JAVIER BARDEM, AMY ADAMS AND PATRICK WILSON TALK 'CAPE FEAR' REMAKE
See more Toronto Sun on Google — save as a Preferred Source
Robert De Niro’s iconic villain Max Cady might have scared most moviegoers when Cape Fear was released in 1991. But Javier Bardem remembers watching his menacing portrayal of a murderous convict hell-bent on revenge and having one thought: “I want to be like him.”
“It was a joy. I was in my early 20s,” Bardem, 57, recalls of his first experience watching the thriller at the cinema in his native Spain. “You’re going to laugh at this, but it’s true. I found Robert De Niro so sexy. Like a sexual beast. The scene with Juliette Lewis and De Niro is iconic. That’s for the rest of movie history. To see that on the big screen, made me think, ‘What just happened in front of my eyes?’ It’s iconic.”
Bardem takes on the terrifying screen baddie in a new version on Apple TV that co-stars Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson as Anna and Tom Bowden, two lawyers who helped put Cady away for murdering his pregnant wife.
Newly released from prison after fresh evidence exonerates him of the crime, Cady returns into the lives of the well-to-do Bowdens (who were played by Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange and Juliette Lewis in the 1991 film) in Savannah, Ga., seeking revenge.
“You deserve a good life. I had a good life,” Cady chillingly warns the couple early on.
“I think there’s a whole new generation that haven’t seen Martin Scorsese’s movie” or the Robert Mitchum-led 1962 version, Bardem says. Updating the story, which is based on the 1957 book The Executioners by John D. MacDonald, for today’s audience allows showrunner Nick Antosca to tap into modern-day fears.
“It opens it up to different themes because we have more time. That makes it very rich in many aspects,” Bardem continues.
“The way that the series approaches different social issues and uses technology shows how one can invade someone else’s privacy and get inside of their life,” Adams says.
“Doing it as a 10-part series with Apple enables you to not only go a little deeper on a story level, but I think it lets the audience dig into something,” Wilson adds.
Like Presumed Innocent , Apple’s small-screen adaptation of the 1990 thriller that starred Harrison Ford, viewers will get to see something familiar from having seen the movie, but this Cape Fear is something altogether different.
The Bowdens are slowly unravelled by a seductive depiction of Cady, who might not be as guilty as he wants everyone to believe.
As Max becomes a media darling after his release from prison, the Bowdens’ possible culpability in his conviction starts to surface. No one is as innocent as they seem.
“That’s an exciting way to tell this story,” Wilson says.
Mad about Max
Played by Mitchum and De Niro, Max Cady has been named among the Top 50 greatest villains of all time by the American Film Institute. So Bardem was careful not to do an impression of either actor.
“I tried to bring … the game into it where you don’t know exactly what he’s doing and you don’t know if he’s telling the truth,” Bardem says. “I felt I was playing someone who was not afraid of losing anything because he lost it all. That gave me a lot of freedom to try different things.”
After inhabiting a memorable Bond villain (Raoul Silva in 2012’s Skyfall ) and earning an Oscar for his threatening rendering of Anton Chighur, the lethal killer at the centre of the Coen brothers’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men , Bardem says his Max is a different kind of outlaw from any other that he’s played in his 30-plus-year career as an actor.
“Max is more of a broken man. He’s a man with a lot of pain. Those two other people weren’t like that,” Bardem says.
Still teens when the 1991 film came out, Adams and Wilson said Scorsese’s Cape Fear changed how they looked at movies.
“I had just graduated high school and I was just starting my journey as an actor,” Wilson recalls. “I loved The Untouchables . So to see De Niro’s transformation five years later was huge for me. Also, it was a bold movie … Scorsese took some big swings.”
Adams, who has been nominated for an Oscar six times, says the film was impactful in the way that screenwriter Wesley Strick was able to use anxiety to take an audience on a roller-coaster journey.
“It was scarring for me,” she laughs. “But it really stayed with you.”
The movies that made them
Collectively, the trio have all built their careers by being unafraid to take risks. Cape Fear is no different.
The movie is a classic thriller and there is always a gamble when you are stepping into the shoes of three legendary actors.
Adams’ career started off promisingly enough with a part in Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can in 2002. But she didn’t take off until she appeared in the 2005 indie dramedy Junebug , which netted her an Oscar nom.
Now one of Hollywood’s most bankable actresses, Adams cites Olivia Newton-John in Grease and Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth as the two roles that impacted her the most.
“I saw Olivia Newton-John in Grease and said, ‘ I want to do that.’ She came out and I thought, ‘That’s what a woman is; that’s what I want,’ ” Adams says. “But when I saw Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth , I thought, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ That was the bar I set for myself, and I still set that bar for myself.”
Wilson, who gained worldwide fame thanks to his role as paranormal investigator Ed Warren in The Conjuring films , says he took inspiration from Michael Keaton’s career when he was first eyeing a career as an actor.
“By the time I got into school, I was looking at Michael Keaton and the run he had there in the late ’80s. I don’t think anybody had the diversity and versatility in the studio system as a lead actor that Michael Keaton had. To go from Gung Ho to Clean and Sober to Batman to Pacific Heights … It was like, ‘How are you able to do all this?’ That versatility was something I really strove for. Not the same sort of career, but that versatility. Can I do that?”
Already having enthused about De Niro, Bardem namechecks Al Pacino’s breakthrough role as Michael Corleone in TheGodfather Part II .
“How did he do that? He was so young, but in control and deep and profound,” Bardem says. “It was so beautiful to look at.”
Adams and Wilson break into laughter. “There he goes again,” the both say in unison.
“What can I say. I love Pacino and De Niro,” Bardem laughs. “I have a crush on them both.”
Cape Fear is now streaming on Apple TV .
2026-06-13T14:24:17Z
