#Claire Danes, Zazie Beetz, Timothy Olyphant Praise Steven Soderbergh’s Directing in ‘Full Circle’: “It Makes Me Rethink the Way Everyone Else Is Doing It”

Claire Danes, Zazie Beetz, Timothy Olyphant, Dennis Quaid and more of the cast of Max’s Full Circle hit the red carpet in New York City on Sunday to celebrate the premiere of their upcoming series.

One thing the entire cast agreed on was how great it was to work with director Steven Soderbergh and how he was a big part of why they wanted to join the thriller in the first place.

“It was really special,” Olyphant told The Hollywood Reporter of working with the Oscar-winning filmmaker on the project that launches July 13. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like him. … I don’t take this lightly, he really just does it in a way that I’ve never seen anyone do it.”

He continued, “Anytime you’re around someone you’re like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know you could do it that way.’ And it makes me rethink the way everyone else is doing it.”

Danes echoed the Justified: City Primeval star’s sentiment, explaining that she also had never worked with anybody like Soderbergh, who she’s been a fan of for quite some time.

“I don’t think he’s made a movie that I haven’t found really compelling and virtuosic. He’s got such a singular signature style, and his process is really unique,” the Fleishman Is in Trouble actress told THR. “It’s fast, almost gestural. It was a little jarring initially because you’re just dropped in, and I felt like I was flailing a little bit, but eventually, I grew to really love the speed with which we worked.”

For Quaid and Jim Gaffigan, all they needed to hear before joining the series was that Soderbergh was the helmer. They didn’t even read the script. As excited as he was to be a part of the project, Gaffigan admitted he was also nervous to work with the director, noting that he knows exactly what he wants.

“The way Steven Soderbergh directs something, the efficiency of it, I think it’s pretty important for morale,” the comedian explained to THR. “Everyone, from the actors to the crew to the craft service, people are like, ‘There’s an efficiency here. I’m not wasting my time.’”

“Every actor, if Steven Soderbergh calls, you wanna work with him because you know it’s gonna be really interesting,” Quaid told THR. “It’s such an incredible, intricate story through families, through America. That’s what Steven does, he makes us look at ourselves.”

When Gaffigan eventually got ahold of the pages, he was even more certain he wanted to be a part of Full Circle because Ed Solomon’s writing went beyond just a thriller, and he created very well-thought-out characters. According to Max, the series follows an investigation into a botched kidnapping that uncovers long-held secrets connecting multiple characters and cultures in present-day New York City.

While Beetz was excited to work with Soderbergh again after starring in his Netflix film High Flying Bird, she was also drawn to the script and the fact that it was a very layered story, in terms of who is good and who is bad, she explained.

“The butterfly effect of our actions and how people who consider themselves to be innocent are not actors in a situation,” she told THR. “All of our decisions do have impact, and so I found that to be an interesting element to the story.”

Actresses Adia and CCH Pounder appreciated how Full Circle brought Guyanese characters to life in its storyline, with Adia noting that it was a challenge to play a character who was of a culture that is not her own but that she was excited to have the opportunity to do so.

“These are people that we don’t see onscreen often, so it was really important for me to make sure I’m representing and doing my very best,” she told THR.

Pounder, on the other hand, is from Guyana, and it meant a lot to her to see a character from her home country portrayed onscreen, saying, “All the years of working I actually never thought that that would happen.”