TV

How Joseph Gordon-Levitt found the human and animal in Uber's 'mad dog' CEO for Super Pumped

Travis Kalanick "just leaned as hard as he could into that beastly, animalistic drive to win, conquer, and kill," the actor says.

By

Tyler Aquilina

Published on February 27, 2022 10:00AM EST

Asked to compare his Super Pumped character, Uber's bombastic former CEO Travis Kalanick, to other antiheroes from film and TV history, Joseph Gordon-Levitt ponders the question for a moment.

"How about George C. Scott as Patton?" he says. "It's been a while since I've seen that movie, but that [performance] was just so fierce and strong, and yet kind of graceful."

Then, he hits on another answer: "Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, from Oliver Stone's Wall Street. To me, that catchphrase, 'Greed is good,' is such a brilliantly and poetically concise summation of what's killing our world."

It's an apt comparison: Over the seven episodes of Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, Gordon-Levitt's Kalanick wages a ruthless fight to assert the rideshare company's dominance, with seemingly no regard for the consequences of his actions.

"It's an Icarus story," the actor tells EW. "As you rise and you succeed, then you become surrounded by people who are drafting off of your success, and it's tempting to just surround yourself with people who tell you that you're right about everything. And the more you do that, the more you will lose touch with reality. By the end of this series, Travis is surrounded by people that won't say no to him, because he's systematically picking off the people who will, and demonizing anybody that does push back. By the end, he's a mad dog."

Based on journalist Mike Isaac's 2019 book about the rise of Uber, it's certainly a timely story, and a highly specific examination of the ecosystem of Silicon Valley. But it's also, as co-showrunner Brian Koppelman told EW, "totemic, in terms of American industry and industrialists throughout time."

"This notion that making money is always the right answer, and who is anybody to decide what's right or wrong or ethical or unethical?" Gordon-Levitt says. "This is the bill of goods that we're sold over and over again, and to me, it's so obvious that that's breaking the world and driving us off a cliff."

Ahead of Super Pumped's debut on Showtime, Gordon-Levitt sat down with EW to steer us through how he approached Kalanick as a character, finding his humanity and animality, and how the show can start a conversation around the issues it depicts.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How much did you know about the story of Uber before joining this project?

JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT: I hadn't followed every single beat of the story, but I was certainly aware of it. But then when I read the book Super Pumped, I learned a lot of things that I did not know. It was pretty fascinating. I think if there's one ill you can point to in the whole world, it's that profits trump everything, and companies are expected to just make money and make value for shareholders at any cost. And Travis was one of the best in the world at that. He did want to win at any cost, and he had a good time doing it. And it made for a pretty fascinating story.

Did your preparation for the role mainly consist of reading the book, or was there other research that you did?

A lot of it was the book, but I also did my own research by talking to a lot of different people that were close with [Kalanick] or that worked with him. You get a different picture of a person when you actually talk to the folks close to them, as opposed to what you see portrayed in the press. What you read about in the book is mostly the questionable decisions and behavior, and we don't shy away from portraying those things. But what you might not get a sense of by reading interviews or reading the book is what it felt like to have a conversation with Travis, and to be friends and collaborators with him. And people really loved him. He was really winning, really inspiring, really positive, really high energy. And obviously, every individual has their own complicated feelings [about him], but that complexity is a big part of what makes a character fun to play. I think if you just reduce someone to, "They're a bad guy" or "They're a good guy," it gets sort of simplistic and boring. So finding that human complexity in both his strengths and his shortcomings was really important.

Was there anything in particular from those conversations that influenced or made its way into your performance?

People would talk about — I mean, this is sort of a generic word, but just how smart he is. I was talking to people who were with him during the rise of Uber, and the stuff they would describe is the kind of thing where, if I were in a room with somebody that had their mind around that many intricacies and details and was able to absorb and process information as quickly and sharply as he was, it would be really impressive. It was clearly no coincidence that this guy was able to find the right business to build and blow it up as successfully as he was.

Actors who play unlikable characters often talk about finding a way to relate to the character. You mentioned Kalanick's complexities; how else did you connect with or relate to Travis to help you get into the character?

We all have it in us, I think, to be that beast that just takes whatever the f--- they want, and to hell with the rest of you. That's an urge I think every human being has, because we're animals. And Travis just leaned as hard as he could into that beastly, animalistic drive to win, conquer, and kill. I know I have that, so it was actually kind of cathartic and fun to have an arena to indulge that side of myself that wouldn't normally ever come out.

This role requires a lot of monologues, a lot of intensity, a lot of energy. Was there anything you found particularly difficult while filming it?

I'll tell you the truth, man. It was a lot of hard work for sure, but this is the kind of thing I know how to do. This was fun, and kind of came easy in a weird way. I think a lot of that has to do with the writing being good. People often ask me, "How do you memorize lines?" And in Super Pumped, I had a lot of lines. I say a lot of words. But when the writing is good, it makes it pretty easy, because it just makes sense. And if you know the story and you know your character, then what they're thinking and what they're saying all follows logically. So I really hand it to [co-showrunners] Brian Koppelman, David Levien, and their whole team of writers. They made it pretty easy.

You touched on the issues this show is grappling with, in terms of the profit motive and recklessness of capitalism. What do you think the role of art is in that conversation, and in trying to raise those issues with people?

I think about this all the time. Because there's art and then there's entertainment, which are similar, but what would be the distinction? I think entertainment deals in emotions, but it can't deal in bigger, harder ideas. It's just not built for that. In the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, he breaks down how your brain has two systems of thinking. One is sort of your animal brain; it's emotional and it's intuitive. Then there's your more rational, logical, and harder-working brain, and that second one is hard. It takes a lot of energy. Like, they proved scientifically that it takes more calories to run those processes. And so when we all sit down to watch something, we're not necessarily wanting to run that, what Daniel Kahneman calls System 2. It feels like work, and we don't watch TV for work. So you cannot deal in the level of intricacy, complexity, and rigor that is necessary to address these bigger problems of how our grand, macro socio-economic system works.

But what you can do, and I think what Brian and David have been successful in doing, is you can make people feel something and ask a few questions, and hope — all you can do at that point is hope — that people will pursue those questions when they're done watching TV and they're ready to turn on their System 2 thinking.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber premieres Sunday at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime.

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