Lisey's Story's Dane DeHaan reveals he, too, was a victim of the "'90s yo-yo craze"
Dane DeHaan admits he has a muscle memory for yo-yo tricks, and discusses the creation of his unsettling villain
TV Features Lisey's Story
Up until the AppleTV+ series’ most recent episode, Dane DeHaan’s Jim Dooley has been a menacing presence largely lingering on the outskirts of Lisey’s Story. A superfan of the late author Scott Langdon (Clive Owen), Dooley shares DNA with another Stephen King creation, Misery’s Annie Wilkes, as the two clearly feel a sense of ownership over their favorite writers’ work and will stop at nothing to access it. In “Jim Dandy,” that dark, unfettered fandom leads to Dooley’s most brutal confrontation with Lisey (Julianne Moore) yet, beating and berating Langdon’s widow until she tells him the whereabouts of the authors unpublished work that may or may not exist.
Dooley is a thoroughly unsettling villain, and DeHaan, King, and series director Pablo Larraín paint him as id personified, juvenilizing Jim through distinctive characteristics: The big yellow coat, the wild temper, and—most notably—the yo-yo. It’s that yo-yo that has The A.V. Club most intrigued, so we spoke with DeHaan about it, and here’s what he had to say about having to brush up on his yo-yo skills for filming:
I was certainly a victim of the ‘90s yo-yo craze. I definitely had a lot of yo-yos at one point in my life… but they did hire this professional yo-yo-er to teach me some other stuff, but—when we got to working together—he felt like the yo-yo they were giving me for the show, [laughs]—it really was from a cereal box, you know? And he was just like, “there’s not much you can do with this thing,” because he has these crazy yo-yos that you spin for minutes at a time. So, aside from “Walk The Dog” and “Rock The Cradle,” which I still kind of had muscle memory [of,] there wasn’t too much more to learn.
In the video above, DeHaan further discusses the creation of the character—one that differs from its inspiration in the novel—and the privilege of collaborating with King and Larraín.
New episodes of Lisey’s Story stream exclusively on AppleTV+ every Friday
Image Credit: AppleTV+
7 Comments
I must have been living under a mound of hacky-sacks, seeing by the light of indiglo watches, in the 90s, as I hadn’t been aware of the yo-yo craze.The phrase “Professional Yo-Yo” just has so much nuance and doesn’t even sound crude!
Hahaha agreed. I do think the whole “yo-yo” thing was more late ‘90s, turn-of-the-millennium. I’m a few years younger than DeHaan, but I remember flashy, light-up yo-yos that could do advanced tricks were like THE toy to have when i was in middle school, which was more like ‘00-’03.
Here Cameron: have some nostalgia:Great. Now I’ve got to dig mine outta storage.
Oh my gosh, thank you!!! Haha this is truly transportive
Down Under, in the late nineties, that was the yoyo to have……or not.Out on the playground, provided we remembered our hats, the war raged eternal between the Yomega Brain, and the Gold Atom 7000, made by Aussie toy company Moose.The Gold Atom 7000. This touches off a very specific nostalgia in me.Which, I was saddened and pissed-off to learn when researching this post (ie, about 20 seconds ago), was functionally identically to their Silver Bullet 6000 despite being like three bucks more expensive, but 12-year-olds are not savvy consumers and easily swayed by cheap marketing gimmicks like gold instead of silver and a large number.PICTURED: The povvo choice.And therein lies the rub. The Atom and the Brain cost about the same – I think the Brain was $21, and the Atom was about the same, but which to buy?
(The Bullet was like $17, but no one wanted that. Forego a few packs of Twisties after school and save up.)The clapper board. Feature films. Stump-Jump ploughs. The goon sack. Wifi. The Daddoes. And Twisties. Great Aussie inventions, every one.One or the put you in a very specific faction, as these things are wont to do. Sure, there was base functionality – the Atom was a classic freespin yoyo, traditional, where you had to do that thing where you wound the string around your fingertip three times before winding it down normally. Which you were guaranteed to have to do if you forget to jerk it back up.The Brain had that clutch, which made everything easier, had that cool techy Y2K see-through thing to show off its shiny balls, clever engineering, but limited with what sort of tricks you could – plus it carried the same stigma of being one of those people who can’t drive a manual car.
But engineering is boring, and it’s the social implications wherein the real interest and drama lay.It was Sega vs Nintendo, Holden vs Ford, Limp Bizkit vs people with taste. It drew a line, and placed you firmly on one side or the other, based on what brand of stringed toy you used.(Except Adam Watson, the rich little shit, who had both.)The implications of being either a Brain or an Atom guy are long forgotten, but I’m sure they were important at the time. I had a Brain, by the way. My brother had an Atom. Is it is his painful cow of a wife, or perhap deeper, yo-yo-based faultlines sewn decades before in primary school?Such mysteries, perhaps, will never be solved.But it’s probably his wife.
So King’s next villain was really into Jamz and slap bracelets?Not having read the book, I was hoping he would get into the differences and the inspirations. The solo headbanging reminds me of Trump apologist John Maus which is surprisingly apt really. Also, in this and “Killing of a Sacred Deer” it’s always nice shorthand to villainy to have the guy eat in a gross way. I really am wanting some more backstory on Dooley, aside from all the external tics, interesting choice of weapon (pizza pizza), etc.
For all the jokes people make about Dehaan and his Green Goblin, or his Valerian, he fucking kills it in ZeroZeroZero.