Matthew Lillard on His Heartbreaking Role in Mike Flanagan’s ‘The Life of Chuck’ [June Cover Story]
Matthew Lillard contains multitudes. Across decades, the actor and entrepreneur has needled a distinct tattoo of himself onto the chest of popular culture. His boisterous character work in early films like Hackers, Scream, SLC Punk, and Serial Mom quickly left a permanent imprint on both genre and alternative cinema.
Yet, as his career turned the page toward more mainstream fare, it left no less of a cult residue for generations of weirdos. His perfect casting as Shaggy, the stoner-coded sweetheart of the Scooby-Doo franchise, remains a key figure in the zeitgeist. And Thirteen Ghosts, where he completely steals the show, is a stone-cold horror classic and an all-time personal favorite.
Now, with The Life of Chuck, Mike Flanagan’s latest theatrical adaptation of a Stephen King tale, Lillard embarks on yet another new chapter creatively. The film is a genre-bending story about three chapters in the life of an ordinary man named Charles Krantz. “It’s unlike any movie you’ve ever seen,” Lillard says. “And that’s worth it right there.”
For Dread Central’s June 2025 cover story, I had the good fortune to speak with genre icon Matthew Lillard about his new film, The Life of Chuck. The film hits theaters in select cities this Friday before going nationwide on June 13, 2025.
Though his screen time may seem limited, its impact is anything but. Lillard’s turn in Chuck is unexpectedly heartbreaking. Like the actor himself, the film is uncategorizable. It also features countless unforgettable performances from an ensemble as large as its themes are vast. Still, this is a new light for the class clown of the genre, who now plays a character who crisply punctuates life’s grief, beauty, and absurdity.
“I’ve got this little beautiful part that I love so much,” he tells me, before reflecting on the audience response at the film’s Toronto International Film Festival world premiere last September, where it took home TIFF’s top prize. “The silence that was held in this theater of 2,500 people… it was really magical.”
I was lucky enough to have been in the audience at that premiere, right after a career-defining moment interviewing King and Flanagan on the red carpet minutes earlier. The silence was so absolute that, at first, I was unclear if the audience was on the side of the film. But when the lights came up, I could see that countless audience members were in tears.
Lillard isn’t blind to the reality that The Life of Chuck may struggle to find its place. “It’s so sincere, and people can bristle,” he admits. “It’s different than anything else. It’s no movie you’ve ever seen before.”
But maybe that’s precisely why it matters. In an industry too often fueled by irony or spectacle, Chuck is something stranger, smaller, and, in many ways, braver.
“You’re hoping people love you. You’re hoping people like the movie,” Lillard says, recalling that electric Toronto screening. “You could just feel the weight of the screening. It was like a breathtaking moment to be a part of.”
An exclusive still from The Life of Chuck courtesy of NEON
“The only thing you ever want as any creative in the world is to be wanted and appreciated,” Lillard explains after I ask how his creative relationship with Mike Flanagan began.
“When Mike Flanagan came to me last year and said, ‘You’re in the FlanaFam now,’ it meant everything.”
The two first crossed paths on the set of Five Nights at Freddy’s, where Flanagan was visiting with his kids. “I said, ‘What does that mean?’” Lillard recalls. “And he told me, ‘It means I want to work with you. I’ll come to you with roles. And you can come to me with ideas. I’ll find ways to make it happen.’”
Lillard pauses, visibly emotional as he reflects on the exchange. “I did a good job not breaking down and crying. Just having that moment with him was immensely powerful. As a man, a human being, a father, an artist—all the above.”
Like with Flanagan, his connection to Stephen King also runs deep, in a different sort of way.
“Christine was the first book I ever read for pleasure,” he shares, recalling how his mother would let him pick any book he wanted whenever they visited a bookstore. “She said they were making it into a movie and picked up Christine for me. I remember reading it in the back of the car on vacation—it was a very strange experience.”
Now, nearly four decades later, he is not just within one King adaptation, but starring in two. Following The Life of Chuck, Lillard is set to star in Flanagan’s highly anticipated rework of Carrie as a limited series for Prime Video. “I’ve read the whole story, all eight episodes, and they’re fantastic,” he says. “Mike was waiting for the right way to do it—and what he’s done is the purest form of modernization I’ve ever seen. It takes what our kids are struggling with today and translates it into this iconic piece of literature.”
“We contain multitudes” was first uttered by Walt Whitman, later canonized by King through the novella The Life of Chuck, and now repurposed by Lillard to define not just the characters he’s playing, but the key figures behind his renaissance.
“Both Stephen King and Mike Flanagan are known for these horrific things they create,” says Lillard, and I start to see where we’re headed. “And here, they step aside and show their humanity. The Life of Chuck is a beautiful journey. You can’t contain them in one box—they contain multitudes. And maybe I do too.”
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While promoting The Life of Chuck, Lillard is still living through disaster. In late 2024, catastrophic wildfires tore through his Altadena community. “We had a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of damage,” he says. “We were the first wave of evacuations, and we were lucky. But our community was decimated.”
When asked whether a pivotal scene in Chuck involving the fate of California reminded him of the fires when they occurred, Lillard is blunt: “No, because I was running for my life with my family. When you’re in the middle of that, the only thing you care about is getting your family to safety.”
For the actor, this tragedy is both macro, as his whole community faced it at large, and micro since it affects him and his immediate household directly and personally. “There are tens of thousands of families out there still trying to get the remains of their homes scraped off their land. And we all go on. But they’re still struggling day in and day out just to answer the riddle of where they’re going to stay for the next year.”
“I think that in the world we’re living in right now, it feels untethered, terrifying, and unprecedented,” he says. “My deep hope is that this movie lands. That people find it. Because it has this salve-like quality, you leave the theater having had an emotional experience.”
“There’s a through line in King’s work,” he says. “He writes these incredible stories with incredible heroes. And now I’m lucky enough to be part of that.”
“I think that’s the whole point,” Lillard says. “We contain multitudes.”
The Life of Chuck opens in select cities on June 6 and nationwide on June 13, 2025.
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