How ‘The Trainer’ assembled Paris Hilton, Julia Fox, Lenny Kravitz, and more — See a first look (exclusive)

Julia Fox, Lenny Kravitz, Paris Hilton, Bella Thorne, Gina Gershon, Beverly D’Angelo, Gayle King, Finneas O’Connell, Taylour Paige, and John McEnroe are all costarring in a new project together.

Ensembles this sizable and wide-ranging are typically reserved for Avengers movies and Wes Anderson projects (and, now, episodes of The Studio). So it’s surprising to discover that this all-star cast was assembled for an indie movie by two relative Hollywood outsiders: English director Tony Kaye, who has only released a handful of projects since his controversial 1998 feature debut American History X, and co-writer/star Vito Schnabel, who has primarily worked as an art curator and is the son of painter/filmmaker Julian Schnabel.

Their film, The Trainer, seen in Entertainment Weekly‘s exclusive first-look photos, is a tense satirical dramedy that follows personal trainer Jack Flex (Schnabel) as he attempts to convince famed Los Angeles figures — both real and fictional — to invest in his absurd fitness invention, a weighted helmet he dubs “the Heavy Hat.” Jack is ruthlessly determined to share his vision with the world, even if he lacks a coherent plan to ensure its execution, and he spends most of the movie bouncing between chance encounters and ambush meetings with potential investors.

Vito Schnabel in ‘The Trainer’.

Tony Kaye

Schnabel tells EW that he conceived of The Trainer over a decade ago, but envisioned himself as the director, not the star. “Then Tony Kaye showed up on my doorstep through a mutual friend,” the actor/screenwriter says. “He was like, ‘I know you want to direct this movie, but I want to direct it, but the only way I’ll do it is if you play Jack.’ I laughed and I said, ‘You’re out of your mind.'”

Kaye explains that he immediately saw Schnabel’s potential. “He had a character in his mind, and he just played straight into my sensibilities. I hijacked the movie and I said, ‘Look, you have to be an actor,'” the filmmaker tells EW. “I could just see that I could get a movie from this fellow.”

Schnabel was apprehensive about carrying the movie, as his only onscreen experience came in a handful of small supporting roles (Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, Miral, Before Night Falls). “I felt like I had no business even trying to do it, to be honest. I was scared,” he says. “But I wanted to do it. And I felt like maybe I could with Tony.”

Schnabel’s lack of acting experience and his artistic-mindedness from his curatorial career were both valuable assets in Kaye’s mind. “He has this honest ascension to a higher language,” the director explains. “There’s a godlike focus that comes over him, and he goes into a zone, for example, when he looks at a painting or a sculpture, and it’s from another world. He has the gift to transfer that focus onto a written character or an unscripted character, or into a moment with another actor.”

Julia Fox in ‘The Trainer’.

Tony Kaye

Fox plays the film’s second lead, Bee, a receptionist for RVCA who assists Jack in his quest and eventually becomes his love interest. Schnabel has known the Uncut Gems actress since they were teenagers in New York, and her casting came together in a hilariously swift fashion.

As Kaye remembers it, “One day I was doing my old man run around my block. I was running out the driveway of my house, and I called Vito and I said, ‘We’ve got to have Julia Fox.’ I’d literally got 150 yards out of my gate when he called me back and says, ‘Okay, we’ve got Julia Fox. So how are we going to make that movie?'”

To Kaye, Fox possessed an appealing combination of precision and naturalism. “Julia was so professional, so machine-like, so trained and untrained,” he adds. “She and Vito together — they were right for each other and not right for each other. And that was the perfect thing.”

Kravitz, playing a version of himself who’s understandably deterred by Jack’s aggressive persistence, was less easy to pin down. “That almost didn’t happen, but then once he decided to do it, he went all in,” Schnabel says. “We wrote it for him. Since we made this movie during COVID, all of Lenny’s stuff was shot at his house in Eleuthera, because he was getting ready to potentially go on tour, and obviously he didn’t want to get sick.”

Tony Kaye in ‘The Trainer’.

Tony Kaye

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Perhaps the most fitting cameo comes from Hilton, who perfectly embodies the film’s primary thematic fixations: celebrity, entrepreneurship, and the power of the internet. Schnabel says that Hilton was one of the final pieces of the puzzle to click into place, ultimately joining the cast at the last minute. “She is such an incredible phenomenon — what she created and what her personality represents,” he says. “It made total sense that she would be the perfect person to help Jack sell this thing.”

O’Connell, best known for writing and producing music with his sister Billie Eilish, was a particular treat to work with for Kaye. “I’m a student of Finneas and Billie,” the filmmaker says. “I’ve studied their sound and their lyrics, and so to have Finneas as a part of our team was amazing.”

Bella Thorne in ‘The Trainer’.

Tony Kaye

Kaye says that the whole cast gave their all despite short windows of availability. “We got these people in the blinks of an eye, and we had to work very quickly with them,” he says.

Schnabel agrees, expressing his gratitude for the cast accommodating the production’s limited resources. “Nobody got paid a lot of money to be there,” he says. “People came together, and people want to work with Tony. It was such an incredible experience for me, and working with him — it changed my life.”

The Trainer will have its North American premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on June 7.