The Order director says Jan. 6 insurrection inspired him to make Neo-Nazi crime thriller with Jude Law (exclusive)

Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult's upcoming heist thriller The Order is inspired by real-life events from America's past, but its themes remain terrifyingly relevant.

Directed by Justin Kurzel (Macbeth), the true-crime drama tells the story of Bob Mathews (Hoult), a white nationalist leader intent on starting a race war. Law costars as Terry Husk, a fictional FBI agent who connects the dots between a string of daring robberies and Mathew's domestic terrorist cell. Teaming up with local deputy Jamie (Tye Sheridan) and former FBI partner Joanne (Jurnee Smollett), Husk works to uncover the Neo-Nazi plot and stop them from sowing the seeds of a violent revolution.

"I was really looking to do an American film and something that felt contemporary in a way," the Australian director tells Entertainment Weekly. When he read Zach Baylin's script, he says, "I was really surprised that I was reading a period piece that was speaking so much to the climate that's going on today."

Kurzel says he got "sucked into" the heists conducted by Mathews and his men and found himself "deeply surprised that they ended up forming a true story based on America's first homegrown terrorist group and how close these men got to carrying out the steps in The Turner Diaries."

In the film and in real life, Mathews' terrorist group was heavily inspired by The Turner Diaries, a 1978 novel by white supremacist William Luther Pierce. While written as a work of fiction, Mathews and other white supremacist leaders have attempted to utilize the book as a step-by-step guide to overthrowing the federal government. One of those final steps involves an event dubbed "The Day of the Rope," in which "race traitors" are rounded up en masse and hung in a public execution. 

"I became really intrigued by all of that — and then January 6 happened," Kurzel says, referring to the deadly U.S. insurrection in 2021. "I remember seeing images of nooses hanging outside the Capitol Building as props and finding real similarities to a particular chapter in the book called 'Day of the Rope' that was describing and reenacting these politicians being hung outside the building. There were just so many similarities to what was going on within this incredible script Zach had written that I just found it so compelling and wanted to find a way into it that I felt could be a wonderful first American film."

The project also offered Kurzel the opportunity to cast Law in a role he's rarely gotten to play but seems increasingly suited for: the grizzled, brooding detective. "That's why I was really excited about working with Jude on this," Kurzel says. "I felt as though he hadn't quite done a role like this and that there was this Americana about the role and masculinity and something quite alpha, but also the character needed to be incredibly likable and vulnerable. Jude has a really strong masculinity about him, but he's also never scared to be fragile and emotive."

Kurzel says he and Law had come across the script around the same time and worked together from the beginning to craft the story and its characters. "He's ridiculously smart, his intuition's really strong, and the instincts that he had for this character were exactly like mine. He's an extraordinary person to work with," raves the director. "His love of acting is really quite extraordinary and very infectious and inspiring as a director."

The Order was also the perfect chance for the director to reteam with Hoult, whom he'd worked with on his 2019 film, True History of the Kelly Gang. "I just loved the experience," Kurzel says of the project. "Nick's a fiercely intelligent actor, but he's very charismatic, and there's something very effortless about him. You become quite quickly drawn to him and feel very comfortable in his presence." 

Those were all important qualities in playing a cult leader like Mathews, who used his magnetic personality to indoctrinate lonely outsiders to his cause. "In a lot of my films, family becomes a really big theme, and there was something in how Bob Mathews was able to seduce a group of people to not only be part of this group but fight for the group and become the soldiers within the group," Kurzel explains. "But they were having barbecues and parties, and everyone was living together. There was a real commune-type feel about it."

From their previous experience working together, the director knew Hoult could bring out Mathews' dangerous and violent tendencies while also showing "this other side of him, which was supportive and could take a back seat at times and listen to others and draw them in through the way he made them feel comfortable. There's a quality about Nick in his performance that spoke to that."

As important as it was for Hoult to nail Mathews' dual personalities, Kurzel was not as concerned with the granular details of the true story behind the film. No stranger to helming films based on historical events, the director has learned how to keep his focus trained mostly on his characters. 

"You do spend, especially with true stories, so much time researching and getting caught up in details that may or may not be true, and there can be a lot of thinking and reading, and sometimes just to break that, what I think is helpful is for actors, especially in pre-production, I'll usually write out a series of active things for them to play with and do."

As he has previously revealed, one of those assignments was having Law and Hoult follow each other for a day without letting the other know. "I told Nick and Jude to follow each other one day, and they both did on individual days without the other one knowing, and it was just them following the other actor. And I think out of that comes a focus and a concentration and a sense of privacy with that thinking process."

He adds, "There were other little things, too. Bob Mathews didn't drink alcohol, he didn't smoke, and he lived a clean life in regard to diet. He only ate meat. I think that has something to do with how you feel. And so Nick started to adopt a similar diet and went off alcohol, and a clarity and a clear-headedness came."

While his methods may sound extreme, Kurzel believes the process allows his actors to feel like they've accomplished something tangible in inhabiting their characters. "You really notice when that actor comes on set that they own this, that they've had experiences which are theirs, that are connected deeply to this character, and that there is a sense of confidence in where they're at and how they feel in the shoes of the person that they're playing."

The Order hits theaters on Dec. 6.