It’s hard to imagine feeling more isolated making a movie than Jake Gyllenhaal did on Netflix’s The Guilty.
From the moment the Oscar-nominated actor saw the Danish original of the same name at Sundance in 2018, he “just felt in my bones” that the “intense, psychological thriller” would translate to an American context. Gyllenhaal quickly acquired the rights, recruiting True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto as writer and Antoine Fuqua, whom he previously collaborated with on the 2015 boxing drama Southpaw, as director. And then came the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent Hollywood shutdown — but Gyllenhaal soon realized that he actually had the ideal movie to be made during this unique time.
The Guilty takes place completely over one day in a 911 dispatch call center and features the main character, demoted cop-turned-operator Joe Bayler (played by Gyllenhaal), mostly interacting with a deep bench of recognizable actors that both he and the audience hear but never see.
