Writer/Director James Gunn and the stars of DC’s “Peacemaker” series including John Cena (Peacemaker), Jennifer Holland (Emilia Harcourt), Robert Patrick (Auggie Smith), Steve Agee (John Economos), Freddie Stroma (Vigilante) and Chukwudi Iwuji (Clemson Murn) discuss their HBO Max series in this interview with CinemaBlend’s Sean O’Connell.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 ♪ Let's have fun ♪
00:01 - Two jerks in costumes and a couple of rejects.
00:03 - Woo!
00:04 - It's like a real team out there.
00:06 - Is that an eagle?
00:07 - It's Eagly, a sidekick.
00:09 (upbeat music)
00:10 - James.
00:11 - What's up, Sean?
00:12 Good to see you, man.
00:13 - Unbelievable, man.
00:14 This was somehow everything I expected
00:16 and nothing that I expected at all.
00:18 - Oh, that's a great thing to hear.
00:19 That's the best compliment I've heard yet.
00:21 Thank you.
00:22 - I need to ask you how you do Eagly.
00:23 Is he just all CGI?
00:25 Like what's the secret behind him?
00:26 He's a fascinating little addition.
00:28 - He is all CGI.
00:29 He is.
00:30 We actually brought an eagle onto set
00:31 at the very beginning of production
00:33 and the eagle was absolutely having none of it.
00:36 And I'm like, I can't.
00:38 This guy is, he's, this guy is so sad right here.
00:41 I can't do it with this guy.
00:43 This poor eagle is like being terrorized.
00:45 I'm like, he doesn't want to be here.
00:47 So we made him, we made him CGI.
00:49 Weta did it.
00:50 He just done a lot of visual effects
00:52 for my movies and stuff.
00:53 Guy Williams is great team member
00:55 and I love working with him.
00:57 - Yeah, how straight an eagle, dude?
00:58 - Not without stealing its soul.
01:00 - Mr. Cena, what did you have to think about
01:01 that helped you convey the overwhelming joy
01:04 of being hugged by an eagle?
01:05 - He's hugging me.
01:06 - Genuinely being hugged by an eagle.
01:08 And obviously we meet Eagly.
01:12 Eagly is much more than a sidekick.
01:14 Eagly is Peacemaker's best friend.
01:17 It's the unconditional love that a pet would give
01:21 the pet's owner or the pet's caregiver.
01:23 That's Eagly.
01:24 And Eagly is more like a cat than a dog
01:27 in a way where he's certainly got his own personality
01:29 and he's independent.
01:31 But Eagly is Peacemaker's best friend.
01:33 So I have to have an embrace with a memory foam shaped
01:37 gray bowling pin that should be an eagle.
01:39 But at the same time, I'm using my imagination
01:42 of I get a chance to see my best friend
01:44 for the first time in a long time.
01:46 My best friend's excited to see me.
01:47 We pick up right where we left off
01:49 and it happens to be a bald eagle.
01:51 - Oh my, what's wrong with your bird?
01:54 - Such a good, handsome boy.
01:56 - This show really is a very fascinating 180 degree turn
01:58 from the Peacemaker we met in "Squad."
02:01 And each episode kind of peels off a new layer to him.
02:03 And I was blown away by all the things
02:05 that we learned about him.
02:06 I wanted to know what new aspect of him
02:08 that you most appreciated getting to play around with.
02:11 - I just, honestly, I think it was just the time,
02:13 the amount of time.
02:14 If you look at the "Suicide Squad"
02:16 and you specifically focus on Peacemaker,
02:20 you see moments of him contemplating his core values.
02:25 You see his human behavior.
02:27 He buys a rat a drink.
02:29 He kills someone he admires
02:32 and it shakes his very foundation.
02:34 And he's certainly willing to eliminate Ratcatcher 2
02:37 at any and all costs,
02:38 strictly because of the concept that he's thorough.
02:41 This is all information that's out there in the movie
02:43 that we know already.
02:44 But it's also, it does shed light
02:46 that there may be some contradiction in terms.
02:49 We just don't get enough time in the "Suicide Squad"
02:52 to go on that journey.
02:54 And I don't think it's a 180 in Peacemaker.
02:56 I think it's just the time to dive into
02:59 what does he think when he is not
03:01 in a process of saving the world on a mission?
03:04 What does he think when the lights go out?
03:05 What does he think when there's no one around?
03:07 I think that's, we get a lot of time
03:09 to explore that on Peacemaker.
03:11 - The flag was right.
03:13 Peacemaker, what a joke.
03:18 - Buddy?
03:20 - What the fuck?
03:21 Hey, what the fuck are you doing?
03:23 - Freddie, I'm gonna ask this because I'm not 100% sure
03:26 having watched several episodes of it.
03:27 What is Peacemaker good at?
03:29 - What is he actually good at?
03:30 - Boy, Peacemaker is sick.
03:32 - What is he actually good at?
03:34 - I mean, in Vigilante's eyes, he's hilarious.
03:38 He's muscular.
03:40 He's the best guy on the planet.
03:42 But I think, I don't know, he's got a lot of flaws.
03:49 I haven't really, we haven't really discussed
03:51 any of his actual decent attributes.
03:53 Hey, at least he's got self-reflection.
03:56 That's what we've learned from the show.
03:57 So that's a positive quality, I think.
04:01 - My advice, cut it out with the introspection.
04:03 The mind is a den of scorpions
04:05 better left running from, not towards.
04:07 - What's the hardest part about pacing out your reveals
04:10 for episodes, multiple episodes,
04:12 versus trying to fit everything into a two-hour time frame
04:14 and figuring out how information drops?
04:16 - You know, I just had to go by my,
04:20 I've never done television,
04:22 so there's no science to it for me.
04:23 It is really only the science that I've learned
04:25 from writing screenplays,
04:26 which is a very different science in a way.
04:28 So it really was just, I had to go off my gut.
04:31 I knew the general story as I wrote it.
04:35 I knew where we were going to end up.
04:37 I knew where we were starting.
04:38 Some things kind of changed along the way
04:40 as I was writing it, but I did write the episodes in order.
04:43 So the story kind of unraveled in front of me
04:47 as I was writing it.
04:48 Although, like I said, I did know what the ending was,
04:50 and that's my favorite episode of all is "Eight."
04:53 - Yeah, Steve is teasing out episode "Eight,"
04:54 saying that we're not prepared for it.
04:56 - Yeah, you're not prepared for it, yeah.
04:58 - I honestly would love to see if there was a season two,
05:01 knowing how episode "Eight" ended,
05:04 where "Economist" goes from here, you know?
05:07 - You can tell me how it ends, it's just you and I.
05:10 - Well, no, I'll tell you, when we were doing,
05:12 when I was doing ADR for the final episode,
05:15 it was just a couple of scenes.
05:18 I asked the person who was remotely directing me
05:23 if they could, after we finished my ADR,
05:25 if they could, since we were already on the reel,
05:28 if they could fast forward to the end,
05:30 because this episode is bonkers.
05:33 And there's a reason they're not showing it to you.
05:35 I was like, "Hey, can you fast forward a little bit
05:38 "so I can see the finished product?"
05:41 And they're like, "Absolutely not."
05:43 And I was like, I was there,
05:45 like, you're not gonna spoil anything.
05:47 And they're like, "Yeah, but there's people in the room
05:50 "who don't know."
05:51 - Oh, man, okay, that's a great tease.
05:53 That's a fantastic tease.
05:54 Everyone is teasing episode "Eight"
05:57 and how we're not prepared for it
05:59 in any way, shape, or form.
06:01 So if you could describe it in one word,
06:03 how would you describe the finale of the show?
06:06 - Explosive.
06:09 - Eat peace, mother.
06:11 - This is our new recruit, Leora DeBayo.
06:15 - I've done a lot of notable things.
06:17 - Where'd you find Miss Brooks?
06:18 She's fantastic.
06:20 - Oh, she's great.
06:20 I loved her on "Orange is the New Black."
06:22 So I actually, this was one of those weird situations
06:24 where I wrote the roles almost completely
06:28 for the people who ended up playing them.
06:30 So I love Danielle from "Orange is the New Black."
06:33 So I wrote the role of Adebayo for her.
06:35 And we didn't even go to her
06:36 till after I had written the whole series.
06:38 And I didn't know if she was actually gonna be the one
06:40 to end up playing it.
06:41 We could have ended up with somebody else,
06:43 but I'm really happy that we ended up with her.
06:45 I love her.
06:46 She's actually getting married right now
06:47 and I'm missing her virtual wedding.
06:49 - Oh no.
06:50 - For you, for you, Sean.
06:52 - Thank you, I appreciate it.
06:54 - But anyway, she was, I wrote it for her,
06:57 Robert Patrick, who I've admired a lot,
07:00 but I saw him in "Harry Mason" and I'm like,
07:04 oh my God, that guy, he would be great.
07:06 And so I wrote the role of Augie for him.
07:09 Maybe that's a put down to Robert, I don't know.
07:11 He's not at all like Augie.
07:13 But yeah, so, you know, of course,
07:15 Jen and those guys I'd already worked with.
07:17 So the only, you know, most of the main characters
07:20 I wrote for the actors, you know.
07:22 Chuck is kind of the one that was outstanding
07:24 because he was, he came in and auditioned
07:26 and I was like, that is not at all how I saw the character,
07:29 but he blew me away.
07:30 One of my favorite auditions ever.
07:32 - That's right.
07:33 - James lives in the rhythm.
07:35 Do you know what I mean?
07:35 And I think that a big reason why Mern worked for me,
07:39 why I ended up playing Mern,
07:40 because I wasn't in the breakdown,
07:42 really what the breakdown was looking for,
07:44 was because I latched onto James's rhythm.
07:46 My background is very much in classical theater
07:49 and whatever, and that's all you use.
07:51 It's not about subtext, it's about the lines.
07:53 And I read these three pages they sent me
07:57 and I was like, oh my God, the rhythms of this guy.
07:58 And I immediately knew how I wanted to play him.
08:01 That's the classic example of, very Shakespearean example
08:04 of the writer directing the actors without directing them.
08:07 You know?
08:08 So I think James is very specific with his language,
08:10 very specific.
08:11 If he, the difference between don't and do not.
08:14 I mean, it's all there in the music of it.
08:16 And of course, that's what comedy is,
08:19 is the timing, is the math of it and stuff.
08:21 So he lives in the specificity.
08:24 And I, as an actor, revel in seeing someone write that way
08:29 and go, oh, I know this guy through the dialogue.
08:32 You know?
08:33 - It really lends a voyeuristic approach to it.
08:35 Like, you know, a lot of times you can see the performance
08:38 and instead I felt like I was in a van with you guys,
08:40 you know, listening to actual conversations.
08:43 It's kind of my favorite.
08:46 The sort of constant movement
08:50 and the very conversational, you know,
08:55 pace that the show has.
08:57 It's something that I absolutely love.
09:01 And it comes fairly easily when you are very prepared
09:06 with the material.
09:08 And, you know, we were fortunate to have these scripts
09:12 long in advance.
09:14 We had plenty of time to prep.
09:16 And so it was just like, you know,
09:20 we just jumped in and it felt very smooth and fun.
09:25 Had a great time.
09:26 - You know, I kind of got the swing of it
09:27 by the time we wrapped.
09:28 (laughing)
09:31 It was, his dialogue was fantastic
09:34 and it was really a great experience.
09:37 And Steve and I have been talking about this today
09:39 that, you know, sometimes, you know,
09:40 the dialogue's great, everything's going great.
09:42 And then all of a sudden he'll yell out some more,
09:44 not yell, but, you know,
09:46 give you some more great dialogue, you know,
09:49 out of nowhere to add to it.
09:51 So it's the advantage of having the writer there
09:54 working with you and directing you.
09:55 He has such a clarity of vision
09:58 of what he wants for these characters.
10:00 And what a very enjoyable process
10:05 from an actor's point of view.
10:07 - I like it.
10:08 I like it a lot.
10:09 I don't give a fuck.
10:10 - What?
10:11 - Give it all you got.
10:12 - Freddie, where would you like to see Vigilante
10:13 show up next?
10:13 On a feature film or another series?
10:16 - Oh, honestly, anywhere in that world.
10:20 Also, hopefully, in a world with James Gunn.
10:22 'Cause like, he's just,
10:24 it's such a joy to work with him.
10:28 And just the comedy, all of it,
10:31 like it's just, it's a lot of fun.
10:33 But honestly, if he turns up anywhere in the DC world,
10:37 I would be ecstatic.
10:38 - Robert, as someone who has seen the many cycles
10:41 of Bollywood storytelling and observed the trends
10:44 of things that have come and go,
10:45 I would love to know what you attribute
10:47 to this 20-year run that we seem to be in
10:49 of comic book adaptations,
10:51 and why you think the genre is still so popular
10:53 and successful.
10:55 - Well, I'm first off thrilled.
10:57 This is the first, my first foray into the DC comic world
11:01 and the comic world that you spoke of.
11:05 I just think it's exciting.
11:06 You know, these filmmakers that grew up reading
11:09 and being inspired by comic books
11:13 and their imaginations being, you know,
11:17 set off from their comic book world.
11:21 That's, I think, what's going on, to be honest with you.
11:26 And it's fun to finally be a part of it.
11:30 - Matt, if you could open up a bit about juggling projects
11:33 between feature films and television.
11:35 It feels like a lot of studios are going in that direction
11:37 and allowing filmmakers and creatives
11:40 to breathe more life into it
11:42 and take more time with different characters.
11:44 Where would you like to see that continue to grow
11:46 as maybe DC projects, future DC projects,
11:49 figure out whether they are feature films
11:51 or long-form television series?
11:53 - Well, my personal proclivity is always for television,
11:56 you know, 'cause I think it affords you
11:58 a much better opportunity
12:00 to live within the character piece, right?
12:02 You don't have that sort of propellant idea
12:05 where you have to tell the story
12:07 and accomplish all of these things
12:08 in that hour and a half, two hours,
12:10 two and a half hour timeframe.
12:11 So for us in this show, you know,
12:14 whereas we met Peacemaker a little bit in the movie,
12:17 it really enables us to unpack the character
12:20 in a way that I don't really think that you can in a feature.
12:24 So I certainly would love to see them doing that
12:26 a little bit more in television.
12:29 - You're so right.
12:30 I actually called it to Mr. Cena,
12:32 like a 180 degree turn from his squad portrayal.
12:35 And he's like, "No, that's not it.
12:36 We just had more time to explore the layers of them
12:40 and the things that make them stand out as a character."
12:41 - Yeah, and there may even be things from the movie
12:44 that end up on the cutting room floor,
12:46 whereas in television,
12:47 and particularly in today's version of television,
12:49 like we're making these episodes,
12:51 we're not adhering to any timeframe, right?
12:55 So the episode can be as long or as short
12:58 as it needs to be for the story to work.
13:01 So it was purely creative decision-making along the way,
13:03 and it allows you a better opportunity
13:05 to be creative that way.
13:06 - These are new experiments,
13:09 branching off with a character and going to television.
13:11 - First time ever.
13:12 - And Sony is trying it, and Marvel is trying it,
13:14 and it's exciting that Warner Brothers is trying it.
13:16 And I just wanted to get your thoughts
13:18 on juggling between the features and television.
13:21 What are some of the things
13:21 that the Peacemaker series taught you
13:23 that you might want to bring to a new future HBO Max series?
13:27 - Well, I think what really makes this special
13:29 is it's the first time that the filmmaker himself,
13:31 the guy that created, wrote, and directed the movie,
13:34 is also writing and directing the series.
13:36 That has not happened before.
13:38 We had the ultimate luxury of having one of the greats
13:41 in the superhero space, James Gunn, do it for us.
13:45 So to be able to give him eight episodes
13:47 in which to play with tremendous freedom creatively,
13:51 to be able to really explore these characters,
13:52 not just Peacemaker, but also the entire ensemble,
13:55 to really take them through their arcs
13:57 over the course of the eight episodes,
13:59 it was a remarkable luxury.
14:01 And that really separates it
14:03 from any superhero show that's come before,
14:05 is the fact that you got the real guy,
14:07 the filmmaker himself, doing the adaptation.
14:10 - Is there a comic book background to "Project Butterfly"
14:13 or something you come up on your own?
14:14 - No, it's my own thing.
14:16 Yeah, there's not any...
14:17 The comic book stuff is, you know,
14:21 the characters who are from the comic books,
14:23 which is Emilia and DeConomos.
14:25 DeConomos is very much like what he was like
14:26 in the comic books.
14:27 Emilia is not at all like what she was like
14:29 in the comics.
14:30 And then of course, Vigilante and Judo Master
14:32 and Peacemaker, but even those guys are pretty much
14:36 different from what they were in the comics.
14:37 - Part of the joy here is that he's taking on characters,
14:42 and he did the same thing with "Guardians,"
14:43 that aren't as well-known, right?
14:45 So that because of the fact that the lore
14:48 is not so set in stone,
14:51 that the fan base will get offended
14:53 if you stray from it a little.
14:54 I mean, you know, particularly with the Vigilante character,
14:57 it's infinitely different than it was.
14:58 In the comic books, but it allows him the opportunity
15:02 to impose his own creativity on where he wants
15:05 to see these characters go,
15:07 what their backstories are like,
15:08 and what makes them tick.
15:09 - Comic book world is such a deep well that,
15:13 up until, you know, the past 10 years,
15:15 the only people who really realized that
15:17 were comic book nerds, people who bought these
15:20 and read these, like people like James.
15:23 When James told me he was doing "Guardians of the Galaxy,"
15:25 I was like, "I don't even know what that is."
15:28 A raccoon in a tree, I was like, "That's incredible."
15:31 Like there are characters that people still don't know about
15:34 that like James is introducing and telling me about
15:37 that I'm like, "What is this?"
15:39 Like, so there is like, I think an endless well to go to
15:43 and also great storytelling in these comics.
15:47 So I can't wait to see where this goes.
15:51 I think comic books are more popular now than ever before.
15:55 - I'd never heard of Judo Master before,
15:56 and he's one of my new favorite characters.
15:58 - Me either. - What about Batmite?
16:00 - Yeah. - Or Batmite, yeah.
16:03 - Never heard of it.
16:04 Well, to that end, Peter,
16:04 and I'll get you guys out of here on this one.
16:06 Can you talk about the relationship between
16:08 having to adhere to the comics
16:10 versus just taking them as loose inspiration,
16:13 the way James kind of does,
16:14 and go in any sort of way that he would like to go?
16:16 Do you feel that we've sort of evolved, you know,
16:18 that the filmmakers have a lot more confidence
16:21 to be able to take these traditional properties
16:23 and go any way they want with them?
16:24 - I think certain filmmakers have a lot of latitude
16:27 when it comes to it,
16:28 particularly ones that are steeped in the knowledge
16:31 of the comic books,
16:32 because they know what's important to keep
16:35 and what are the elements that you can, you know,
16:37 have a little bit of freedom with.
16:39 It's those guys with a real background in it
16:42 that I think are the best at picking and choosing
16:44 the elements that they want to really adhere to
16:46 and the ones that they want to move away from.
16:48 So James is, you know, uniquely positioned to do that.
16:52 - Is this meant to be a one-off
16:53 or are you mapping out a second season?
16:55 - I'm not mapping out a second season,
16:57 but I think about it a lot and we talk about it a lot.
17:00 And I think that John and I are both in
17:03 if we can figure everything out correctly
17:06 and, you know, we'll see what happens,
17:10 but we're into it, we want to do it.
17:12 [BLANK_AUDIO]