He’s not gonna let him see True Detective. “Never never never.”
He is not great at ominous lawn-care. He assents there are probably lawn-mower bloopers of him after the show. His dad used to have him mow the lawn growing up, but with a mower “you had to push, not one you ride on.” The show’s rusted-out model made so much noise, and had such a janky clutch, that he would go too far past his mark in a scene sometimes, or not hear directions over the motor, everybody shouting to keep him motoring in the right direction. At one point filming the end of episode seven, with the crucial orange twilight fading, there were crane shots flying, and everyone was at a distance. Glenn couldn’t hear direction over the mower, so everybody was literally screaming “from very far away” to keep him going the right way. “We finally got it right before the sun went down,” he says, “Cary [f*ckunaga] came over and said, ‘Well, that was confusing.’”
**His favorite post-True Detective Internet comments have been all the ones about how he’s kind of speedy. **“That shot where Matthew sees me, and I take off in the woods? I wanted to be really quick,” he says, “and I noticed some people commented on how nimble I was! That made me happy. Because people think a big guy can’t move, but I like to be deceptive in that, you know? I thought, even when I attacked him in the fight scene when he first comes in, I’m just sort of stealthy and quick—that’s the sort of surprising, scary feature of a large, ax-wielding guy.”
He’s thinking about losing some weight, maybe. “I’ll have to get some tips from McConaughey about how to shed it all,” he says. “By the time I met him, he’d already put on I don’t know how many pounds. And he still looked like my pinky finger.”
He’s been getting a lot of texts about his character. “My favorite is from someone I hadn’t talked to in a while that just said, SPAGHETTI??? With, like, six or seven question marks.”
**He casually goes to museums. ** If there wasn’t anything to do in New Orleans, he’d go to the “World War II museum on a rainy day.” Or try out a good Sazerac, or beignet.
**He entered his fifth-grade talent show. His talent was Jimmy Carter impressions. **“And Kermit the Frog, and Popeye.”
He had the earliest, most brutal call times. Thinking 3:45 a.m. couldn’t be topped, one day he was called in at 2:30 a.m., for four to six hours getting scarfaced in the makeup chair. One day they reclined him all the way back, and he thought he could sneak in a little sleep—until the makeup artist said, “Ok, now our assistant here is going to hold your eyes open while we put in a bunch of eye-aging drops . . .”
So yeah! Glenn Fleshler is a really great, totally unscary guy who likes books and the occasional whiskey co*cktail. But one thing that really is scary about him, a thing he totally has in common with Errol Childress:
He is quite excellent at throwing an ax. “The stunt-guy was pret-ty impressed with my ax-throwing. I think ‘cause I did a little pitching when I was younger. Not to destroy the illusion, but they basically put an X on a piece of fabric and I had to hit that X. And I nailed it every time. So, I felt pretty good about that.”
Yikes.
