Tom Hanks Offered Austin Butler a Role Immediately After ‘Elvis’ Out of Concern for His Mental Health

Austin Butler revealed that Tom Hanks was so worried about the young actor’s mental health while playing Elvis that he immediately offered him another role to prevent “emotional whiplash.”

In an interview with The Times of London conducted in April and published on Sunday, Butler revealed (via Variety) how he scored a role in the upcoming Apple TV+ series Masters of the Air. Hanks, who produced Masters alongside Steven Spielberg, became concerned for the young phenom.

“You have immersed yourself so deeply in Elvis that, for your mental health, it would be wise to go straight into something else,” he recalled Hanks warning him. “If you just jump off the train, you might have emotional whiplash…and, you know, I’ve got this thing I’m producing.”

Butler has been open about his method approach to Elvis. The role earned him an Oscar nomination for best actor, but took an unexpected toll on his private life. The actor had “to go to the very edge of what is possible” for Baz Luhrmann’s unconventional biopic.

“Not every experience will be like that,” he admitted. “I don’t think I’ll ever have an experience like that again, but if I have to really dig, it makes me feel alive.”

Butler’s preparation for the role took three years and saw him resort to drinking pints of melted ice cream to gain the necessary weight. Last year, the star admitted to GQ that he fell ill just hours after filming wrapped. “The next day I woke up at four in the morning with excruciating pain, and I was rushed to the hospital. My body just started shutting down the day after I finished Elvis.”

Masters of the Air premieres later this year. It serves as a companion series to the Hanks and Spielberg produced WWII shows Band of Brothers and The Pacific. Butler can next be seen playing the nefarious Feyd-Rautha in Dune: Part II.