Ezra Miller was one of the first people director Mary Harron thought of when she began developing a movie about the latter years of Salvador Dalí nearly a decade ago. She envisioned Miller as the second lead in Dalíland, playing James Linton, a fictionalized young gallery worker who becomes enchanted—and later disillusioned—by his encounters with the aging surrealist. “It was after The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and they were the original choice to play James,” Harron recalls. “They were very interested.” (Miller identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.)

But there was a problem, even back then. “At that point, the producers and everyone were saying, ‘Well, you can’t cast them because they’re not a big enough star,’” says Harron, the filmmaker behind American Psycho and I Shot Andy Warhol. “And then a year later they were too big a star and had to drop out because they got Fantastic Beasts, and then later got The Flash.”

Oscar winner Ben Kingsley joined Dalíland in the lead role as the older Dalí, who’s trying to maintain creative and social relevance in 1970s New York as a radically changing world threatens to outpace his ability to shock. Christopher Briney, currently costarring as the heartthrob Conrad in The Summer I Turned Pretty, took on the role of his naive young admirer, James. But Harron was determined to keep Miller involved.

“I thought it’s a shame because they’re such a good actor. What about getting them to play young Salvador Dalí?” she told Vanity Fair. “It doesn’t matter how busy they are. We can consolidate [the scenes] and shoot them in one week,” she says. Miller’s offbeat energy seemed like a plus. “Whoever plays young Dalí, they have to be the young Ben Kingsley,” Harron says. “And one thing about Ben is there is a tremendous focus and intensity.”

Miller maintained ties to Dalíland even when things threatened to fall apart. “They stayed very loyal to the project for years, even when other people dropped out right and left because of schedule changes and the pandemic,” Harron says.

Now Dalíland is finished and headed to theaters, making its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival as the closing-night movie on September 17. But there are new problems concerning Miller, who has been arrested in Hawaii twice in recent months while engaging in chaotic or menacing behavior, and was charged with felony burglary in Vermont. Other disturbing accounts have also surfaced, among them accusations of inappropriate relationships and claims of cult-like manipulation.

Two weeks ago, the 29-year-old announced publicly that they are now getting help for “complex mental health issues.” “I want to apologize to everyone that I have alarmed and upset with my past behavior,” Miller said in a statement.

About a week before Miller released their statement, Dalíland’s TIFF announcement went wide—and Miller’s name was conspicuously left off the cast list. Many of the headlines about Dalíland’s closing-night status were about this omission, which generated erroneous speculation that Miller had been cut from the film. 

Miller is indeed in the film as young Dalí, Harron says: “They turned in a completely realized performance. They were very professional and nice to everybody. There was no trouble or a sign of trouble on set. So it was very upsetting and terrible to read what happened later. Reading this stuff was very sad—very sad for everybody involved. Hopefully they are getting help for what sounds like a very, very serious break.”

By the time the extent of Miller’s behavior was made public, it would have been difficult to remove the actor from the project, even if Harron had wanted to. “The film was completely finished and wrapped,” she says. “It might have been different, especially if we were shooting, if there had been bad behavior during that. But this all happened after the film was not only filmed, but edited and mixed and done. I also felt like everybody shot all those things in good faith. Nothing bad happened during our filming, and the film is the film.”

She adds, “I’m not condoning anything they’ve done wrong. I think it doesn't matter how talented someone is, if they’ve done anything wrong, they have to face it. I also think that clearly this is not just a young star acting out. This is much more serious. This seems like something that needs a serious intervention, which I hope has happened.”

While Ezra Miller’s presence in Dalíland threatened to upstage the film, their role is colorful but brief—essentially three sequences. Kingsley is the central focus, viewed through the lens of normal, quiet James, who admires the painter and his larger-than-life persona but is unsettled to discover the frail, sometimes desperate human being clawing for relevance behind the artist’s iconic glaring eyes and pointed mustache.

For Kingsley, the role was a chance to be untamed. “I had in my mind, to myself, ‘You cannot be a careful actor. You have to take risks,’” says Kingsley. “My leap had to be one that stepped away from the years of study of Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter, of classical acting, of the precision of performing as Itzhak Stern in Schindler’s List and other characters.” Restrained is the one thing Dalí was not. Even when he was frightened—of death, of irrelevance, of the tremors in his hands—he was wildly frightened.

Harron says other artists noted him as someone who bridged both tradition and change. “I didn’t want to put Warhol in as a character, because I’ve done a film about him already, but Warhol said in his diaries about Salvador Dalí that he was both more old-fashioned than any of us and more advanced than any of us,” Harron says. “More of the future, and more of the past, which I thought was interesting.”

Dalíland suggests the artist sometimes became trapped in this liminal space, unsure where he stood. If the performance transfixes audiences, Kingsley could find himself with a fifth Oscar nomination. He won in 1983 for Ghandi, and was nominated for Bugsy, Sexy Beast, and House of Sand and Fog.  

“This was not an academic starting point, not a historical starting point, but more a starting point based on his language; his behavior; his taste in love, life, food, wine, and everything; and also his daring to break so many rules,” Kingsley says. “I think of the trapeze artist swinging from one trapeze to the other, and that triple somersault in midair is what the audience needs to watch. We do not need to watch the trapeze artists swinging and holding on to the trapeze.”

If the character of Dalí has a safety net, it’s the coterie of admirers, patrons, and sometimes parasites who surround him in 1970s New York. He struggles to create, he strains to pay for his lavish lifestyle, but he feeds off the energy, vitality, and sexuality of his acolytes and muses.

Among them is Amanda Lear, a real-life singer, model, and author who became one of his closest companions during this era. Mears is played by Andreja Pejic, who captures Lear’s famously gender-defying beauty and tender friendship with the increasingly frail Dalí. Pejic is a trans actress, but the real-life Lear has denied reports that she is trans herself, despite several investigative reports over the years that have stated the contrary. Nevertheless, she has remained a trans icon for decades. Dalíland addresses her fluid style, but doesn’t declare anything definitive about Lear. “We don’t say it’s fact; we say it’s rumored,” says Harron. “She’s never said that she was, so we have to put a question mark over it.” 

Kingsley theorizes that Dalí was drawn to those who shaped their own distinct identities, defying convention to live freely as themselves. That meant they would be more accepting of him, flaws and all. “I would guess that perhaps Dalí adored being with people with whom he could completely be himself,” the actor says. “We all have versions of ourselves, and when we’re with different people we are slightly different versions of ourselves. I think that he loved being his version of Dalí with her, with Amanda.” He called the performance “a duet with dear Andreja. We had a sublime working relationship.”

His other “duet” was with Dalí’s wife Gala (Barbara Sukowa), his financial protector who shares his fear of aging. She carries on a public affair with a young Broadway star and clashes viciously with her husband at times. “Mary Harron has a perfect pitch for harmony in her casting and harmony in performance,” Kingsley says. “She allowed people to harmonize together, even if it was a brittle moment of violence. Even when I’m spitting venom at Gala, it is still a duet. Duets don’t have to be nice.”

And what was his experience with Miller? Even though they play the same character at different points of life, Kingsley sometimes appears in Miller’s scenes as older Dalí, watching the memories of his younger self. “We share scenes, but we don’t actually interact,” Kingsley says. “I found that he was completely immersed in the process of young Dalí, surrendering his soul for life to another. There is a scene where he speaks and I mouth his words as a recollection.”

Kingsley also described this moment as “a duet,” and said there were no problems. “Whenever I describe working with a fellow actor as a duet, it means it’s probably 10 out of 10,” he says.

For Briney, a recent acting-school graduate getting his first big-screen role, Dalíland’s story of James and Salvador mirrored his experience with Kingsley—awe threaded with terror. “There was a lot to freak out about,” Briney says. “I mean, the first take we did on set, I was standing next to him, and I really think you can see me shaking in the final cut because I’d never…I didn’t know what I was doing.”

So Briney did what they teach you in acting school: He used it. “ I don’t know how you’re supposed to act around a legend. How does James act around Dalí? What do you say? What do you do?” he says. “I guess you just do your work at the end of the day.”

The real Dalí’s work hangs in museums around the world, while also adorning countless bedrooms and dormitories as posters and prints. For young minds, Dalí’s art has always been an avenue to the impossible for those who feel buttoned-up or hopelessly constrained. Briney’s character of James Linton is an amalgamation of various young men from Dalí’s orbit who were looking for a way to escape his crushing normalcy. “Contrary to James, Dalí just is one of a kind and was one of a kind as a real person,” Briney says. “He just existed on this sort of transcendental plane that is untouchable.”

From the Archive: The Last Days of Dalí

James strikes up what at first seems like a typical romance with one of Dalí’s alluring followers, Ginesta (Suki Waterhouse), who is intrigued by the high-strung young man. In one scene, he returns to the bedroom they share and finds her with another man. James’s impulsive reaction is what you’d expect: a flare of jealousy, hurt, and anger. Then Ginesta surprises him—by reaching out her hand. And he surprises himself—by taking it and joining them. Suddenly, James becomes aware that the rules and expectations he has set for himself are breakable too.

“That’s a great moment of the real world and Dalí’s world intersecting, and James taking the leap of faith to just be like, ‘Fuck it,’ right? ‘I’m in Dalí’s world now, so let me be a part of this,’” Briney says. “I could go on about James’s misgivings about it and his insecurities about it. But I think the choice in itself is just to be a part of that world and to have that memory. He wants to explore.”

Briney also met Miller during the production, and discussed the role that was once meant for them. “I did have some encounters with Ezra. And I can’t speak to the controversy and all that. I just don’t know what to say, and I don’t have a broad enough perspective on the situation. But they were there my first two days on set, and I will say they were really, incredibly warm to me and very welcoming,” Briney says. “On my very first day on any professional set, Ezra spent their entire lunch just chatting with me about acting and their start.

“At the time, it meant a lot to me to be able to sit there with someone, again, who I’d seen in We Need to Talk About Kevin and ‘Yada Yada.’ It just meant a lot to sort of humanize the situation I was in. Ezra was gracious and willing to talk to me. Again, I can’t speak to the broader picture of all the things going on, but they were wonderful to me.”