Logan Lerman is all tied up. Literally.
In the delightfully subversive rom-com Oh, Hi! (now in theaters), Logan plays Isaac, who’s on a romantic getaway with Iris (Molly Gordon). It’s an idyllic weekend for the new couple. But after some kinky sex where Isaac gets tied up to the bedposts, he reveals to Iris that he’s not looking for a relationship. That sends Iris into a tailspin, where she decides to leave Isaac restrained and spend the weekend convincing him they’re meant to be together.
Isaac is a very different character for Lerman. And that’s saying something, given he’s made a career out of being unpredictable.
His breakthrough came when he played the titular descendant of a Greek god in Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief in 2010. Since then, he’s portrayed a shy high school student (The Perks of Being A Wallflower), an American soldier (Fury), a university lecturer (Shirley), and a ’70s Nazi hunter (Hunters), to name a few.
“It’s really important to me to explore new characters and not do the same thing,” Lerman told The Daily Beast’s Obsessed in a recent Zoom interview.
Because of his undeniable good looks and charm, Lerman is considered a heartthrob by his fans. (The Daily Beast’s Obsessed once crowned him “The Ultimate Internet Boyfriend.”) It’s no surprise, then, that Lerman often receives scripts for romantic comedies to consider.
“Oftentimes, I’m reading them and they’re fine,” he said. “But I’ve seen them a million times; nothing is surprising about them,” he said. But when Oh, Hi! came around, it shocked me. It’s adding to the genre—it has something to say.”
Oh, Hi! offered Lerman an opportunity to play a new kind of character: a guy who’s kind of an a-----e. As varied as his roles have been, they’re generally united by an underlying gentleness and insecurity that comes across as sweet. Lerman’s aware of the way he’s perceived. Oh, Hi! allowed him to challenge that.
“I’ve never done anything like this,” he said. “As an actor, people view you as the last thing you did, or the project they’re most familiar with. I don’t want to be typecast as one thing.”
Lerman relished playing the unlikable side of Isaac: “Isaac is a bit of a jerk, and it was fun to lean into moments where he’s being more of an a-----e.”
Channeling Isaac’s fear of commitment Oh, Hi! also opened Lerman up to exploring his own dating past. Before he met his now-wife Ana Corrigan, he struggled in the dating scene.
“Playing Isaac was cathartic for me, because I’ve dated people like him,” Lerman said. “I’ve always wondered why they were the way that they were. I’ve racked my brain to figure out why things didn’t work out with people, and I was able to place those things onto Isaac to try and figure out where he’s at.”
It was a challenge for Lerman to find the vulnerability in the kind of guy who takes a girl on a weekend away and pulls out all the romantic stops, only to reel it all back and claim to not want anything serious.
“He’s complicated,” says Lerman. “It was a bit of a tightrope walk with tone and understanding who this character is, what he feels and what he wants, and keeping that consistent throughout the movie.”
“I don’t think he was manipulating Iris in the beginning of the movie, when it’s very couply,” he added. “I think he was genuinely enjoying that. But the minute the idea of a relationship comes up, he freaks out and runs. It’s a common response for a lot of people.”
Lerman developed a backstory for Isaac that involved issues with his parents that helped him understand why Isaac could be perceived as a manipulator. “It was interesting, diving deeper into that and understanding the complexity of being pulled in two different directions. Your natural self is really enjoying being with this person, but your analytical self is like, ‘Nope, it will never work. You can’t do this for whatever reason,’” says Lerman.
So much of acting comes through physical movement, but Lerman faced an even bigger task in Oh, Hi! He had to spend the vast majority of the movie with his hands tied to a headboard and lying in bed naked. And he really was properly restrained the whole time. “I was in bed 80 percent of the time,” says Lerman.
While that might sound extremely uncomfortable, Lerman has a surprising perspective: “I actually really enjoyed it!”
“I’m not running like Tom Cruise through a city, fighting people and s---. This was the most comfy movie I’ve ever made. It was so great on my body.”
