Domhnall Gleeson plays Daniel in The Incomer

“The Incomer” is first-time writer/director Louis Paxton’s film about a brother and sister who are the only residents of an isolated island, the only home they have ever known. Domhnall Gleeson plays Daniel, the shy, awkward bureaucrat sent to evict them.

In an interview with RogerEbert.com, Gleeson talked about finding the right tone for the story, creating one of the movie’s best scenes, an energetic enactment of “Lord of the Rings” fan fiction, and being directed by Taylor Swift in the “Opalite” video. “The Incomer” opens in theaters on September 25.

As I watched this movie, I couldn’t help thinking that you could make this setup work as a broad comedy, a horror movie, an adventure, or a satire. It has some elements of all of them but retains a remarkably consistent, if unusual and very singular, tone. How did you maintain that?

It’s such a really interesting combination of things that could feel disparate and messy. But the person leading the charge did know exactly what they were doing. Louis is a very unusual filmmaker, never mind a first-time filmmaker, in that he was able to bring all those things together, and the tone was never in question. That’s what I loved about it, the way it brought all those things together in the script. The reason I hopped on to do the film was that, tonally, it knew itself so well in the script.

How would you define the tone?

It is really funny. It’s very heartfelt. There are moments in it that are almost horror-like, “The Wicker Man” scary stuff. And then there were bits of pretty broad comedy. But to me, it’s the heart at the center of it that matters most. And that’s the thing that comes through the most. If you ask me to describe it in one sentence, rather than a paragraph, I would really struggle. It’s itself, and that’s what I like about it is itself.

You have demonstrated a remarkable facility with accents in your career. How did you work on the Scottish accent for this character?

There are few things scarier than turning up to set in Scotland with an almost completely Scottish crew, Scottish filmmakers, Scottish cast. The moment you break out your Scottish accent on set is a very scary moment. But thank God it seems to have gone well. The feedback has been pretty good. I worked very hard on it with a wonderful dialect coach. I based it on a couple of people, including our second AD. He had a wonderful voice, and when I met him, I was like, “Oh, I might steal some of him for the accent as well.”

Do you have a phrase that you use to get yourself into it?

Oh, I did, and I can’t say it. It had a couple of curse words in it, but it got me back pretty quickly. It was one of those great curse words that have a lot of vowels in it.

One of the highlights of the movie for me was the Lord Of The Rings-infused story you told the other characters. It’s really a turning point for your character. I had the impression, watching it, that your character hadn’t really talked to anybody in a long time, and we really see him open up.

He’s so buttoned up. He’s so much on the back foot. He’s so interior, and you can see that he wants to connect with people, but he struggles. We see that he believes, and I think he’s right, that people consider him a bit of a weirdo on the mainland. And this is the first time he lets all of it out. And it’s through storytelling.

That’s what we all do as actors, as directors, as everything. Storytelling is what we’re there for. Daniel just gets to go into his imagination. I imagined that’s who he was when he was five years old, before the world taught him to be embarrassed about himself or to hide pieces of himself away. So I just went back to my five-year-old self and how exciting it is when a kid is trying to tell you a story. I thought of my nephews and the way they tell stories.

The physicality of it was something we hadn’t seen from Daniel before. I just love the way he threw himself into it as though he’d been holding on to that moment for his whole life and was so excited to finally have an audience.

He finally has an audience. That’s exactly it. People are actively listening to him, and he has them hanging on his every word. And I remember having the conversation with Louis—“How tight is the frame going to be?”—because I had a feeling it was going to go big. And I was like, “Maybe we back up a little bit for at least one of them.” So there is room for Daniel to hop all over the place. I really enjoyed that day on set.

I also enjoyed the interaction at the beginning of the film with Roz, Daniel’s boss, because it would be hard to listen to that performance without laughing.

Michelle Gomez is so good. She brought so much to Roz. This was clearly a woman who was very into herself. And she looked down on Daniel so much. Again, a lot of it was in the script, but Michelle brought some of her own stuff. Daniel very much just wants to please her. That scene just depended on how much he was trying to make her like him and how much he knew she didn’t like him.

That pivotal moment when you tell the story to Isla and Sandy has a nice echo at the end with an almost-meta point about what stories mean to us. What will the audience learn about the importance of stories?

A well-told story brings everybody together, from when you’re a kid and you’re around the campfire, to when you’re up late at night and somebody tells you a story from their childhood for the first time, and you see a different part of them, to everybody sitting in a cinema together and experiencing the same story. There is nothing like it. Humans have done it forever. This story felt so specific, and it cared about the value of stories to people. A well-told story is hard to come by, and I just think this is supremely well told. Louis puts you in safe hands from the very beginning.

You’ve worked in some of the biggest franchises of all time with huge budgets and special effects. What is the best thing about working on a little independent film from a first-time filmmaker like this one?

I found it incredibly invigorating. It reinvigorated my love for independent films, for watching them, for being a part of them. We were all away from home. We were up at the very tippy top of Scotland. There were loads of people who were up a level from where they’d been working before. Everyone was trying their hardest. We were all in it together, and they were tough days, but we had super producers. We had super heads of department across the board. Everybody who was on it was bringing their A game because they cared about it. No one was there for the money; no one was there for a paycheck. They were all there because they loved this thing, and they wanted to make it good. There’s nothing else like it.

I have to ask you: was it hard to learn the dancing in Taylor Swift’s “Opalite” video?

[Laughs] Yes, it was embarrassingly hard. I keep on forgetting the phrase, I think it was “full send“ was what Taylor used, Which was that the doing of it is what makes it good, that you have to believe totally in it.

I had a concerned look as we were doing it because I was trying to remember the moves, and she was like, “Forget all that; we go for it now.” That’s why she’s one of the best entertainers in the world, as well as a great artist. It reminded me what it means to be a good actor. I am by no means a good dancer, but it only works if you believe in it 100%. I did not know those moves as well as I wanted to, but I went for it. And I think you can see that in the video. I’m very proud of it.

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The Heart at the Center Of It: Domhnall Gleeson on "The Incomer"