Colin Farrell is and isn’t John Sugar. The latter is a fictional private eye, the titular role of Apple TV+’s new series Sugar, cruising the streets of contemporary Los Angeles—alongside his dog, Wiley—to track down missing persons. The former is a very real actor, who recently earned his first Academy Award nomination for The Banshees of Inisherin. They both harbor hearts of gold and a love for the movies.

Known for transforming himself into a range of characters that span from high-budget frenzied grit (The Batman, Miami Vice) to independent understated tenderness (After Yang, The Lobster) to somewhere in between (In Bruges, The Beguiled), Farrell’s thoughtful depiction of Sugar isn’t an exception to his gravitation towards the absurd and tragicomic, towards complicated men existing in a hybrid territory simultaneously familiar and alien to our own reality.

Yes, Sugar is a series and we don’t have those on Letterboxd yet, but as Dominic Corry explained in his Journal interview with creator Mark Protosevich, John Sugar is one of us: a bona fide cinephile. Although the bulk of the story revolves around the case of a legendary Hollywood producer’s (James Cromwell) missing granddaughter, Olivia (Sydney Chandler), each episode features multiple clips from classic cinema, juxtaposing Sugar’s experiences against those previously imagined on the silver screen.

Though he has a penchant for film noir and often reminisces about favorite scenes from the likes of Double Indemnity and The Big Heat, Sugar’s interests extend to other genres. In episode two, he attends a repertory theater screening of John Cassavetes’ romantic drama Minnie and Moskowitz. In episode four, he goes to the doctor and compares the examination to John Carpenter’s seminal horror The Thing. In short, he sees the world through the lens of cinema. This is also why it was imperative that we get John Sugar’s Four Faves, with the help of Farrell’s co-stars Kirby and Amy Ryan.

Kirby plays Ruby, Sugar’s handler and closest friend, and Ryan is Olivia’s stepmother, Melanie, a former rock star who helps coax Sugar out of his solitary shell while suppressing some secrets of her own. Once we got Four Faves settled, the trio chatted with me about subverting elements of film noir, the meta-link between Cromwell and L.A. Confidential and the false dichotomy between cats and dogs—plus, Farrell presents a film history lesson on The Night of the Hunter.

It’s such a clearly defined genre—and it has such a definite mood to it, and there’s such lovely mystery always at the core of it—but there is always also this abject disgruntlement, or a sickness, that is readily available in every frame. I think it kind of also is why people are so obsessed with murder documentaries and stuff like that. We do have a suspicion of the darkness at the heart of man, which doesn’t just live alone, of course—it is counter to the light that also is there.

We love to be exposed to that darkness, and noir gives us the opportunity to do that, but it also has a consequentiality because the essential character is usually paying a price for being as involved in the ugliness, through the cases that he—usually he—has worked. He’s usually embittered, and he’s usually tired by being exposed to these more nefarious and ugly aspects of the human condition.

The beautiful thing about this show, when I read the pilot, was that Sugar had this almost optimism in the face of all the ugliness that he’d been exposed to. He had this belief in the fundamental decency of human beings, which is a tricky belief to hold on to when we see the world and how it is. That was the thing that I loved about it. And yeah, it was fun to swim in the waters of noir. Would you call Sunset Boulevard noir? You wouldn’t, would you?

I would.
Kirby: Yeah.

AR: Yes.

CF: The energy of it, yeah, and the voiceover and the mystery. Yeah, at the center of it, I suppose.

AR: They have a swimming pool, too.

CF: Yeah, totally. Swimming pool, voiceover, typewriter—done.

CF: A little more wily, ironically.

K: Exactly. They’re more wily—“if it feels good to me, it’s good.” I felt like, in that moment, the animals are sort of metaphors for us.

The next film, The Big Heat, is mentioned in the first episode. John Sugar gets starstruck because he gets to have Glenn Ford’s gun from that movie. I was curious, as actors, have you ever had a moment like that, where you’ve been given this iconic prop, or you’ve been filming on the same stage as one of your favorite movies, and you got to geek out about it?
AR: Oh, that’s such a good question.

K: I feel like the Paramount lot. Whenever I’m just—

AR: Going through the gates, yeah. Agree with you there.

CF: Totally, because they have the legends outside each stage. It’s beautiful. It’s so gorgeous.

K: And it’s still quite small. Some of the newer lots, they feel newer, but the Paramount lot feels... I mean, none of us are from LA, so for me, being this little girl from London… The Hollywood sign is one thing, but… To me, the Paramount lot is so iconic.

CF: The water tower. What’s up with that?

AR: And then driving from trailers to set, and going through all the fake streets in the back.

K: It’s so windy and twisty. That, to me, always feels magical. I love that lot.

Next film: Gilda, a clip of which appears in the first episode. It’s such a film-school staple, because it’s pioneering and also subverting the femme fatale and damsel in distress archetypes. Amy, I feel like your character is also subverting all of these tropes at the same time. Could you talk about how Melanie has a similar function?
AR: Well, we all do, and yet we take a modern spin on it. The modern spin with Melanie to John [is], yes, she is this “damsel in distress”, “femme fatale”, yet they lean in more to true friendship, and recognition of each person’s flaws, and how they’re connected through that, as opposed to just pure attraction of flesh, and rumpled sheets and desire. And because of that, we get a sustained relationship throughout the series.

I think rage, hatred, anger, revenge, these kinds of themes, are something that become personally experienced for him by the end of the eight episodes, and it’s something that he wasn’t really versed in. He’s always had an ability to take care of himself and use violence, and use his body as a means of protection, either of self or others. But he’s never actually had the emotional or psychological component of what so often accompanies violence: rage, disdain, hatred and a desire for retribution. By the end, he knows those things, so yeah, nice one. Yeah, thanks for that.

We only have time for one more movie; we’re going to do a more contemporary one, okay? L.A. Confidential.
CF: Love. Love. It’s so good.

K: Yeah, I love that film. My brother’s a massive cinephile just in general, and he’s watched everything. He just came to LA and was so surprised that I hadn’t seen… What is the film? It’s Michael Douglas. He’s having a terrible day in LA?

CF: Oh, LA, Falling Down, Joel Schumacher?

K: Yes, yes. My brother literally got here and was talking to the cab driver about it.

CF: About Falling Down?

K: About that film. Yes, yes, yes, but he also was horrified that no one else in my family had seen it.

CF: It’s a great film, Falling Down. It’s one of Joel’s great films. Yeah, Lord rest him… L.A. Confidential. James Cromwell, of course. James Cromwell, who was with us in this.

That’s exactly what I was about to bring up, is how James Cromwell is this meta-link between L.A. Confidential and Sugar. Could you talk a little bit about that?
CF: I got to work up close and personal with him, and yeah, legend. We’ve been talking about it, but you just get giddy sometimes. You get to work with and encounter and share moments of bringing stories to life with people that you have revered, or you’ve felt a familiarity with. Or people that you were watching at home when you were a kid on your television, and then all of a sudden, you’re sharing space with them, and you’re working on a text with them. I mean, it’s mad. You never get used to it.

AR: You never get used to it.

K: I hope, because it’s fantastic. Cromwell, he’s a gem. Just a huge heart, obviously ridiculous talent, and an extraordinary storyteller.