Ahead of the release of Rebel Moon this weekend, I got to sit down and chat with Sofia Boutella and Ed Skrein about their parts in this epic puzzle.
They had a lot to say about the upcoming sci-fi epic. Sofia Boutella and Ed Skrein discussed their excitement about the script. Skrein described it as, “exciting and nerve-wracking”. Sofia described it as terrifying. She continued by discussing what it felt like trying to understand the vastness of the world that Snyder had built.
Terror and imagination
“Yeah, I was terrified. I don’t know why I do that to myself, I always start something thinking, how am I going to do it? And I always, think when the possibilities are endless, such as starting a project, because it could go one way that I always wonder, Where do I start? And then you I always need from where I started, what is going to be my first choice. But when the possibilities are endless?”
“For some reason, I always think how am I going to do this? Now, it’s just it doesn’t mean that I don’t think I can do it. But it’s just I know, I will do that to myself. In the end, I know I will, I will be narrowed down. But at first, it’s so vast, and I need to start to bring things together. And little by little you start shaping what you’re working on. But I first read it and I thought, wow, yeah, it’s so vague. Yeah, the world is so giant. “
“And I thought also wanting to know as much as I possibly could. And talking with Zack, the more I spoke to him, the more I realised how much I did not know. And an hour, I was like, how am I get this man’s time to get, you know, as much as I could for so every time I kept asking questions, and more and more about the myths that he wrote, and where we’ve come from and what, what really is the situation of our world? As actors, I think we are, it’s our responsibility to make up as much as possible from our own imagination. But the more you can get from your director who has built this entire world, the better.”
Preparation, preparation, preparation
Skrein then went into great detail about how it felt to build up to the incredible feat in the film, “I really feel like it was an overwhelming proposition, seeing what we were gonna have to do.”
“In 2009, I and two of my friends began training to swim from England to France across the channel. And I remember thinking, How the hell am I going to do this, you know, and the temperature of the water and everything?”
“So what we began with was, okay, let’s go to the local swimming pool, and you swim inside a swimming pool, which is you know, 27 degrees, which is very warm, which is got lane ropes and you 25 metres there and back. And then you go into the 50-metre pool, the outdoor one, which is, I think it was 21 degrees or whatever, then you go to the unheated one. Then you begin to go down to the sea and swim in the harbour. Here you begin with 20 minutes, then you go for 2 minutes, then an hour before you know what you’re doing two hours, three hours, you go to the Lake District and swimming water that’s colder than you’re going to swim in the channel, you know, 11 degrees.”
“And you can really only handle a short amount of time in there. You do all of this preparation over the space of a year. So when it comes to this gargantuan task, you just get in and swim. And it was very much me it’s about laying out a roadmap of preparation. And that’s why I go crazy in preparation.”
“And I kind of didn’t stop that craziness in preparation, a lot of my friends until I’d finished the shoot a lot of my friends and family and everyone recognised like, yeah, it’s gone, like, gone deep and weird into this like, and I couldn’t, I couldn’t let off until I wrapped. And then when I wrapped, I could try to open the pressure valve and let the steam out.”
Rebel Moon, a challenge, but a welcome one.
Skrein then went on to describe how he felt when the production ended, “So all of these things that give you more self-belief I feel Rebel Moon has helped me so much as an actor, and also like, the challenges of Rebel Moon, emotionally, spiritually, they really did help me grow and become like a better person.”
Rebel Moon has left an impression on its cast and I quite liked it myself. Check out my review here. Stay tuned to Scannain for more news, reviews and interviews.