Barry Pepper of ‘True Grit' plays characters in Sooner settings

Indian Territory is the setting for “Lucky” Ned Pepper's galloping shoot-out with Marshal “Rooster” Cogburn, but the actor who played the outlaw didn't set foot in the real Oklahoma until six months after filming had wrapped on the Coen brothers' remake of “True Grit” in April 2010.

Canadian-born film star Barry Pepper (no relation to “Lucky” Ned) finally arrived in the real red dirt state for the first time in October to work on a new film set in present-day Oklahoma, this time under the direction of Terrence Malick.

“Yeah, I was just out in those parts in Bartlesville,” Pepper said in a recent phone interview promoting the DVD/Blu-ray release of the Coens' “True Grit.”

“I loved it. It was an absolutely beautiful, picturesque little town, and it was my first time in Oklahoma, and I loved every minute of it. I think it didn't hurt that I was there working with Terrence Malick. That always makes for a very enjoyable experience.”

However, Malick — best known for such highly-praised films as “Badlands,” “Days of Heaven” and “The Thin Red Line” — maintained a closed set while filming the still untitled movie starring Ben Affleck, Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz, and has kept the nature of its storyline a secret from the press and even from some of his actors.

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“I was never given a script, so I don't know the story,” Pepper said. “Terry works in a very unique way in that he only gives you what you need to know in terms of characters that you're not aware of and don't cross paths with in the course of the film's storyline. ... I really, honestly couldn't tell you outside of the basic idea, the genre of it, being a love story that follows Ben Affleck's character. My character in the film never meets Ben Affleck's character, so it's not really important that you know of their existence or their storyline.”

Pepper's experience working with writers/directors Joel and Ethan Coen was quite the opposite. Armed with a complete script and having read the novel by Charles Portis at the outset, the actor knew all about “Lucky” Ned Pepper and the rest of the characters who populate “True Grit.”

“I had never read the book nor had I seen the original Henry Hathaway version of ‘True Grit,'” he said of the 1969 film starring John Wayne in the “Rooster” role and Robert Duvall as “Lucky” Ned. “I watched it after I had read the Coen brothers screenplay and formulated a character for them based on reading the novel and their screenplay.”

Locations around Granger and Austin, Texas and Santa Fe, N.M., stood in for the 19th century wilderness of what is now the Sooner State, where the Coens filmed their faithful adaptation of Portis' book about Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), a 14-year-old girl out to capture Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man who shot and killed her father for two gold pieces. She enlists the help of hard-bitten, hard-drinking U.S. Marshal Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to help her track Chaney into Indian Territory, where he is believed to have rejoined Ned Pepper's gang of killer outlaws.

Although little is disclosed in the film about Ned's past, Barry Pepper found all the backstory he needed in Portis' novel.

“That informs the design of the character,” he said. “And what I loved was that Rooster and Lucky Ned were nemeses with a history, and that a year before our film takes place they crossed paths and had a dustup. Rooster shot Ned in the face, in the mouth. And that's really where I started.”

Even though a scar above Ned's lip, broken teeth and a partially locked jaw would never be explained in the film, the Coen brothers agreed to hire a special prosthetics artist to apply the facial characteristics the actor desired, to achieve the transformation he'd envisioned. In the end, Pepper was glad he waited until after the Coens' project was finished to go back and observe Robert Duvall's interpretation of Lucky Ned Pepper in the 1969 version of “True Grit.”

“I'm such a huge admirer of his that I could have easily fallen into an impression by the way of homage,” he said. “I called Bob and thanked him, to basically just let him know what an honor it was to reprise a role that he'd originated.”