Ha, Miles Teller got a mountain of (well-deserved) hate for his New York Times interview. I keep telling you, this guy is cocky. He’s the bro who will tell you how great he is, even if it means disrespecting John Cusack’s career (blasphemy!). Anyway, Miles is still promoting Whiplash, which critics keep saying is one of the sleeper awards-bait films this year. Everyone believe JK Simmons is going to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as a maniacal, abusive music instructor. So what did Miles think of the amazing JK Simmons when they first met? Ugh, this kid didn’t even know who he was. Seriously. Some highlights from Miles Teller’s Vulture interview:

Vulture: Have you ever dealt with a director who really got in your head, like J.K.’s character does to you in Whiplash, and tried to screw with you in order to elicit a better performance?
Teller: Yeah, I’ve had directors who think they need to do tricks and manipulate you. I don’t work that way. I’m not a dog — you don’t need to show me something shiny to get me to look up on that line. My favorite directors are people like Damien [Chazelle] who are very collaborative and respect what you do but will give you a different way of thinking about the scene, as opposed to just telling you to squint on a line or move your eyebrows during this word. That kind of micromanaging can get frustrating for me because as an actor, you want to suspend your disbelief. You want to feel like you’re in that moment; you don’t want to remind yourself that it’s fake.

Vulture: Before he got the funding to make Whiplash into a feature film, Damien shot one of the centerpiece scenes as a short film, with J.K. Simmons and another actor in your role. Did you ever watch the short, which was a big film-festival hit?
Teller: They gave it to me, but I did the movie purely based on the script. I knew who J.K. was, but honestly, I knew J.K. because of the Farmers Insurance commercials. Actually, I thought those were for State Farm, and he corrected me, “Those were Farmers Insurance, Miles.”

Vulture: He was also the voice of the yellow M&M, let’s not forget.
Teller: Is he? Good for him, he’s got a great voice. But yeah, they sent me the short film and I didn’t watch it. I didn’t want to see anybody else playing my part. It was the same thing when I did Footloose, I never saw the original film. I just trusted Damien, although I didn’t even meet him for the first time until I’d already signed for it.

Vulture: You and the actors you’ve been working with lately — Shailene Woodley, Michael B. Jordan, Ansel Elgort — are now all starting to blow up. Is there any sense of how to prepare for the even bigger fame that lies ahead?
Teller: I take things project to project. If people based how good they were as an actor on how many Twitter followers they have — when your popularity is that far ahead of your résumé — then you’re gonna get into trouble. The most important thing about my work is trying to get better. That’s really the only thing I’m interested in at this point.

[From Vulture]

I know a lot of you abandoned Miles when he threw shade at John Cusack, but this is my limit: how can you call yourself an actor in this day and age and NOT know JK Simmons, one of the greatest character actors of the past two decades? How can you even have a passing interest in film and television and never come across a JK Simmons performance? Look at JK Simmons’ IMDB. The Closer. Juno. The original Spider-Man movies. Up In the Air. Burn After Reading. And he’s guest-starred on pretty much every TV show in the past twenty years. And Miles Teller only knew him from the Farmers Insurance commercials. Okay, I’m done with Miles. DONE!

Photos courtesy of PR Photos.