An Unbridled Enthusiasm: Talking with Detective Pikachu’s Justice Smith

Detective Pikachu comes out May 10, 2019 and it almost feels weird to be excited about a live action adaptation of a video game. Yet every trailer shows a wonderfully realized world of pocket monsters and every day that passes, the young six year old version of me becomes more and more giddy at the prospect. It certainly helped that we got to talk with the (human) face of the film, Justice Smith a.k.a. Tim Goodman. Black Nerd Problems: A lot of us at Black Nerd Problems were introduced to you as Books in Netflix’s The Get Down and later in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom as Franklin Webb. How excited are you to introduce yourself as Tim Goodman to the rest of the world? Justice: I’m very excited. I was this huge pokemon fan myself and to be a part of something like this, that means so much to so many people. It’s a childhood dream come true you know? It’s great, man. It’s great. BNP: What was your first Pokemon game? Justice: Pokemon Gold for GameBoy Color. But I also had Pokemon Crystal, Pokemon Stadium, Pokemon Snap for N64. BNP: What does the franchise mean to you after being cast? Justice: It meant a lot to me as a kid. It had such a huge impact on me. And after being cast, I learned so much more about Pokemon than I ever thought. And going in, I already knew a lot. I watched the anime, played the games, all that good stuff. But yeah, it’s incredible.

  BNP: What were some of the challenges of filming Detective Pikachu, given the wide range of set pieces and the CGI …