Armie Hammer has enjoyed a pretty diverse career, from his breakout role as the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network to Luca Guadagnino’s coming-of-age drama Call Me by Your Name to playing himself in the Entourage movie. More recently, Hammer stars in Ben Wheatley’s adaptation of Rebecca, the romantic thriller made famous by Alfred Hitchcock, which is now streaming on Netflix.

Collider’s Steve Weintraub got to sit down (virtually) with Hammer to talk about Rebecca and a number of the actor’s other films, including the upcoming drama Dreamland, about the opioid epidemic in America. Hammer is extremely passionate about the project, and he shared some of the reasons that drove him to be in the film.

“Nick Jarecki, who directed it, he’s a friend of mine,” Hammer says. “We’ve known each other for a long time. And he came to me and he said, ‘Hey man, I’ve got this movie, it’s about the opioid crisis. And I’ve almost lost multiple friends to opioid addictions, whether it be heroin or pills or a mixture of both. And it is a massive epidemic that we are dealing with in America, that, because pharmaceutical medications make so much money, not only for the pharmaceutical companies but also for lobbyists, also for politicians, also for everyone, we turn a blind eye to this. The amount of people who die from opioid addictions in America is staggering. And also I read the script and I thought, ‘This is really good. This is really interesting, and it’s highlighting that this doesn’t just affect… you know, this affects everyone.’”

Hammer also went into a bit of detail about the actual plot of the film, in which he co-stars with Gary Oldman, Evangeline Lilly, Greg Kinnear, and Michelle Rodriguez.

“There’s no one safe from opioid addiction, especially in America where they’re so quick to prescribe pills and also with how easy it is and also with Fentanyl. The fact that we’ve invented this fucking poison called Fentanyl that’s like 100 times stronger than morphine. And just the littlest tiny sprinkle of it and you’ll overdose. And the movie is about a drug ring in Canada that is getting the ingredients for fentanyl sent in from China, processing it, and then shipping the pills down into America. And this is what’s happening. This happens all the time. So we wanted to make a film about it, and show sort of like the stark reality of it.”

Opioid addiction is a major issue in America, and Hammer is clearly very invested in shining a light on the problem. A release date is still TBD, but Dreamland sounds like an extremely relevant film with a pretty solid ensemble cast. You can watch the full clip below and look for Steve's full conversation with Hammer later this week.

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