Asa Butterfield Learned to Play Bass from Alex Wolff for New Movie: ‘He Took Me Under His Wing’
April 27, 2018Life imitated art for Asa Butterfield and Alex Wolff in their new movie The House of Tomorrow.
The film tells the story of an outcast teen named Sebastian, played by Butterfield, who befriends a young, budding punk rocker named Jared, played Wolff.
Just like their onscreen counterparts, Wolff and Butterfield developed a student-teacher relationship when it came to learning to play their instruments.
“I taught Asa bass, so all the scenes with music, all of that is live. None of that is with overdubs, none of it is us doing overdubs or another musician, we’re doing it live and on the day.” Wolff, 20, told PEOPLE now. The former Nickelodeon star has previously showed off his musical chops on the comedy series The Naked Brothers Band.
Alex Wolff (L) and Asa Butterfield.
Astrid Stawiarz/Getty
“I’ve always wanted to learn bass,” said Butterfield, 21. “I always looked at bass guitar players as the cool one in the band, so I was well up for it. But Alex is an amazing musician, he can play pretty much anything.
“He just took me under his wing and pretty much from day one we spent all our free time either listening to punk music or playing music and writing songs.”
In order to get ready for the film’s big concert scene, the duo even performed a mock show at a real venue. “To prepare for our concert at the end and really get in the spirit of what was going on, we found a club in St. Paul, Minnesota and we went an played a punk show,” Wolff explained.
The House of Tomorrow, also starring Nick Offerman and Fred Armisen, is in theaters now.