A24’s Sharper, a neo-noir thriller for Apple TV+, marks director Benjamin Caron’s first feature film after years of helming episodes for well-known series like Sherlock, The Crown, and most recently, Andor with Disney+. Dipping his toes into the Star Wars universe was a first for Caron, who says it was the “well-drawn-out narratives and great characters” that really drew him to Tony Gilroy’s series masterpiece. Likewise, Sharper is a character-driven mystery that piqued Caron’s interest, especially considering the star-studded cast, featuring Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan, John Lithgow, Justice Smith, and new talent, Brianna Middleton.

Taking its audience to the penthouses of Manhattan, Sharper weaves a web of intricate lies revolving around billionaire Richard Hobbes’ (Lithgow) wealth. It begins with a love story between the bookish Tom (Smith) and graduate student, Sandra (Middleton), who encounter one another serendipitously at the bookstore Tom works at. The movie takes a sharp turn when Max (Stan), the con artist son of Hobbes’ girlfriend Madeline (Moore), breaks into his highrise. Tensions simmer when a scam begins to unfold between the mother-son duo, right around the time Hobbes is looking for someone to inherit his empire, someone other than his estranged son Tom who Richard believes to be incapable of taking over the family’s business.

Sharper’s twisting narrative keeps viewers guessing through its four acts, as more lies and deceit unravel between them all. During his interview, Caron discusses the way he and the crew organized the film in order to shoot their out-of-sequence storytelling, how the final act came together during the editing process, and deleted scenes. He also shares what it was like to be a part of Andor and what it was that appealed to him about the series (hint: it isn’t Star Wars). For all of this and more, you can watch the interview in the player above, or read the full transcript below.

COLLIDER: I want to start with congrats on Sharper, but before I get into talking about your movie, I think Andor is the best thing on TV and I want to talk just a touch about your work on Andor if you don’t mind.

BENJAMIN CARON: Of course.

You got to direct, I believe, three episodes on Andor, you got to do the finale, what was it like being part of a show like that, which is so beloved by so many people?

CARON: That is great, but obviously that happened after we made it. But at the time, it didn’t seem like there was a lot of heat on Andor. It felt that it was slightly undercover and that this massive show was being made in Pinewood, but that people had somehow forgotten about it. And you have to bear in mind, I am not the biggest Star Wars fan, and I don’t mean that in any sort of mean way. I mean from a kid I was, but I maybe fell out of love with it, or I hadn’t followed it in my later years. And I declared that to (creator) Tony [Gilroy] really early on. I said, “Look Tony, if this is a question about what’s been going on in Star Wars recently, I have no idea, I mean look, I’ll happily go and watch the last few films, but I haven’t seen them.” And he was like, “No that’s great, we don’t want fan service. I’m aware of your work and I like your work and I want that work in Andor.” So that’s how it came about. I responded to his writing, I hadn’t read anything like that for a long time.

I genuinely forgot that it was Star Wars, you know? There were no light sabers, there’s no Darth Vader, there was none the force. It was just really well-drawn-out narratives and great characters that I just wanted to spend time with. That’s as a director, or me personally, that’s what I respond to and I guess that’s where it all started. Then when we were filming, I just approached it like anything else I do, you know? You direct it.

I think that’s the reason why Andor is so good. Because if you took the Star Wars out of it, it would still be an amazing show.

CARON: You know what? We should move on to Sharper, but for me, it was a spy thriller. It was a thriller. Look, you know Tony Gilroy. I mean, I love [The Bourne Legacy], but it was a spy thriller and that’s what I [leaned] into. Yes, it was in the Star Wars universe, but it was a spy thriller. So I [leaned] into that tone and mood.

Image via Disney+

So one of the things I really thought was cool is that, without spoilers, each chapter of the film essentially has its own aesthetic. I’m curious, what is it like as a director when you obviously have to film certain locations on the same day that are taking place in the different chapters on the same day when you’re going for a different look? Like, the beginning looks almost like a romantic New York City movie.

CARON: Well that’s preparation, you know, like anything, you’ve just got to be a really good student, you’ve got to be really well-prepared. You’ve got to have all of those conversations before you go out and start filming with your crew. We sort of broke it down. I remember we had this mood board in the design department, and it went through all of the different chapters, and it was like a colorway. It was amazing. So, the first chapter [was] beautiful oranges and reds and greens of Spring. Then we got to the second chapter, and it was more like tungsten and yellow and almost devoid of color. So those, and then so on and so on.

So that was pretty much a guiding principle from the beginning throughout the chapters. Then with the actors, we had a rehearsal process where I made the story more linear so that we could go through it in the – again, trying not to give too much away, but sort of going through it how the story would have played out. Then, you just bottle that up and you’re back on set.

So you know, it’s funny you talk about shooting out of sequence. I think on one day we shot the beginning of the movie and on the next day we shot the end of the movie because the film, excuse the pun, but you know, bookends. The beginning and end of the film [take] place in the bookstore. But I’m used to that, and I think most filmmakers are used to that now because, whether it’s on episodic television or feature films now, it’s a luxury now to shoot anything in sequence. It’s certainly a location-based movie. We wouldn’t be able to achieve the ambition of this film in the places I [wanted] to go to, racing across the whole of New York City, if we were going to shoot it in sequence.

Image via Apple TV+

I like talking about editing because that’s where everything comes together, but especially with this film. The editing is incredibly important to this film because you’re figuring out how much you want to give away and when. So can you talk about the challenges you ran into in the editing room, maybe how the film changed in ways you didn’t expect?

CARON: Yeah, that’s a good question. When I first read this, I embraced and loved the fact that this was a nonlinear narrative, and that the structure itself sort of echoes the story’s tricks and turns. My longtime collaborator Yan Miles and I have worked together for, I think, now 10, 12 years. We worked together right from the beginning of the season of The Crown, and he edited Andor with me. So we have a real understanding and love of, exactly as you are referring to, the playfulness that you can explore in editing.

The end of the movie wasn’t quite as finished in the early script stage, and even when we finished it. So, I remember there was a day when I came into the cutting room and I pulled out this big piece of paper and I wrote out the film in linear fashion. And for a moment, Yan was like, “He’s lost the plot. He basically wants me to re-edit the movie and put it back linear.” And then I was like, “No, no, no, this is all to do with the last chapter.” I think I’d just seen The Usual Suspects, and I wanted this idea that there was this story that we could take from the rest of the film that would give us this final act. It was there all along, but you didn’t see it. There was another message in the film that we could use at the end. So that came together completely in the cutting room, that sort of final act.

Yes, I’d always shot bits along the way that I knew could form part of this big puzzle, or this big jigsaw puzzle, at the end, but it wasn’t really clear to me what the throughline was. That was something we definitely discovered in the in the edit.

And then, with Yan, I love inter-cutting sequences. I love going with the story, and then meanwhile something happens in here. So, in the Tom chapter, a lot of those scenes that you see between Tom and Sandra in the kitchen were actual scenes, they were actual proper scenes between the two of them, but there was a pacing issue around that time. I wanted there to be a classical, for all intents and purposes, an independent and indie rom-com montage. So, we had that piece of music by Curtis Harding, and we started amalgamating those scenes into more broken-up moments with other non-dialogue scenes that we shot either up on the rooftop in Times Square… I like to say we put it in the washing machine, we put it all in the washing machine, we jumbled it all around, and it sort of comes out with that. So those things definitely were discoveries in the editing process.

Image via Apple TV+

Did you end up with a lot of deleted scenes?

CARON: Yes. [There were] two scenes that we had to cut, and one scene was basically about a Max and Madeline origin story, and we shot it in Washington Square Park. It was a great scene. It was a flashback, it was about maybe five years before any of our story takes place, and, in the script, it came after Max’s chapter and before Madeline’s chapter. We tried it, and we ran it, but it was like a pebble in the shoe. It just broke up the, I say the flow, but there was something pure about the timeline, or the nonlinear timeline, and that actually disrupted it. So we lost that and it freed it up a little bit. In a way, it was sad because you understood a bit more about Max’s character and Madeline’s character. But, I’m never afraid of leaving some of those questions out there. You can sort of leave some of that to the audience.

And then there was another scene, one other scene was in Tom’s chapter between Tom and Sandra, and it was after the birthday party at the bookstore. It was between the two of them, and Sandra is giving Tom a present. That present – and I can’t tell you what it is because it’s gonna give away… it’s a plot spoiler – but there was something in that present that, again, disrupted how you felt about Sandra. So we had to lose that scene. So only two.

Sharper is now playing in select theaters and premieres on Apple TV+ beginning February 17. Check out this clip of Sebastian Stan’s Thunderbolts update from our interview with the cast below.