You might know him best from MTV’s hilarious, groundbreaking, and painful show Jackass, with its latest movie receiving the most acclaim the franchise has ever experienced. Millennials may remember his fun little supporting turn in Walking Tall (2004) alongside Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. But more recently, Johnny Knoxville has tackled a role he was perhaps born to play, a dramatic turn with shades of humor and hard R-rated banter about this cruel world we live in.

In Sweet Dreams, a new feature from Paramount and writer-director Lije Sarki (producer on The Peanut Butter Falcon), Knoxville plays a recovering alcoholic who joins a rehab home that the film is named after. We recently caught up with Knoxville and Sarki in a paired interview to learn more about their heartfelt new drama, which features a stellar cast that also includes familiar faces like Bobby Lee, Mohammed Amer, GaTa, and Kate Upton.

Getting the Cast of Sweet Dreams Together
Sweet Dreams (2024) Release Date April 12, 2024 Director Lije Sarki Cast Johnny Knoxville , Mo Amer , GaTa , Bobby Lee , Theo Von , Brian Van Holt , Jonnie Park , Shakewell , Adam Faison , Erik Anthony Gonzalez , Beth Grant , Jay Mohr , Kate Upton Runtime 99 Minutes Distributor(s) Paramount Pictures

Sweet Dreams sheds an important light on the road to recovery for addicts, which usually requires people to find something to fill the void left by the absence of alcohol. The guys living in the Sweet Dreams rehab home find that when they get a softball team together to try and win some dough to prevent their shelter from going under. The spread of gents is an eclectic array of popular names like Jay Mohr (Air), GaTa (Anyone But You), and comedian Theo Von — in addition to Knoxville, of course.

“Johnny exceeded what I thought was possible as far as the cast, really, and I mean that in the most sincere way,” Sarki told MovieWeb. “When I was writing it, I had Theo in mind for Garvey… and there was some other guys attached early on that didn’t end up being able to do the film as well because of schedules and stuff.”

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And that’s when the reliably hilarious Knoxville jumped in while Sarki was speaking, to joke that “Tom Hanks” was one of the actors who was attached early on. Then Sarki continued, regarding the casting process:

“The way it worked out with GaTa playing Jake — like, I thought that was gonna be a surfer, but I just was watching
Dave
[Davionte Ganter, or GaTa] at the time, and I was like, ‘
This guy’s got to be in the movie,’ and I reached out
. So we really did help the cast early on in the process. But yes, it evolved and exceeded the idea of what I had.”

Johnny Knoxville on Being Inspired by Fatherhood and Recovery

In Sweet Dreams, Knoxville plays a struggling dad who is now estranged from his eight-year-old daughter. In real life, Knoxville has kids of his own and even posted on Instagram recently after letting his daughter do his makeup. We were curious if having kids perhaps changed the trajectory of the kinds of films he’d like to do these days. “It hasn’t shifted my focus, but I can definitely draw inspiration, especially in this film, from having two daughters,” he told us, adding:

”
I’m lucky enough to have two daughters and a son
. And [my character] Morris is fighting to get his life back and his daughter back. And my oldest daughter worked on the film, so the scenes with off-screen lines for my daughter in the movie — my daughter Madison would read them.
And then she would just break my heart every time I’d hear her little voice, and it was great to have her there
.”

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Knoxville also described the other real-life inspiration that helped fuel his tremendous performance in Sweet Dreams. “Lije wrote a great script, and I have many people in my life in recovery,” he said. “My father was an alcoholic. I have distracted and overindulged in different periods in my life. So yeah, I spent my lifetime preparing for this role.”

The Bad News Bears Meets Sober Living: Having Fun in Recovery

And as mentioned earlier, Knoxville is perfect for this kind of movie because the themes of recovery are explored in an environment where the guys are having a grand ol’ time. “No one ever makes anything light or fun with this stuff,” Sarki told us. “My experience in the decade-plus of being sober is like, ‘This is fun, or I wouldn’t be doing it,’ you know? This is a good time. I have a big life. I have a lot of friends. It does not have to be this lonely, depressing place.” The director continued:

”
I was picking up a newly sober guy from sober living and taking him surfing
, and ended up writing the movie with him, and it was inspired by him. And I always wanted to make a baseball film, so all these things came into my head at the same time, or just kind of worked out at the same time with this sports/
Bad News Bears
/sober-living situation that was hopefully going to be amusing in an absurd way, but also say something nice about recovery and getting sober that is not often portrayed that way.”

“I saw The Way Back, that Ben Affleck movie. I loved the movie, but at the end, I was like, ‘Doesn’t anybody win at the end anymore?'” continued Sarki. “And it doesn’t portray this great sequence of life events after you hang up the towel from your old addiction into a recovery sort of life. And I was like, ‘Man, people just don’t ever say what it really is,’ you know? At least my experience, or the people that I hang out with — it’s a good time.

So is Sweet Dreams. From Paramount Pictures, Sweet Dreams is now playing in theaters and will be available on digital April 16. You can find showtimes and tickets here.