Original subtitles

You know, when you have to play one of these roles, whether it's like playing a

pianist or playing a sort of weapons expert, it's like, oh, you're the best

person in the world at whatever this is. It's like, oh, great, cool.

And I have how many weeks to do this? Right, cool. Yeah.

I think I was just sort

of miscreant at school, and I remember being put in...

school play almost as a punishment for how distracting I'd been in class and

that just led to a lifetime of misbehavior

So

I was sent this script You know pretty soon after moving to the States really

and I decided that I was gonna come over here and see what variety I could find.

And it was so unlike anything I'd ever read, certainly unlike anything that

made in the UK.

And I had recently seen Your Next, so I knew just how batshit crazy

Adam Wingard must be. And I thought, I have to meet this man and convince him

that I'm the person he needs.

We met up, I came out to LA and I was living in New York at the time and I

out to meet him and we just hit it off. And I think...

The sense of humour that I could see coming through the screenplay and the

of humour I felt from Your Next and obviously his collaboration with Simon

Barrett, there was a wicked, wicked sense of humour there. He found the idea

putting the guy from Downton Abbey in his movie very, very funny, as did I.

It was not something anyone was expecting to see and it was certainly

something I was expecting to do, but I was thrilled to get the chance.

The script was totally different to anything I'd ever read. And I just

laughing my ass off the whole way through it. And I spoke to one of my

had found it just unrelentingly grisly and nasty.

And I was like, didn't you find it funny at all?

They're like, you found it funny? I'm like, yeah, it's hilarious.

Yeah, that's fine.

You want the elite?

Well, I'll take them all.

All the handguns? No, everything.

All your guns.

You know, shooting in that quarry that day where, you know, Ethan Embry's

to sell me the weapons, and, you know, I just remember that being an intensely

hot day and, you know, trying to keep my cool, literally, and, you

know, and remember my...

weapons training, all that kind of stuff.

I think it was that scene where I had to strip the gun and take it apart and put

it back together. Again, that was a whole new thing for me, which I had

practiced and was really trying to get right while it was like a thousand

degrees.

That's what I was thinking.

Look, man, if you brought money for all of them, I'll cut you a deal. You can

take them all off my hands. No, I'm going to kill you.

This is definitely not... the kind of film that really gets made in the UK

often. And the tone of it and the style and the kind of role, it seemed so kind

of quintessentially American. It was really feeding off all those sort of,

know... B action movies, you know, that they used to make in the 70s and 80s.

And, you know, there's something quintessentially American about that. We

very interested in the idea of charm as a weapon.

And, you know, there's obviously British charm and then there's Southern

American charm, which are, there are some overlaps, I would say, you know, in

their passive aggression, perhaps. And so, yeah, just playing with that in some

of the scenes was really, really fun.

David and the guest is... supposedly from Kentucky.

He's gone through the military.

You know, there were a lot of things that we were processing through the role

that were very out of my experience. But it was great. You know, for an actor,

it's a dream just to dive into a totally different world and learn about stuff

like that.

That's me.

David is a charming young man who has been part of this military program.

It's very deliberately undefined as to exactly what he's endured, what he's

through. He's been in the same platoon as this young man, Caleb, who's been

killed in action, and he goes to visit their family.

Very nice to meet you.

Caleb told me a lot about you.

David just got discharged this week. He was a friend of your brother's.

You know Caleb?

Yes, ma 'am. Very often the secret with playing bad guys is that they don't

think that they're particularly bad.

And I think certainly in the beginning...

David's programming is such that he feels that he's doing the family the

ultimate service by solving problems of, I don't know, ex -boyfriends or

miserable bosses or bullies at school.

And he goes through and almost one by one ticks off these families' problems

an absurdly extreme way.

And so I think that's part of the fun of the role is feeling like he's... you

know, a very twisted knight in shining armour.

But then when the military element comes in and he begins to be sort of hunted

down, then the second part of his programming, I suppose, kicks in where

designed to self -preserve and protect the programme and things go haywire.

What about him?

Everybody's best friend.

I called the military base that he said he was from, and they told me he was

dead.

This is military intelligence for you.

Right.

Ask the CSID.

He's not David Collins, okay? We don't know who he is.

Mike is fantastic in that role. I mean, it's really survival girl role taken to

the extreme. She's so badass in it. And I think she matches David, you know,

step for step. And there's a fantastic showdown between the two of them. And

it's unusual in that it's sort of not a particularly sexual relationship at any

point. There's sort of odd moments where it sort of flirts with that idea, but

it never really goes there.

was quite refreshing. It's a fun dynamic that, you know, and just watching her

navigate his weirdness is a joy.

What are you doing here?

I told your mom I could pick you up from school today.

Is that cool?

Yeah.

You'd have to ask Brendan if he looks up to me in real life. Probably doesn't

anymore.

But he was very, very sweet.

It's a great trope that, you know, in those movies, the sort of the innocent

who just, you know, who thinks that this guy is, you know, the sun shines out of

his ass and, you know, he can do no wrong when David is clearly doing a lot

wrong. And it just kind of, that hero worship just gets increasingly absurd as

the movie goes on.

Oh, man.

Your parents' knives suck.

Yeah.

That's a very sweet dynamic, and also the brother -sister thing that he has

going on with Micah's character is very sweet.

Adam and Simon were very keen to play with a lot of the expectations of a role

like that, but no, he was great.

Please stay.

It's nice having you here, and I would love to hear more about you and Caleb.

Yeah, Sheila Kelly is wild. And, you know, she has this amazing kind of

stare, you know, which is just so perfect for that role of the sort of the

unseeing mom, I suppose, who doesn't quite know, you know, enough about what

kids are really up to and, you know, wants to see the good in everyone. And

has this amazing positivity and light about her, which was so great for that

role.

I didn't know that they'd almost run out of bullets, but it doesn't surprise me

because it was absolute mayhem that day. And also, I remember they got an

incredible stunt driver to do that scene where they back out of the garage, and

I think they only had one garage door, so they had to get it right on this one

take, and this guy just ripped through.

It was amazing to watch. There were some really spectacular...

scenes to watch um you know like the the scene where he rolls the grenades into

the cafe and walks out into the street we

filmed

in a tiny town in in new mexico um i think it was called edgewater but i

be somewhere near there in New Mexico, one of those small towns which is

essentially a sort of a truck stop with a high school that happens to exist in

the middle of nowhere. And they hadn't really told any of the town that we were

going to be blowing the windows out.

And so there were people just like driving past with these windows and this

just shot across the street and very, very nearly took out just an innocent

driving by. So there was some insane stuff going on.

In terms of the gun stuff, I mean, I hadn't handled a lot of weapons like

before. And so I was, for the movie, a fully paid up member of the LAX

firing range and was going there and learning how to handle handguns and all

sorts of military grade weapons. And yeah, I had some excellent teachers,

Clayton Barber, who was our stunt coordinator.

who put me through my paces just physically, but also, you know, with all

gun training.

And, you know, he knew exactly what it needed to look like. And, you know, I

determined to get there. So, yeah, there was some great stuff. But the scene

with the, you know, the laundry, you know, fire, and that was one of the

scenes to shoot, I think.

There's certain scenes you shoot sometimes where you kind of know that

going to be in slow -mo and the sort of actor's mistake is often to kind of do

the slow -mo yourself, you know, and you're kind of like, and so there was a,

you know, I had to kind of resist that and just, you know, but it was more

just with Clayton just like technically getting all the gun stuff looking right

and as soon as that, you know, all... clicked into place then you know they

took care of the rest but um yeah it was very very funny just watching them you

know spatter all the the uh the laundry with blood and that kind of stuff and um

and also just i remember having to coordinate dropping the laundry basket

whipping the gun out and doing that which is a lot harder than it looks i'll

tell you you killed dad's boss too right i don't care i'm not going to say

anything why not

Because we're friends.

Right?

Yeah.

Do I not blink much? I know there was that one particular scene where he sort

of, I don't know if he's like uploading or whatever, he sort of, you know, he

goes very much into kind of a robotic trance -like state and Adam wanted to do

this tracking shot through the window and...

And I feel like we had to do that a few times because he was like, I don't want

you to blink. I don't want you to blink. I was like, okay, fine.

He is just about to stream down my face. It was like, no, we don't want him

crying. We want him staring, looking scary. I was like, fine, no crying.

fine. You know, and doing that over and over again. So, yeah, listen, what Adam

wants, Adam gets.

Luke, come on. I mean.

I'm sorry.

No, no, I am sorry.

I thought Wick was in there.

Up to that point, it was definitely the most rigorous physical transformation

and regime I'd ever been through.

And Clayton Barber, our stunt coordinator and trainer, who was a kind

taekwondo champion back in the day, you know, he...

really um you know put me through my paces physically mentally and uh you

he'd seen this kind of transformation before and i hadn't i had no idea what

going on and so we started off in la and i was training at a facility down near

lax and then we went to new mexico and we basically borrowed it was in the

summer holidays and we borrowed uh this high school gym

And it was essentially this, I mean, that in itself would make a great movie

just this sort of this English actor sweating in the New Mexico heat in this

sort of, you know, very retro high school gym with, you know, lots of sort

motivational quotes all around the wall, you know, running around a track on my

own.

And, you know, it's like, come on, you know, you want to be the best? Come on!

It was an amazing, amazing experience.

Yeah, behind that shower door, you know, he was there just like, you know,

Robert, give me 30, you know, and it was like, action, come out, you know, just

like looking as hench as I could.

You know, Adam is so...

steeped in cinema of all kinds, especially the kind of weird and

-horror and B -action movies that many of us grew up with. And he really

understands the vocabulary of a shot. And it was one of the first times I've

worked with a director where you just, I don't know how else to describe it, you

know you're in a great frame.

And so rather than feeling like it's all on you to kind of come up with the

magic of the scene, actually a lot of it you can tell is, you know, between him

and Robbie, the DP, you know, just...

you know these beautiful kind of western style shots sometimes and you know

really borrowing from from great cinemas and so yeah he was just meticulous in

knowing the style that he that he wanted and and uh yeah i just remember being

you know so uh enamored really with that with that way of working and a lot of

people coming in you know for days here and there they you know they weren't

necessarily sure what they were stepping into and it was it was sort of on me to

reassure them it's like no no he's got this he knows he knows what he wants and

yeah I know it seems weird but you know just go with it and so there's a lot of

confusion for some of those day players but I think it worked out

they

constructed a Halloween maze in this high school as I said we had the run

of this high school for the summer which was weird in itself, you know, shooting

in those empty corridors and things like that. And I hadn't spent a lot of time

in American high schools anyway. So that was kind of a new experience for me.

And yeah, you know, using the sort of desolate landscape of rural New Mexico,

which is something, you know, it's really wild out there. And, you know, I

staying in a place in the middle of nowhere and just watching these

storms over the mountains at night. And it was, you know, the whole...

atmosphere of the shoot was was pretty strange you know and the drive to work

each day you know just going on this interstate you know which is bare

and and i'd never seen anything like that you know coming from from england

and you know visiting mostly you know coastal American cities, and this was,

know, really kind of deepened my understanding of Middle America.

And, you know, Simon Barrett is from Missouri, Adams from Alabama, and a lot

that, you know, what they experienced and endured as, you know, adolescents in

those parts of the country, I think really feed into the script.

Can't help but notice those ladies over there are drinking cheap beer. That

seems like a shame to me. I'd like to buy each one of them a blowjob shot.

Are you serious?

It was just a real sense of humor, I think, on set with just the madness of

we were doing, really. And as the story goes along, just how it kind of ratchets

up. And I think one of the joys of shooting it for me and I think for

was just how steeped it was in a love of this kind of...

film and this kind of cinema so yeah it's borrowing on a lot of tropes of

kind of films but it's not a it's not a reboot it's not a remake as such it but

it's definitely it's definitely a very affectionate homage to that that style i

don't remember the premiere at all i was terrified it was at sundance it was

midnight madness and uh i had not been shown the film i think they'd only

finished it a few hours before you know and they'd sent the print and uh

I was, yeah, I was really excited, but, you know, terrified because I'd never

done anything like this before. I'd never seen anything like this before.

And I was aware of Midnight Madness at Sundance and just like, what a big deal

that is for this kind of film. It was just the perfect.

home and the perfect place to launch it. And it got a wild reception. It was

great, you know, and to hear the laughter and that kind of thing. But it

bit of a blur.

I was a bundle of nerves, for sure. One of the things I do remember was taking

the film to London.

And I was allowed a special screening where I could invite friends and family

who hadn't seen me for a couple of years. I'd moved to the States. I'd gone

and done a couple of different things. And everyone was a bit confused as to

I'd left.

And this really felt like part of my explanation, which came as a massive...

shock and surprise to even my closest friends they were just like what is this

you know and um especially for an english audience there was it was very

different to the midnight madness reaction you know midnight madness are

and ready and they're thirsty for this kind of film and the english crowd were

just in in sort of shock and awe of like what i had been up to um which was

great

It's one of those films that over the years has really kind of found its

audience.

And you never expect these things to blow up at the time, and if they do,

great. But it definitely over the years has found its crowd, and that's a pretty

wonderful thing. I'm thrilled I did it, and it's led to a long, long friendship

with Adam and Simon, which is wonderful, and hopefully more films from us in the

future.