While breaking down the creative process behind his latest musical dramedy, Power Ballad, Irish filmmaker John Carney noted that an important key to the success of a film relies on finding the right alchemy of talent. As a composer and musician himself, Carney knows a thing or two about striking that chord, having helmed such music-centric movies as the Oscar-winning Once, Begin Again, Sing Street, and Flora and Son.
Power Ballad follows a similar melodic vein, centering on Rick Power (Paul Rudd), a washed-up rocker now fronting a local Irish wedding band. A chance encounter brings him together with Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), a former boy-bander desperate for a hit. After a spontaneous evening of jamming, Danny records and releases a song Rick played for him that night, turning it into a massive hit and passing it off as his own. Rick is determined to get the recognition he deserves, setting the stage for a showdown over artistic ownership and broken trust between two artists.
At a press conference attended by Casting Networks, Carney, Rudd, and Jonas sat down for consecutive interviews to peel back the curtain on how the project came together. The conversations offered practical insights into the mechanics of casting, the reality of imposter syndrome on set, and how subtext can shape a performance.
Key Insights
- Strong casting starts with finding the right lead, then building an ensemble whose strengths naturally complement one another.
- Great performances come from embracing vulnerability, trusting your preparation, and allowing yourself to play even when self-doubt creeps in.
- The most compelling characters are shaped by what they don’t say, using subtext and collaboration to create layered, authentic performances.
Listening to the Lead
When it comes to structuring a film’s lineup, director John Carney told Casting Networks that the casting of his main lead character tends to serve as the anchor for the rest of the surrounding roles. Rather than traditional casting, he treats the process like building a band.
“Once you have [the actor] in that role, you should listen to that and cast around that,” Carney stated. “Like, what ingredients do we have here? Once we had Paul, we thought it would be really cool to cast our friends and family and actors that we loved working with in Ireland, and mixing it up between real musicians.”
This approach even allowed for moments that fans might recognize as part of a shared creative world. For instance, Irish music producer and musician Gavin Glass plays a street busker Rudd’s character encounters. In a nod and wink to Carney’s filmography, he just happens to be singing a track from Once. That scene, Carney playfully noted, was dubbed by others as being something out of the “JCU” or John Carney Universe.
That’s not to say newcomers can’t enter the close-knit Carney group. Casting the role of Rick’s eye-rolling, unimpressible teenage daughter was challenging, until newcomer Beth Fallon walked into the audition room.
“Beth Fallon, who played the daughter, was a bit of a find,” Carney shared with Casting Networks. “There’s always a [character] who, until you get that role filled, you can’t make the movie. When she walked into the room and started delivering the lines, it gave us permission to go ahead and make the movie.”
Pushing Through Self-Consciousness
Stepping into the shoes of a rocker-turned-wedding band frontman required Rudd to perform music at an elite level alongside professional musicians, such as co-star Jonas. Despite knowing how to play guitar, Rudd confessed to experiencing some self-doubt when cameras started rolling.
“I was certainly aware and self-conscious the whole time, knowing that I was around real musicians, of which I’m not,” Rudd recalled. “I mean, I like to play music. I like to sing in the way that everyone kinda does. While I played guitar for many years, I’m not the kind of guitarist who is so proficient that people go, ‘Oh, man. Play some guitar. We want to hear you play guitar.’”
Instead of letting that intimidation stall his performance, Rudd intentionally flipped his mindset, treating the collaborative and improvised environment orchestrated by Carney as an invitation to play.
“I don’t know if I rose to the occasion, but I felt like instead of using this as something that would be intimidating, I made a mental note to go, ‘Join in,’” Rudd noted. He later added, “As is often the case in life, everything is daunting until you go, ‘I’m just going to decide this is fun and then just jump right in.’ That’s what I did with this.”
Decoupling From the Archetype
For Nick Jonas, portraying Danny offered an opportunity to dig into the script and subvert the standard expectations of a stereotypical adversary. Rather than approaching Danny as a calculating thief, Jonas grounded his preparation in the idea that the character is simply navigating severe professional panic. As a professional musician, both solo and as part of a trio with his siblings in the Jonas Brothers, he pulled directly from his own music industry experiences.
“I’ve seen scenarios play out, not to the level that it escalates to in the film, but versions of where an idea got started, someone else finished it months later, [and then] forgot where they had heard it or where it had originated from,” Jonas pointed out. “And that’s what really drew me to this project and this idea that we don’t have to position Danny as some evil villain. He could just be a guy who made a bad decision and then also probably didn’t even realize, as it was happening, what was going on. I love that aspect of it. It just complicates the story further and makes it way juicier.”
Navigating that internal conflict meant focusing on the layers beneath the dialogue.
“A lot of what’s happening [to Danny] … is playing out in his head,” Jonas explained. “There’s what he’s saying to Mac, his manager, [and] what he’s not saying to Mac. Same with his girlfriend, and all these layers of growing anxiety and stress that he’s under. I always love characters like that, where you can play the thing that’s not being said and have [those] layers underneath.”
The Alchemy in Action
That spontaneous jam session in Power Ballad where Rick and Danny bond over playing music, also had subtext of its own: it served as day one on set for the two co-stars.
“That was the first scene that we shot together, [our characters] kind of getting to know each other,” Rudd recalled. “It was also what was happening in real life. I’d never met Nick before we worked on this. We kind of fell into it pretty easily. It was also nice to get to know each other as people, as the characters were getting to know each other.”
Jonas echoed that chemistry, noting that the scene succeeded because Carney gave them the technical freedom to play within a structured environment.
“In the first couple of minutes on set, I knew we were going to be fast friends,” Jonas said of Rudd. “It was that night where [the characters] were writing the songs and messing around. The stuff at the piano was my favorite back and forth. John Carney, gave us some good guardrails of what he needed story-wise, but then let us play and let us kind of improvise.”
That improvisation with a sense of play was exactly what the actors appreciated most.
“The way he directs is like a musician,” Rudd noted of Carney. “Something might happen in a rehearsal, and he’s like, ‘let’s play around with that a little bit.’ There’s a real spontaneity and liveliness to the way he orchestrates a scene.”
For a film centered on artistic ownership, Power Ballad ultimately celebrates something more elusive: creative connection. With the easy rapport between Carney, Rudd, and Jonas, the chemistry wasn’t just limited to the screen. It was present from the first day on set, proving that sometimes the right mix of talent really is the secret ingredient.
