “He’s had run-ins with [her] before,” Yeun says. “When people who can afford it are put in precarious situations in which going through traditional legal and structural lanes would probably compromise the end result, you go to someone like Dayle, who is able to operate within and out of the system.”
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Cecilia is the Kimballs’ family nanny, a loyal employee who loves Denny like he’s her own child. She’s recently begun dating Ramon, an immigrant laborer who’s hoping to find work in Los Angeles as well.
Cannes Best Actress winner Paz leaped at the opportunity to play Cecilia, a hardworking woman who cares deeply about her chosen family. “There’s a stereotype that Mexicans are drug dealers or criminals, but definitely, criminal behavior isn’t defined by nationality,” Paz says. “There are a lot of honest Mexican people and other immigrants working hard here, so it was very important for me to show this world and try to build it through Cecilia.”
The film’s themes of inequality also struck a chord with her. “We are living in the same world, but we are not living in the same world,” she says. “Some people believe that theirs is the only reality, and they are not aware of what less privileged people have to go through.”
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Ramon is Cecilia’s new boyfriend, an undocumented immigrant looking for work at the Kimballs’ home. Mark, in the middle of a heated campaign, balks at the possibility of controversy.
Cecilia is more interested in getting Ramon in with the Kimballs than he is. “She’s being, maybe, a little too pushy,” Méndez says. “The situation is very complicated for Mark because he’s running for mayor, so he cannot hire a Mexican immigrant who is illegally in the country, because that will have very particular optics now. They’re very reluctant to hire Ramon; they love Cecilia, but this guy is the boyfriend, so it’s tricky.”
Méndez, a director himself, was thrilled to watch Affleck work. “Paul Thomas Anderson is my favorite director, and our DP Robert Elswit did all those movies,” he says. “So when I found out about that, I remember I told Ben, ‘Do you mind if I’m like your shadow the whole time?’ I was acting in the movie, but I was also trying to understand and learn everything from these people because these guys are just incredible.”
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UCLA professor Ron is Abigail’s big secret; the two are having an affair behind Mark’s back.
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The Kimballs’ son Denny soon becomes the center of a hostage crisis after he goes missing on Halloween night.
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Ramon’s son Hector has become fast friends with Denny; he’s trick-or-treating with him when the kidnapper strikes.
