Leo Woodall and Havana Rose Liu talk new thriller 'Tuner'

Interview with the stars of 'Tuner'

Good Day Atlanta's Paul Milliken interviews Leo Woodall and Havana Rose Liu, who star in the new thriller "Tuner," which opens this weekend in Atlanta. 

ATLANTA - Leo Woodall tunes pianos, cracks safes, and banters with an Oscar-winning legend in the new thriller "Tuner."

"Tuner" — which opens in Atlanta theatres on Friday, May 29th from Black Bear — centers on a piano tuner with a rare hearing condition that inadvertently makes him adept at cracking safes. Those skills have him falling in with a group of criminals at precisely the same time he begins falling in love with a music student, played by Havana Rose Liu.

Both Woodall and Liu are required to play piano in the film — which meant mastering not just the movement of their hands, but also the "piano face" of an artist lost in music.

"I actually did watch a lot of pianists, and everyone has such a different way of expressing it," says Liu. "But I felt like the biggest takeaway was, basically, feeling the piece. Like, ‘piano face’ is just deeply feeling the piece."

"Tuner" co-stars two-time Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman as Woodall’s friend and mentor — and it turns out much of the banter between the two actors came directly from them.

"Bro, that was all improvised," laughs Woodall. "And I give all credit to Dustin, because I went into it on a particular day when it was just the two of us in a van, with this much dialogue in the script. And I didn’t know that we were going to end up doing these 25-minute takes, just fully riffing! Had I known that…my angst would have been even higher!"

"Tuner" is the first narrative feature from director Daniel Roher, who previously won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for "Navalny." For more information on the film, click here.