The Instigators' Matt Damon & Casey Affleck On Teaming For Buddy Heist Comedy & Ocean's 14

Summary Matt Damon and Casey Affleck reunite in The Instigators for a high-stakes heist that sends them on the run when it goes awry.

Affleck praises co-writer Chuck MacLean and director Doug Liman for helping shape the script, while Damon's Rory character provides the perfect foil to Affleck's Cobby.

The duo also share their surprise at George Clooney having a script for Ocean's 14, but are open to returning to the heist franchise.

With 17 years gone since their last on-screen collaboration, Matt Damon and Casey Affleck are back in the saddle together again for The Instigators. Damon and Affleck, younger brother of fellow acclaimed filmmaker Ben Affleck, first began working together in 1997's Good Will Hunting, and followed it up with roles in the 2002 indie drama Gerry, which they also co-wrote together, and Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's trilogy. The duo also collaborated on the Oscar-winning 2016 drama Manchester by the Sea, in which Affleck starred and Damon produced.

In The Instigators, Damon stars as Rory, a man at a low point in his life who elects to take part in a robbery in order to earn enough money to try and win some respect back from his teenage son, whose life he's been unable to be involved with. Rory is partnered with Affleck's Cobby, a more seasoned criminal looking for an easy score, only for things to go awry for them both when details of the job are incorrect, and they end up drawing the ire of people with high political power.

Related The Instigators Review: Matt Damon's Apple TV+ Comedy Is At Its Best When It's Not Action-Focused The Instigators isn't as slick as a Guy Ritchie flick, though it's cut from a similar cloth, but Matt Damon and Casey Affleck make it a fun ride.

Alongside Damon and Affleck, the ensemble Instigators cast includes Hong Chau as Rory's therapist who he brings with them during their efforts to escape, Paul Walter Hauser, Michael Stuhlbarg, Ving Rhames, Alfred Molina, Toby Jones, Jack Harlow and Ron Perlman. Co-written by Affleck and City on a Hill creator Chuck Maclean, and directed by Road House's Doug Liman, the movie is a fast-paced, offbeat and fun twist on the buddy heist genre.

In honor of the movie's release, Screen Rant interviewed Matt Damon and Casey Affleck to discuss The Instigators, why Maclean was the perfect partner for Affleck in putting the script together, how Liman reshaped its ending, and their thoughts on a potential Ocean's 14.

Maclean & Liman Were Key To Affleck's Help With Shaping The Script

Image via Apple TV+

While the Oscar winner has experience in the writers chair, including his 2019 post-apocalyptic drama Light of My Life, Affleck was presented with a unique challenge with The Instigators in putting together a movie that was both action-packed and character-driven. Affleck acknowledged the major help Maclean and Liman brought to finding the right scale for the story, particularly the ending, with the director having "completely pulled it apart":

Casey Affleck: Well, it was Jeff and Graham. We were looking for a comedy, and they've worked a lot with Chuck Maclean, who is a great writer. He had already had a similar idea, and had done a draft of the script. And with Jeff, and John and Chuck, they all said, "Why don't you just take a stab at rewriting it?" Chuck is just always writing some new idea, he's got a million ideas and a bunch of good scripts that he's just waiting to get made. So, he's always on to the next thing. And he said, "Why don't you run with it?" I've written some things, but nothing like this, so it was kind of hard for me to figure out what would make a movie like this work. If I sit down in front of my computer by myself and write something, it's not something like this, but I did my best. And then, two years later, I sent it to Matt and Lucy, and then the process really began of rewriting and rewriting with everyone else in mind as they came on board, and with their input and their ideas. And no one more so than Doug, who completely pulled it apart, especially at the end of the movie. He said, "This just won't work. If you want to make a movie like this, you got to, it has to be different, and here's how." And he was right, so the third act of this movie used to be more like Midnight Run. And Doug said, "It's just got to get bigger, the stakes have to get higher. Visually, there have to be more opportunities for a sort of big movie feel." I didn't really know a lot about that, it's not how I approached writing or filmmaking, in general. So, I learned a lot, and at every turn, there was a part of me that I felt like was going against my own creative grain. But I just totally trusted him, and he was right every single time.

Damon's Rory Is The "Perfect Kind Of Foil" To Affleck's Cobby

Image via Apple TV+

Damon's turn as Rory in The Instigators also provided the Oscar winner a chance to return to the world of comedy he's occasionally explored, ranging from Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse to the sci-fi dramedy Downsizing. In reflecting on developing the character with Affleck, Maclean and Liman, Damon explained the objective was largely to find "the perfect kind of foil" for Affleck's Cobby, landing on Rory being someone so intent on doing his only crime correctly he will resort to "taking notes":

Matt Damon: Yeah, that was stuff we all came up with in the writing phase. And when we looked at what Casey had, his character was really solid and great, and we were like, "What's the perfect kind of foil for that character? What would be the right kind of partnership for the buddy comedy?" So, that's how we came up with Rory and his backstory, and it's his first crime he's ever committed. He's in this very desperate place, but he's willing to do this reckless thing, but he only wants to do it once. So, he's trying to do it diligently and easily, taking notes. [Laughs] So, all that kind of stuff we just came up with a few months before we started shooting, and then we just mapped out what that relationship would look like, because they're a very unlikely pair of friends.

Damon & Affleck Weren't Aware Of George Clooney's Ocean's 14 Script (But Are Ready To Return)

Though the duo have worked together off-screen on a variety of projects, The Instigators marks the first on-screen pairing for Damon and Affleck since 2007's Ocean's Thirteen. The years since have seen the release of the female-led spinoff Ocean's 8, and a prequel announced with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling intended to star, all while a fourth mainline movie seemed unlikely. George Clooney, though, recently came out to reveal he had "a great script" ready for a new Ocean's movie, which surprised Damon and Affleck to learn, but also excited them:

Casey Affleck: No, you know more than I do. [Laughs]

Matt Damon: Yeah. [Laughs] I guess it'll be up to if we can get the whole group together and get a good script. We'll see where it goes, but we haven't heard much at this point. But, we're obviously open to it. We love all those guys in that whole group, and it would be really fun, obviously.

About The Instigators

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Rory (Matt Damon) and Cobby (Casey Affleck) are reluctant partners: a desperate father and an ex-con thrown together to pull off a robbery of the ill-gained earnings of a corrupt politician. But when the heist goes wrong, the two find themselves engulfed in a whirlwind of chaos, pursued not only by police, but also backwards bureaucrats and vengeful crime bosses. Completely out of their depth, they convince Rory’s therapist (Hong Chau) to join their riotous getaway through the city, where they must put aside their differences and work together to evade capture — or worse. Directed by Doug Liman and written by Chuck MacLean and Casey Affleck, “The Instigators” also stars Michael Stuhlbarg, Paul Walter Hauser, Ving Rhames, Alfred Molina, and Toby Jones, with Jack Harlow and Ron Perlman.

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Stay tuned for our other Instigators interviews with:

Hong Chau

Matt Damon (red-carpet premiere)

Casey Affleck (red-carpet premiere)

Hong Chau (red-carpet premiere)

The Instigators is now in theaters and hits Apple TV+ on August 9.

Source: Screen Rant Plus