EXCLUSIVE: Michael B. Jordan Talks Bringing to Life New Action Movie, Without Remorse

Today, April 30, Amazon Prime Video released its new movie, Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse. We sat down with one of the stars of the movie, Michael B. Jordan to talk about bringing this movie to life.

In the chat, we also talked his stunt training, John Kelly’s relationship with Lieutenant Commander Karen Greer and so much more. Check it out below.

On films skipping theaters and being directly released on Amazon Prime Video:
“I think it’s given access to films that quite possibly they [the audience] wouldn’t have an opportunity to go see. I think certain films are obviously intended to be shot and played on a movie theater in a theater. But we’re in an evolving time where obviously with the pandemic this last year had everything shift. And we were victims of that as well in a sense of trying to figure out where were we going to pivot? How will we get our movie out to the masses so everybody had an opportunity to watch it and see it?

I think there’s something to sitting at home and being able to have instant access to like the movies that you want to see. But then I think it’s also something to go into the theater and having that movie theater experience as well. So, it’s going to be a nice little healthy balance, I think, in the future.”

On releasing his first action movie under his production company, Outlier Society Productions:
“It was just going through the process of building that out[the stunts]. It was a learning curve for myself. I walk away from this movie with more knowledge and experience and how to put those sequences, those movies together. So yeah. I know when to shut up and listen, and learn. I was a sponge on this one and I think we walked away with something that we could be really happy about.”

On John Kelly’s relationship with Lieutenant Commander Karen Greer (Jodie Turner-Smith):
“Putting my producer hat back on, Stefano [Sollima], Akiva [Goldsman], and I really wanted to work through finding that balance between comradery and that brother/sister relationship. We had to make sure that the audience understood [their relationship]. I didn’t want anybody to be misunderstood by the relationship or the dynamic. We wanted to be really clear that they loved each other, but it was more a , ‘Through thick and thin, I’m not going to leave you behind. This might get me in trouble, but I’m still going to give you this.'”

We also wanted to be very respectful to John’s relationship with Pam. We didn’t want anybody to assume or try to forward-think that their relationship would go down a road that it wasn’t supposed to. We wanted to make sure we honor John’s motivation throughout this movie. That was something we kept a close eye on as we developed those scenes. And I think we found a pretty good balance between the two.”

To read the rest of the interview, click below the jump. Who has watched the new movie already?

Photo credit: Nadja Klier © 2020 Paramount Pictures

On working with Lauren London [Pam]:
“It was something that as actors and artists, being able to have the opportunity to express ourselves through our work is sometimes the only release that we can really get in that type of way. As a scene partner, Lauren was so generous to help me personally get through, and understand. the mind state and those emotional beats of what a person would be going through in certain situations. Sometimes in movies you just get those X factors, that special whatever it is that just makes things just pop. Lauren for us was definitely one of those things.”

On learning how to hold his breath under water:
“It’s an exercise. If you stop training and you stop exercising that muscle, you can definitely lose it. But underwater training was definitely something we spent a lot of time on. We knew we had these sequences earlier in the script development phase. Stefano looked at me and was like, ‘Mike, you know you got to do all of these, right?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, yeah, of course, easy. Easy. No problem.’

So we hooked up with some military divers and we spent time in the tanks. They put us under stressful situations where we would have to problem-solve, work through malfunctions, gear failure, work through military like rebreathers, which is basically machines that these soldiers would wear to basically suppress all the bubbles so they could breathe in the water without leaving any physical traces, we had to work through all that.”

It was a lot of very detailed training that we went through for the water exercises. And yeah, I can hold my breath during filming for pretty long, maybe about three minutes or so. Something like that.”

On his love of being in the water helping him with his breath training:
“I’m a water baby. I love being in the water. Honestly, if you’re calm and you’re sitting still, you can hold your breath for a lot longer. So they’ve created an environment for us to kind of really relax and just kind of like be at peace.”

On doing his own stunts:
“It was fun. I’m a little action junkie. As a kid, these are the movies that I watched, that I always wanted to be in one day. So, when Stefano says that he wants you to do all your stunts, we still work with stunt doubles and people who actually vet these sequences to make sure things are safe. They teach us the proper way so we’re able to handle ourselves in those situations.

So Clay [Donahue Fonteno} and Doug [Coleman] and everybody that was there, they assembled this incredible stunt team that allowed us to train at high intensity. So, when we were able to show up on the day, we were able to do the things that we needed to do. We got banged up throughout the process, but it was so worth it.’

On working with Brett Gelman [Victor Rykov]:
“It’s fun because when you get to know somebody, you build bonds and relationships with other actors like Brett. It gives you that free reign to actually go that much further. To play against somebody that you don’t like or you’re trying to kill, it actually makes it more fun when you’re really close and you like each other.”