“The policeman is completely helpless,” says Lily the sheep (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) in The Sheep Detectives. “We need to help him.”
The sheep defy assumptions that they’re the dumbest animals on the farm as they set out to solve the murder of their beloved shepherd, George (Hugh Jackman). However, the flock underestimates the town’s seemingly clueless policeman, Tim (Nicholas Braun), too. Much like the fluffy farm animals, Tim proves he’s smarter than the herd gives him credit for being. With a little help from the sheep and some keen sleuthing inspired by paperback fiction, Tim rises to the challenge of finding out which of his neighbours in the quaint English town snuffed out George.
“He’s a really endearing character. He’s very lonely, and trying to give himself confidence,” says Braun. The actor, speaking with That Shelf in Toronto ahead of The Sheep Detective’s theatrical run, says he really admires the arc of this humble character. “Tim doesn’t get any respect or any encouragement from the town, so I felt like that was really identifiable, really relatable for people.”
As Tim and the sheep embark on their semi-connected investigations, Tim refocuses his place in the community. He’s kind of a bumbling joke when he first appears. Not quite cut out for detective ranking, his forte involves issuing parking tickets and saving cats. He’s out of his depths with a murder, and the townspeople, all of whom are suspects, use his apparent simplicity to their advantage.
“He’s brought into a community and he really comes out of his shell and kills it at the end of the movie, no pun intended, but has that big speech in the middle of the town and gets to show everyone, ‘I’m meant to do this job. I’m good enough for this job.’ And that’s a beautiful arc,” Braun adds. “The A to B of this story for this character is amazing. There’s so much for me to do as an actor, so much for me to find all the little levels.” Braun points out that as the sheep gently nudge clues Tim’s way, including pushing a “how to” book into his path or dropping clues into his path, the investigation affords Tim a manic spell as he summons his confidence.
“Where’s so many good beats in that journey for him, so there was a lot that got me excited about the character,” says Braun.
As the not-so-helpless policeman hits his stride, Tim learns more about the townspeople and suspected outsiders. The latter includes George’s daughter, Rebecca (Molly Gordon), who mysteriously appears the night before George dies. While the townspeople grow especially wary about Rebecca, Tim’s hunch is that she’s a better romantic interest. His path adds a motive to clear the name of the woman he loves.
At the same time, George’s lawyer, Miss Harbottle (Emma Thompson) provides a perfect foil for Tim. She’s stylish, calm, confident, and eloquent. As the sheep run rampant around the poised Harbottle, Tim goes with the flow of the herd.
Braun says it was great fun to lean into the bursts of physical comedy when The Sheep Detectives allowed. “I love figuring out how to show with your body what you might otherwise be saying with your words,” observes Braun. “I like for my performance, or what a character’s going through, to be visible. Especially when a movie is going to get translated into a hundred languages, I like giving the picture of someone’s emotional state with their body.” Braun captures Tim’s growth from awkwardly clumsy to a worthy equal to Harbottle’s self-assurance.
The contrasts between Braun and Thompson add a spot of fun to The Sheep Detectives. Besides the visually differences—Tim’s country-bumpkin-like air and Harbottle’s over-the-top, sharply defined style—the actors serve as great sparring partners. Braun says it was lots of fun going head to hear with Thompson as Tim followed his clues.
“I loved shooting my scenes with her. She’s an incredible actress, obviously a vet and came to set completely prepared, knew exactly what she wanted to do, was not phoning it in,” he says. “The two characters are such a fun match for each other, and they also have a nice arc together. But sitting across from her, she’s a very present actor. She’s giving you a lot. It’s the best experience when you’re acting to someone who has all their ideas.”
As for the sheep scene partners, Tim shares the screen sparingly with the woolly sleuths, but Braun says the few scenes he had with the sheep revealed a carefully plotted process to create the photo-realistic animals. Braun notes that director Kyle Balda, making his live action debut after animated films like Minions and Despicable Me 3, provided extensive storyboards to give actors a sense of how scenes with the sheep would play out visually.
“We knew what the sheep were going to look like, what their emotions were going to be. There were sometimes stuffed animal versions of them, a stuffed animal head sometimes, and were sometimes cardboard versions that the VFX team would run around the street so that we could see where they’re going,” explains Braun. “There was enough there so we had a sense of what’s going on and maybe a sense of what Lily’s face might look like, what her reaction might be, or what she’s giving to me on the other side of the camera. So there were no sheep on set—never met a single sheep. It was sad. I thought maybe there’d be some sheep in the background, but we were working with our imagination a bit and trusting it was going to turn out really well.”
The flock of The Sheep Detectives also offers a far cry from the dramatic intensity of Braun’s breakout series Succession. The actor says that he sees something of Cousin Greg in Tim, but also likes that the policeman’s arc is totally not Greg-coded by the as Tim ultimately shakes his bumbling ways.
Braun admits that having such a popular character in a hit series can be difficult to navigate, but he’s intentional of his choices in the face of typecasting. “I’m very deliberate about not choosing parts that are Greg. This one probably came to me because it feels Greggy in the beginning of the movie, but I’m looking for ways to break away from that,” says Braun.
That said, the actor completely relates to Tim’s need to prove himself. When asked if he’s ever been in that situation, he just laughs that he’s been living it for the first 26 years of his career. “The difficult part of doing this career is that no matter what stage you’re at, you wish you could be seen and able to do more. When I was younger, in my teens and early 20s and not getting parts that I thought I did a great audition for, or that I should have gotten, you wish somebody could understand that you’re capable,” says Braun.
“Even at this point in my career, I still feel I have things to prove to people. They’d love to give me Greg-like parts, so I have to prove that I can do other things than just play that type of role. You kind of have to just keep pushing against the boundaries and it is hard. It’s always competitive.”
Taking on a family comedy like The Sheep Detectives and giving it a little bite is one way to shear typecasting stigma, but Braun also notes that audiences sometimes just don’t get to see the risks that actors take. See, for example, his bold turn in the 2023 thriller Cat Person, which cast him as an ambiguous love interest in an adaptation of the uncomfortably controversial New Yorker story. His character Robert is either a huge creep or a misunderstood outcast depending upon how one reads the story, but the film got a sliver of the exposure that the story did as a viral sensation. Any expectations that one brings by associating Braun with Greg quickly get blown away.
“Cat Person really was a different kind of character and I was really proud of that movie and that figuring out that relationship. Emilia [Jones] was so good. That was something really different, but that movie came during a Sundance where buyers weren’t really buying and that movie just didn’t get a chance to get out there,” Braun says.
“Everyone who sees Cat Person, I think really responds to it. It’s poignant for our times, and if people saw Cat Person, maybe they would see a different side of me that they haven’t before, but you just can’t count on anything. You just keep working and trying and just pushing forward.”
Those words carry a hint of Tim as the actor keeps proving himself. Fortunately, the amiable Sheep Detectives provides just the right sense of escapism and comic relief to find the audience that a film like Cat Person might not. But equally a chance to stand out from the flock.
