It’s 9 a.m., during the Toronto International Film Festival, and John Turturro is milling around a hotel meeting room, pastry and coffee in hand. And that’s when it happens. The quintessential and unmistakable New York actor – veteran of Spike Lee and Coen brothers’ films – is overtaken by the biggest, widest, longest yawn I’ve ever seen – and with his hands full, he can’t even cover his mouth. It’s so over the top that I unsuccessfully stifle a laugh just as I am passing by. He laughs too: “I’m sorry for yawning in your face,” he says before surprisingly opening up one arm for a side hug. “I’m doing a play right now in Massachusetts, and I was performing last night before coming here. I’m just exhausted.”

But he gets a second wind as he sits down with me and a dozen or so other journalists to discuss his new film, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (in theatres Oct. 30), alongside the director Noah Segan and costar Giancarlo Esposito, who also starred with Turturro 37 years ago in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. To a new generation, they may be better known as Irving B. from Severance and Moff Gideon from The Mandalorian, respectively – although, to many of us, Turturro will always be Jesus from The Big Lebowski and Esposito remains Gus “The Chicken Man” Fring from Breaking Bad and its prequel Better Call Saul.

In this new film, an old-school crime story, Turturro’s light-fingered protagonist Harry Lehman finds himself in a jam and on a tense adventure that takes him through all five of New York’s boroughs as he comes to terms with how his profession, city and relationships have changed. The quietly powerful performance has earned Turturro Oscar buzz, and is such a perfect fit for the veteran indie movie star that you’d think it was written for him. “It was in my wildest dreams that John Turturro would be in this movie,’ says director Segan (who is also an actor in the Knives Out films). “I thought, ‘We’re gonna make it for eight dollars, and I’m gonna grab a guy on the street, and be like, You’re the pickpocket.’” Nonetheless, he sent the script to both Turturro and Esposito. “I wouldn’t have written this movie if these guys, John and Giancarlo, had not made their movies. I can track the conception of this movie all the way through the beginning of these guys’ careers.”

Joining Turturro, 69, and Esposito, 68, who plays a veteran police officer with a soft spot for Turturro’s character, is Steve Buscemi (as a pawn shop owner), who’s shared the screen with Turturro in the Coen brothers’ films, including Barton Fink, Miller’s Crossing and The Big Lebowski. Into this trio of Hall of Fame character actors and lifelong New Yorkers enters Tatiana Maslany, 41, who plays Harry’s estranged daughter. The actress is decades younger than her co-stars and hails from that way, way outer borough known as Regina, Saskatchewan. During a separate video call with Zoomer, she addressed being the fish out of water on set. “There’s always an element of, like, fraudulence,” says the Emmy Award winner (Orphan Black). “But that’s part of the job.” 

Certainly, Turturro wouldn’t have traded her for a native New Yorker. “We were just really lucky to get her,” he said, and has since compared her favourably to Julianne Moore, Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet and Emily Watson, all of whom he’s worked with. “And she had a great Bronx accent.” High praise, considering Maslany tells me she still has trouble keeping her Saskatchewan accent under control. “I’ve tried to get rid of it, but when I’m nervous, it comes out,” she says. “Or if I’m at home it comes out, or emotional or whatever it is right there. Those parts of us that are true just kind of peek out. And I like it, I love it. But as an actor working in the States, you gotta kill that stuff.”

Remarkably, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York was just the beginning of a beautiful creative collaboration for Turturro and Maslany, who next shot a film together, A Statement (which comes out later this year) by director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent, Spotlight) and spent the fall performing Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist play Rhinoceros, in Cambridge, Mass. – the same play that had Turturro tired out that morning at TIFF. “I don’t know how he did it,” says Maslany, “because if you see his performance on stage, he’s like, so full-bodied, he’s carrying the whole show. He’s throwing himself all around the place, and then he would fly to Toronto, do a film festival appearance, come back and jump right back on stage. I’ve never met anybody who’s that tireless. It’s wild.” This spring, they are launching the play on Broadway – and Maslany is ready to see Turturro’s New York City. “I’m sure he knows all the best places to eat.”

Back at TIFF, Turturro and Esposito were often asked about their hometown, which is its own character in the film. “It is the city that never sleeps and you can never sleep with it,” says Esposito, “or you can get with your program within it. But it’s a cacophony of sound and language and movement. Maybe that’s the best way to describe it, movement. I thought that was beautiful.” Turturro agrees, seeing it as “constantly in flux – I think it’s just full of change. The only constant in that city is change.” And he can even find romance in the petty crime. “I was a bartender, and I used to separate all my tips and put them in different pockets because I knew if I got robbed, with a knife or something, I would just go into one pocket and give a wad of ones with a 10 wrapped around them, or something like that. And that happened to me more than once. But pickpocketing is a non-violent sort of crime. It’s still a violation, but sometimes they put the wallet in the mailbox, and there’s a whole code and stuff.”

Sitting in Toronto, Esposito can’t help but compare the two cities. “Sometimes I feel with all the ‘Can I get you anything?’ and ‘How was your morning?’ like, ‘Just shut the fuck up! I’m a New Yorker!’ It gets to be a lot, you know, every 15 minutes, ‘Would you like some more coffee?’ ‘No, I don’t want any more coffee!’” He gets the laugh and adds, “But then I think it’s a beautiful thing, and it’s really effective. I’ve been here for like three or four days, and I go, you have to get with this Canadian attitude, and you should adopt some of that. Asking people, ‘Are you okay?’ You know, it’s a beautiful thing.” 

In fact, he recently found himself pointing his adult daughters north, as they become more worried about the state of the world. “My kids are like, ‘You’ve got to build a bunker. Everyone else builds a bunker.’ And I said, ‘Those are for millionaires.’ So when they asked, ‘What would we do?’ I said, ‘You go to Canada, even if you have to walk. Bicycle, walk – if you have any gas in the car – just go as far as you can. Get to Canada.”