The actor Charlie Plummer always wanted to be a cowboy. In National Anthem, a sensual, bold new film that premiered last year at SXSW, that dream came true. “A cowboy is, in a lot of ways, what Americans have grown up with as the idea of a superhero,” Plummer tells W. “I’ve always had this desire to lose myself in a Western world and have this fantasy.”
Plummer, whom Ridley Scott once likened to a young Leonardo DiCaprio, first rose to fame on the indie circuit. While he starred in Scott’s 2017 crime thriller All the Money in the World and the Hulu teen drama Looking For Alaska, the 25-year-old’s breakout was in Andrew Haigh’s Lean on Pete, in which he starred opposite Chloë Sevigny and Steve Buscemi as an introverted teenager trekking through the desert with a stolen racehorse. In National Anthem, a coming-of-age (and coming out) story, he plays Dylan, a profoundly lonely 21-year-old cattle rancher living in rural New Mexico. Dylan’s desperation for work leads him to the House of Splendor ranch, where a community of queer ranchers and rodeo performers sprouts out of the desert like an oasis to embrace him in their found family.
National Anthem sees Plummer taking the reins in his first role as a fully-fledged adult. Like his idol, the late River Phoenix, the actor has grown into adulthood on screen. He embodies a quiet, tactile sensitivity in director, writer, and photographer Luke Gilford’s first feature (based on his recently reissued 2020 photobook, National Anthem: America’s Queer Rodeo). As Dylan, Plummer is captivating when his eyes finally emerge from under his hat’s lowered brim. The film avoids cliché archetypes, ensuring that Dylan’s transformation isn’t mired in trauma and shame. Instead, as the repressed young man is welcomed into the joyful House of Splendor, he undergoes a period of rapid self-liberation, gently unraveling with the help of rodeo star Sky’s (Eve Lindley) careful touch.
Gilford and Plummer first met in 2018 at a photoshoot for Lean on Pete. “There’s just such a soulfulness about him, a grounded warmth,” Gilford says. “I could tell that he was quite introspective in a way that made me curious.” At the shoot, Plummer was styled in a Western shirt, and Gilford immediately saw him as Dylan. “I couldn’t stop thinking about him as I was writing,” Gilford adds.
Acting has been part of Plummer’s life as far back as he can remember—his parents both work in professional theater, and before even becoming a teenager, he’d been in a handful of short films and several episodes of the 2011 period drama Boardwalk Empire. We’ve seen the turbulent road that child actors walk, but Plummer has been careful with his footing. National Anthem marked “a huge shift internally” as it concluded a period of pandemic-driven insecurity. “I needed to take ownership of my life and the work I was doing,” Plummer says. “I was asking myself: why do I want to do this?”
It was advice from his friend, the cinematographer Bobby Bukowski (who was also close to Phoenix), that gave Plummer direction. “He said River was always confident and knew he would land. He never knew how or when, but he trusted that it was going to fall when it needed to,” Plummer says. “Letting go of the child actor aspect of the job is the anxiety of, where am I gonna go? You have to find it in yourself to feel trust in the universe.” It’s with this newfound trust that Plummer walked onto the set of National Anthem and slid into the leading man’s boots. His evolution is set to continue with Uberto Pasolini’s upcoming retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey, The Return, in which Plummer got to work with two of his acting heroes, Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche.
In addition to spotlighting Plummer’s talent, National Anthem reinvigorates traditional notions of the Western genre. The usual bravado is traded for a dissection of masculinity and a celebration of LGBTQ+ cowboys against a perpetual golden hour. At a time when queer and trans rights are under attack, National Anthem is an almighty sigh of relief. “I give Luke so much credit for seeing an opportunity with this,” Plummer says of National Anthem’s colorful context. “The movie is coming out when, especially in our country, we need to see examples of heroes that are not afraid to embrace all of themselves.’”
Plummer devoted himself to the project, which is why, on the first day of filming, he found himself riding on the back of a bucking rodeo bull. But it was Dylan’s drag performance, a pivotal scene in the film in which Plummer commits wholeheartedly in red lipstick and a sparkling sequin dress, that proved to be Plummer’s biggest challenge. The art form helped him bond with his younger brother, who does drag, and having watched in awe for several years, taking to the stage himself was terrifying. “I was really worked up on falling on my face, literally or figuratively,” Plummer laughs. With encouragement from Gilford and an “unbelievably collaborative” set, Plummer pulled off a formidable debut. Looking back on it now, pushing through the doubt to be present and open to the moment was all that was needed. “Luke was giving me an opportunity, saying, ‘I know you’ve always wanted to play a cowboy, and you never thought you could do drag. So here we go, man. If you want to see this out of yourself, you gotta dive in the deep end.’”
National Anthem is currently playing in select cities and will be in theaters nationwide July 19.