Harry Melling has an impressive resume under his belt—one that includes several Harry Potter films and Netflix's quarantine hit The Queen's Gambit—but The Pale Blue Eye writer and director Scott Cooper was unfamiliar with all but one of Melling's works when he cast the English actor as a young Edgar Allan Poe.
"I'd only seen his work as the limbless performer that Liam Neeson carries around the American West in the Coen Brothers' Ballad of Buster Scruggs. That was the only thing I'd seen of Harry's, and he is remarkable," Cooper told Collider in a recent interview, raving about Melling's range as an actor.
"He's, for me, personally, a revelation in this film. Maybe less so for you because you've seen such great work of his in the past. But he has such range. He has such a compelling and interesting look that can play both contemporary and play very beautifully in a very period sense, obviously in 1830, or in the Coens', which is probably in the 1880s or 1890s. But he is a remarkable actor with so much range, and he's the nicest guy. I really hope that people see this film. And in particular, I hope directors and studios see this and say, 'I want him in my film.'"
Cooper Shares How Melling's Character Changed to Accommodate the Actor Playing Poe
Based on a 2003 novel of the same name by Louis Bayard, The Pale Blue Eye follows the future famous author as a young cadet called upon to help solve a murder mystery at West Point Military Academy in 1830. With dozens of drafts discarded before the final film was written, Cooper shared that one of the biggest modifications between versions was adjusting the role of Edgar Allan Poe to be informed by Melling's performance—all while reconciling the "entrenched ideas" about the author with a younger version of himself.
"I would say Poe changed the most only because we have very entrenched ideas about who Edgar Allan Poe was. And that's from later in life when he died under mysterious circumstances in Baltimore and was prone to alcoholism, and it left us the creator of detectives in horror fiction.But this is about who he was before. So it was really about understanding Harry's tone, his performance, trying to find somebody who's warm and humorous and witty and prone to romantic and poetic musings, and then having Harry express that and bring that to life."
The Pale Blue Eye is now playing in select theaters, and the gothic murder mystery will be available on Netflix beginning January 6.