Eddington Actor Matt Gomez Hidaka on Ari Aster’s COVID-19 Movie

Not many would willingly relive the spring of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was still in its nascent stages and we still disinfected groceries while remaining socially distant in our homes. But, for a chance to act opposite Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal, it was worth it for Matt Gomez Hidaka.

Gomez Hidaka, 27, stars in Midsommar director Ari Aster’s latest movie for A24, Eddington. The film takes place in May 2020 and is set in a small town in New Mexico where the local sheriff (Phoenix) faces off against the mayor (Pascal). The plot has been kept under wraps, but in the trailer for the film, news coverage and social media posts revisit the chaotic pandemic era, from reports tracking the virus’ spread to the rising racial reckoning and protests against police brutality that erupted in the summer. Gomez Hidaka plays the son of Pascal’s mayor.

“When I first found out that this was going to be a COVID piece, I was nervous, because I thought, ‘Are we as a culture ready to witness that?’ It feels so fresh still,” says Gomez Hidaka. “I thought, when I look back in 20 years I feel like this will be a movie that we show our children and say, ‘This is what we lived through.’ It was really exciting to get to be a part of something that could be used to capture a moment.”

For his part, Gomez Hidaka, who is of Dominican and Japanese descent, was still a student at the University of Southern California’s theater school during those early days of the pandemic. He grew up in Chicago and inadvertently found acting at a young age. “When my friends started playing sports, I still wanted to play Pokémon,” he says with a laugh. “My parents were like, ‘OK, well, let’s sign you up for an acting class.’ ” He started after-school performing programs in the third grade that led to joining a youth theater troupe in high school and an eventual move to Los Angeles to attend USC.

After acting in several short films, Gomez Hidaka landed a role on the Apple TV+ series Silo, acting opposite Rebecca Ferguson in two seasons of the dystopic science fiction series. At the top of 2024, he recalls having a prophetic meeting with his manager: “We do this every year where we talk about things I want [for the future]. And I said, ‘I would love to work with Ari Aster.’ ”A month later, he was told that he had secured an audition for Aster’s next project. A few weeks after that, Gomez Hidaka found himself on location with Aster in New Mexico, where production had descended on a town called Truth or Consequences (yes, that’s the town’s real name).

“I truly felt immersed in this whole new environment,” he says of filming in the town with a population of roughly 6,000. He would eat out at local restaurants and hang out with the 20-somethings his own age, going to “bonfire parties” out in the middle of the New Mexico desert.

It was during his first costume fitting that Gomez Hidaka saw the headshots of the actors he would be sharing the screen with — Emma Stone, Austin Butler and Luke Grimes among them. While on set, Gomez Hidaka found himself in the middle of a “master class,” as he puts it. He would sit at the camera monitors with the film’s producers to watch Phoenix, who had developed a rapport with Aster while working on the director’s previous feature, Beau Is Afraid: “The amount of play he had was so admirable, because he is a guy whose craft is so specific, I did not expect him to have so much freedom. It was really inspiring.”

As for finally getting to work with Aster, the actor admits to being apprehensive. “I had spent so long looking up to him, I didn’t want to be disappointed,” he says, adding that he was eventually delighted with Aster’s calming presence. “When he had a note, he would come up, pull you aside so no one could hear, and just talk to you.”

Next up, Gomez Hidaka is set for the indie drama The Wilderness, about teens who attend a wilderness therapy program in Utah’s desert. But before that, he will be heading to France for the premiere of Eddington, which screens in Cannes’ main competition.

“Even though it was such a big movie for me, it really did just feel like such a small bubble,” he says. “It gave me this feeling that there’s no reason to be afraid of the next project, because, at the end of the day, it’s just a bunch of artists getting together to make something cool. That’s a comfort that I’m going to carry with me onto the next thing.”