The dramatic thriller “Paper Tiger” stars Adam Driver, Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson as family members torn asunder by a terrifying experience with the Russian mob. It’s set in 1986 New York, where a business deal involving Brooklyn’s polluted Gowanus Canal quickly goes wrong.
There are shootouts and car chases, but the cinematic tension is equally driven by relationships. Driver and Teller play brothers; Driver’s character is a charismatic, wealthy ex-cop, and Teller’s is a mild-mannered engineer, who lives in Queens with his wife (Johannsson) and two teenage sons.
The film, in theaters, was written and directed by James Gray (“Ad Astra,” “We Own the Night”), with many autobiographical elements. The castmates gravitated to his work because of how finely tuned it is, they said.
“The scripts are crafted with a lot of nuance,” Driver said, “and there’s a lot of things to play — which is rare, and what I thought was going to be more of what movies were.”
He and Johansson were both nominated for Oscars for their portrayal of a disintegrating couple in “Marriage Story” (2019); they share the screen with Teller for the first time.
In a recent interview, the actors spoke about how they got into character, their real-life relationships with each other, and what it was like to film with vintage ’80s technology. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
The movie has the elements of a thriller, but it’s also a tense family drama. “Secrets” is what I wrote in my notebook when I saw it. What do you think it’s about?
SCARLETT JOHANSSON You know, there’s a lot of love in this film. The love that two brothers have for one another, a husband for a wife and vice versa, a mother for her children. That runs through the veins of the movie, really. And all the characters act from that place.
MILES TELLER With that love comes expectation and with expectation comes disappointment, sibling jealousy, admiration. Sometimes bad things happen to well-intentioned people. I just had a lot of empathy for this family, how everything kind of comes crashing down.
Adam and Miles, how did you develop the brothers’ relationship or backstory?
ADAM DRIVER Miles and I kind of knew each other from afar at different, kind of high-stress actor events, and we always gravitated toward each other.
TELLER There was always a real comfort there. But I had no idea how Adam worked. I know how relentless he’s been in the roles that he tackles.
DRIVER You know, with good actors [like Teller], you really don’t have to work at a lot of dynamic. So we kind of just dived right in. We had a couple weeks of rehearsal — time to be pretty forthcoming about what we related to in the script.
TELLER For the brotherhood thing to really work, there’s got to be a real ease there. And I never felt like Adam was ever trying to control a scene, control a narrative.
How was it to act opposite Adam and Scarlett, this former on-screen couple?
TELLER Well, we would often say we’re a throuple now.
JOHANSSON No, only you said that, Miles.
TELLER Yeah, but I saw that you didn’t hate it when I said it.
The movie is very specific about its setting: the small house in Queens, the grotty Gowanus Canal — which is now surrounded by high-rise apartments. What kind of research did you do about the period and locations?
[Long pause]
DRIVER We’re thinking as a throuple now. We shot in Passaic, [N.J.], so the location, that was helpful. For me, there wasn’t really much research, it was so clearly articulated in the script. A lot of this movie was about first impulses.
JOHANSSON We just try stuff out, and it’s easy to capture it. You’re not fighting a massive set.
TELLER That home that we were in, James had said, is almost identical to the house he grew up with. And our production design and the wardrobe, it was very transportive. When I looked at Scarlett, I said, yeah, that looks like 1986 to me.
Scarlett, James has said that his mom actually had the same hairstyle you did. You weren’t playing her exactly, but I felt like you were channeling some generational struggle, especially in an emotional scene where she unleashes about not being listened to.
JOHANSSON Is it generational? It’s sort of like the woman’s condition. I thought about that a lot. This woman, let’s say she grew up and had some aspiration for herself. It was probably not, oh, I can’t wait to get married at 20 and have two kids almost immediately. And then the reality of the time and place, and of the patriarchy as it is, right? Suddenly society tells you those are in fact your priorities, and you assimilate.
Whatever doubt she has, she pushes aside because her purpose has become, for a very long time, uplifting her family and shepherding her sons to greatness. But whatever resentment is underlying all that is still there. And it comes out in this moment of abandon because her feelings are so raw.
What do you think the film is saying about the American dream, or its dismantling?
DRIVER It definitely hints that our measure of success is skewed.
TELLER James’s scripts really give so much room for subtext, especially in this story, where characters are rarely saying what they’re thinking or feeling. If we’re looking for some kind of grandeur in this film, I think James is able to get to those places through familial relationships.
Adam, did you think your character was a good cop?
DRIVER Yeah. I think the expectation is, someone who moves like that through the world has some ulterior motive at play. But what’s refreshing is he genuinely wants his brother to rise above his station. All his money he made on the side was legitimate.
But he comes back to his found family, the police department, with the same tools, and they don’t apply anymore. Which I felt was a great metaphor for what can happen in relationships and family dynamics: You come back and desperately want everyone in your family to acknowledge this new version of you. And they can’t help but place you where you left.
You shot on period-appropriate equipment, vintage lighting. Did it give you an extra ’80s vibe?
DRIVER I got this, guys! Yeah, we shot with tungsten lights, vintage lenses. You definitely have moments on set where you’re like, ‘Well, this is exactly why we switched to digital!’ But then you kind of think, if they shot “Sorcerer” on the same equipment, maybe we can do it with talking in rooms.
JOHANSSON There’s something nice about the purr of a film camera, if you grew up working around it. We shot “Jurassic Park” [“Jurassic World Rebirth” from 2025] on film, too — everybody’s always shocked by that. On [this], I never noticed any of the equipment at all.
TELLER There were not very many setups per day on this film — I think we averaged about 10. It was not an anxious, hectic set, in many ways, and it allowed us this bonding. To just live in this space and sit with each other.
You were also able to do some improvising, right?
DRIVER Especially at the family scenes. Improv is good because it just keeps everyone on their toes in a really nice way.
JOHANSSON You make discoveries — it’s such a fun way to work.
TELLER The first scene where we were all together — I had met the kids, and Scarlett and I had talked. I don’t think I had met the woman playing her mother before that. There needs to be so much history between everyone, but you’re meeting everybody at the same time and it’s chaotic. I just remember feeling so out of place. I was like, is this Miles feeling like this? Is this the character? James really allowed the cameras to go for a while there.
And then my kids were ad-libbing things — that was throwing me off. Because I was like, James, if these are my kids, I would not let them talk like that at the table. He’s like, well, tell them!
