KJ Apa Plays Jimmy Stewart and Admits the Odds Were Zero

KJ Apa will receive a Spotlight Award on Oct. 18 at the Newport Beach Film Festival, and his Jimmy Stewart biopic "Jimmy" reaches theaters on Nov. 6. That's the calendar. The more interesting question is how an actor who admits he shares nothing with Stewart got the part at all.

"I don't look anything like him. I don't sound anything like him. I'm not as tall as him," Apa said in a conversation before the film's world premiere at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis. "Like none of it lined up, but by the end of the movie, I was like, 'I have to do it.'"

The movie he rewatched was "It's a Wonderful Life," Frank Capra's 1946 classic. "Jimmy," directed by Aaron Burns, charts Stewart's Hollywood rise and his WWII service — 20 missions flown over Europe as a B-24 bomber pilot, a colonel's rank, involvement in the D-Day invasion. Stewart won his Oscar for "The Philadelphia Story" in 1941, then was drafted. He enlisted rather than leverage his celebrity.

How do you build a voice that iconic?

Stewart's drawl is one of the most imitated sounds in American cinema. Apa's method was repetition with dialect coach Eliza Simpson, whom he'd worked with on a planned Sublime biopic in which he was set to play frontman Bradley Nowell.

"I watched all his films. I would listen to him over and over and over again," Apa said. "You just have to spend a lot of time listening and repeating, listening and repeating."

There was a practical limit, as Apa noted with some candor: "His voice is so specific and iconic. It's not like you could practice by using it when you're at Starbucks."

For the Sublime project, he'd road-tested the accent on strangers. For Stewart, he prepared alone. "I was in no man's land for the duration of the prep. I had not shared it with anyone. I was terrified. My only sounding board was Eliza."

The first day of shooting was, in his word, nerve-wracking. He'd read the online jokes comparing the prospect to an "SNL" skit. "If I look like a fool, I look like a fool. I did my best," he said.

What does the film argue about Stewart?

Apa wants audiences to register the scale of the man's life — decorated actor, then more than two decades of military service, then some 50-plus films after the war. When Stewart returned, Hollywood had largely forgotten him. He considered moving back to Indiana, Pennsylvania, to work in his father's general store. Capra handed him the George Bailey script instead.

"I honestly think 'It's a Wonderful Life' was like therapy for him," Apa said. Stewart's daughter Kelly told him her father came back from the war unsure whether he was "a retired actor or a retired pilot."

Is Apa the singer Mr. Fantasy?

No. Asked directly, Apa said: "I say the truth, which is no. Listen, I wish that I could have the confidence to do what that guy does. I mean, he's just so himself. The energy that guy has!"

He added that Mr. Fantasy — the masked singer whose identity fuels ongoing speculation — "would love this movie because he is such a positive guy and it's a movie that will make you feel good."

What did he say about addiction and recovery?

On Dylan Sprouse's podcast "Wildmen" this summer, Apa discussed his struggles with food, part of a longer openness about addiction and recovery. He said the appearance was unplanned; he'd just dropped his son back at his mother's house and showed up unprepared.

"I felt in that moment like, this is who I am. This is a huge part of who I am," Apa said. "These thoughts that go into an eating disorder or drug addiction or other addictions, they are all part of who I am and have taken up so much of my life."

The response surprised him. "I've had so many people come up to me saying, 'Thanks for sharing that.' I honestly didn't realize that it would have that reaction."

Apa grew up in New Zealand knowing little of old Hollywood, by his own account. On Nov. 6, audiences can judge whether the listening and repeating paid off.