New Babylon Featurette Highlights the Impressive and Star-Studded Ensemble Cast

In order to authentically replicate a debaucherous time in the infancy of the Hollywood industry, filmmaker Damien Chazelle enlisted one of the most impressive ensembles of the year to star in Babylon, with a new featurette for the film highlighting how even the smallest role featured an immensely talented performer. While Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt are central figures in the overall narrative, virtually every time a new character enters a scene, audiences will be surprised and delighted to see who Chazelle has tapped for such roles, with one performer after the next stealing scenes from one another. Babylon is in theaters now.

The film is described, “From Damien Chazelle, Babylon is an original epic set in 1920s Los Angeles led by Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, and Diego Calva, with an ensemble cast including Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li, and Jean Smart. A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, it traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood.”

The film also stars P.J. Byrne, Lukas Haas, Olivia Hamilton, Tobey Maguire, Max Minghella, Rory Scovel, Katherine Waterston, Flea, Jeff Garlin, Eric Roberts, Ethan Suplee, Samara Weaving, and Olivia Wilde. 

Chazelle’s breakout film came in 2014 with Whiplash, the tale of a hopeful drummer (Miles Teller) under the tutelage of an intense and overbearing instructor (J.K. Simmons). He followed that with the acclaimed La La Land, a project which served as both a love letter and tribute to timeless movie musicals, with that project going on to earn six Academy Awards.  

While that film captured the more romantic elements of Hollywood’s past, Babylon explores an entirely different side of the industry.

“It was really a wild West period for these people, this gallery of characters, as they rise and fall, rise, fall, rise again, fall again,” Chazelle told Vanity Fair earlier this year. “The thing that they’re building is springing back on them and chewing them up.”    

The film might be chronicling fictional figures, but there are various real-life parallels to what the movie-making industry was really like back then. Robbie’s character drew inspiration from Clara Bow, Jeanne Eagels, Joan Crawford, and Alma Rubens, while Pitt’s character was inspired by John Gilbert, Douglas Fairbanks, and Rudolph Valentino.

Babylon is in theaters now.

What did you think of the film? Let us know in the comments!