This image released by IFC Films shows Kyle MacLachlan in a scene from “Tesla.”

This image released by IFC Films shows Ethan Hawke in a scene from “Tesla.”

This image released by IFC Films shows Ethan Hawke in a scene from “Tesla.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Ethan Hawke has portrayed several real people in recent years, including musician Chet Baker and abolitionist John Brown, but his new role as pioneering inventor and engineer Nikola Tesla presented the challenge of playing a genius. In the new independent film “Tesla” by writer-director Michael Almereyda, Hawke shines light on the Serbian immigrant’s many theories and inventions.

Hawke plays Tesla as an outsider with a brilliant mind who has visions of the future, including wireless communications systems. Kyle MacLachlan plays charismatic Thomas Edison and Almereyda imagines the two as competitors chasing investors and ideas.

This is the third time the actors have worked together and in a recent interview with The Associated Press, it was clear they have an easy rapport, full of mutual respect and teasing.

AP: How did you approach playing a genius?

Hawke: I’ve met a handful of people that were truly brilliant in my life. My father, Tom Stoppard, a few people whose brain doesn’t work like other peoples’ and they’re just unique people. They’re distant. So I just wanted him not to be average. I wanted him not to speak in a way that was normal. I wanted him not to walk in a way that was normal and to wear his hair in a way that was normal and everything that he had any agency in, any choice he had, it was something he created.

MacLachlan: The challenge, I think, is finding the person, the human, the frailties, you know? As you go through these guys…the thing that I think that I respond to most — I’m thinking of (director) David Lynch now — is the absolute commitment to the artistic process, particularly in David’s case. If I’m working on a character or I’ve got a role to do, a job, you’re very committed. But during the rest of the time, I’m off just kind of messing around, I don’t know, making dinner. You know what? Edison’s not making dinner somewhere! You know what I mean? He’s constantly thinking. Almost, I wonder if he’s at the mercy of this mind and would he like to get off the treadmill? I don’t know.