IN HIT MAN, GLEN POWELL PLAYS A FAKE ASSASSIN — IN FACT, MANY DIFFERENT FAKE ASSASSINS. AS HE AND DIRECTOR RICHARD LINKLATER UNLEASH THEIR ROMCOM THRILLER, THE DEADLY DUO DISCUSS THEIR BLOSSOMING COLLABORATION

WORDS BETH WEBB

"I'M JUMPING SHIP, MAN."

It’s a bold statement from Glen Powell. “I’m getting out of the business completely,” he says to Richard Linklater, his friend and collaborator, as the pair talk to Empire over Zoom. The teasing continues. “I think we did it,” continues Powell. “We did what we needed to do.”

He’s joking, but this is testament to the film that Powell and Linklater have just made. The actor is speaking to Empire from his home in Los Angeles, giving us a virtual tour of his front room. Boxes and framed pictures sit on the floor behind him, as the actor is preparing to up sticks and move back to his native Texas. And next month, Hit Man hits cinemas, also marking a new chapter for Powell.

This would be the worst possible time for him to jump ship. Thanks to his longstanding partnership with Linklater —the pair have now worked on four projects over nearly two decades —and his own box-office triumphs like Top Gun: Maverick and Anyone But You, Powell’s status has entered the stratosphere. Yet Hit Man is the first time that the duo have collaborated on a script, and gives Powell his first feature screenwriting credit. A sexy, screwball character study, it is loosely based on Gary Johnson (Powell), a real-life undercover mole who throughout the ’90s would pose as a gun-for-hire to frame criminals. Charting their history from high-school dreams to Mexican knife fights, Linklater and Powell bring Empire up to speed on what makes their dynamic killer.

THE CONTRACT

“Rick has always been on the Mount Rushmore of filmmakers,” Powell says when describing the impact that Linklater has had on his career. “It’s a small mountain, by the way,” Linklater clarifies. Powell keeps going: “It’s really more of a hill, but it’s still impressive!”

Mountain, hill, stump —you can call it what you like, but there’s no denying that the filmmaker’s influence has been present ever since Powell, now 35, decided that he wanted to be involved in films. He mentions a creative-writing class that he took in high school, in which he was the only student exploring screenwriting. His professor put him onto Linklater’s work. “My love of writing really started with a lot of Rick’s movies, and to get to [be screenwriting] with him at this point in my life, at an appropriate age, has been wonderfully full-circle,” he summarises.