EXCLUSIVE: Joe and Anthony Russo Talk Bringing The Gray Man to Prague
This Friday, July 22, The Gray Man will be released to Netflix. Starring Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, and Ana de Armas, the movie is based on the spy thriller by Mark Greaney.
To celebrate the film’s release, we heard from the directors of the film, Joe and Anthony Russo. During their chat, the duo talked why they wanted to take on this story, their cast, and so much more. Check out what they had to say below.
What made you both want to take on this story?
JOE: “Well, this is a modern story. I think that, you know, Bond is about 60 years old at this point and Bourne’s about 20 years old and this film is connected in a lot of ways to some issues that are going on in the world right now. The character is exceedingly existential, quite funny, and we just find that it fits our sense of humor. And, you know, it’s the kind of film that, you know, we feel would work well with today’s audiences.”
You have a particularly intense action scene that takes in Prague, how hard was it to bring that scene to life?
ANTHONY: “Every single element of it. We needed a large section of the city to pull that off. That sequence starts in a major city square, and it continues through a chase throughout the city, so it was very complex. And, just to give you an example of how hard it was, there’s a tram that The Gray Man gets on and Ana’s [de Armas] character is sort of chasing it in a car and there’s a lot of other mercs around and it careens through Prague, and in order to shoot that sequence, we were using actual trams in Prague.”
How did you pull that off?
ANTHONY: “We built a bus that was designed to look exactly like a tram but ran on wheels because sometimes we needed to run the tram faster than the tram could actually go, or we needed to take it down streets that didn’t have tracks, et cetera. Then we also had a tram that was located at a lot in Prague that was stationary that we would sort of shake, and we had blue screen around it. So, you’re building the sequence through all those different locations, we’re shooting with our main cast, we’re shooting with stunt performers for the portions that are too dangerous, and it was a very complex process to build that.”
How did Prague feel about you filming this scene?
ANTHONY: “We’re grateful to everyone in Prague, Prague’s an amazing filmmaking center, they have amazing crew there, and the people are very supportive of filmmaking. So, you can only pull something that complex off at a place like Prague.”
Why did you choose to shoot on location in Prague rather than on a soundstage?
JOE: “It would have been tough and required a lot of VFX. I mean, that is a very tactile sequence, you know? It’s interesting, whenever you go into a town, we did this with Winter Soldier, we shut down a freeway. We went back to Cleveland, our hometown, to shoot the movie and everyone was very happy, and then we shut down the freeway for two weeks and…”
ANTHONY: “I was gonna say, they weren’t that happy.”
JOE: “And then they weren’t happy. It was very short lived.”
ANTHONY: “Chris [Evans] can call us on that one.”
JOE: “I don’t think we can go back to Prague or Cleveland, but we’re very grateful that we were able to shoot on location.”
You have such a great cast taking part in this movie, how much collaboration did they have in their characters and the story?
JOE: “It’s really important to us to work with the cast on the scripts. We want them to have emotional ownership over the characters. Everyone is a great storyteller, as well as an incredible actor. They all have an amazing wealth of experience. And we encourage all of our collaborators to bring that to the table. You know, the script, for us, Anthony and I like to prepare so that we can throw things away. That’s a really, it’s an old adage in filmmaking, so we’re always available to what’s happening in the moment.
If there’s something organic or funny, or if somebody says something funny, it doesn’t matter where it comes from, if it works with the character and it works with the story, we’ll try it. And everyone brought dialogue, jokes, you know, character accents in a way that really filled out the film and made it much more colorful.”
Any collaborative moments that come to mind?
ANTHONY: Ryan [Gosling] reminded me of something where he was in a car with Ana and he tried to joke, and I walked up to him after the take and I said, ‘Yeah, that’ll never make the movie.’”
Did the line make the movie?
ANTHONY: “The line actually made the trailer.”
The movie is based off one book in a series, is there a chance we could be getting more The Gray Man content?
ANTHONY: “Look, part of our motivation to assemble a cast like this, an amazing cast like this who can embody so many interesting characters, was the hope of creating sort of a universe that you wanted to follow all of them, either forward or backward from this moment in time that we caught in this first movie. So yes, hopefully, there will be more stories to tell in The Gray Man world.”
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Photo credit: Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Netflix