World-famous actor, maker of beverages and king of Twitter quips (mostly at his wife / children’s expense), Ryan Reynolds occasionally dabbles in laugh-out-loud movie play. And this summer, he’s back on the big screen – returning to cinemas around the world, and right here in the UAE, with gaming-inspired flick Free Guy, which follows a bank teller who suddenly becomes aware he’s a background character in an open world video game – and one that will soon be taken offline. Compelling, crackers and possibly the most timely movie of the year so far, here Reynolds spills all.
What made you want to be part of Free Guy?
I fell in love with the central conceit: a bank teller who discovers he’s a background character in an open world violent video game… That to me was fascinating. I just fell in love with the character of Guy who is looking for some kind of authorship in his life and some semblance of belonging. I remember immediately sending it to Shawn Levy because we’ve wanted to work together for years. I have been a fan of his for a long time – not just as an artist, but as a person.
What is it about Shawn Levy that makes him the ideal director for Free Guy?
I think he saw the same things in the story that I did. I miss wish-fulfillment storytelling, and this got me thinking about that, and I think it got Shawn in a similar way too. We knew it was going to be a tremendous amount of work, so we sat down with screenwriter Zak Penn to go through every scene of the script and make sure that we were world-building in the right way. Shawn is the exact guy you want to be building worlds with, because, not only has he had vast experience in that area, he’s very good at it.
We were standing on the shoulders of giants because so much of what we were aiming for was the kind of feel that Back to the Future had, which is a wish-fulfillment movie that is timeless in a sense. You can watch it now and have the same experience you did back in 1985, which is the case with most wish-fulfillment movies. We wanted to populate this movie with as many details and Easter eggs as possible, so on repeated viewings, you see something new.
What can you tell us about Guy?
Guy has a childlike innocence about him. He has a very rote kind of pattern that he goes through every day. He’s obscenely optimistic, but then he meets this woman, Milly /MolotovGirl, who helps him grow, and I think that is something a lot of people can relate to. She helps him grow in interesting and unique ways and he gains agency and an ability to begin thinking for himself as a result. Guy is stepping out of the background and speaking to so much of what’s happened and is going on in the world, probably now more than even when we started working on the movie. It is rare that you get a script or find a character who has such a clearly defined arc, and I loved that about this script. Also, to speak a little bit more globally about the movie, you can take all the different elements of this story and superimpose them with what’s happening in the world right now.
What can you tell us about Jodie Comer as Milly / Molotovgirl?
We read so many truly amazing actresses who were just epic, I mean, one after another…they were each incredible. Jodie was one of our last auditions, and it was like you were watching Meryl Streep in her first film role… It was one of those magic moments that I don’t think I’ll ever forget. I remember sucking in the scene with her because I was outside of my own body watching. I was just really caught off guard by how nuanced she was with her work and just how good she was. Even when she thought she wasn’t good she was still better than I could ever be…she was just so present. We all love Killing Eve and we knew she was the person who plays Villanelle so we thought, let’s see how this goes, and sure enough, she was mind-blowing.
What about Lil Rel Howery, who plays Buddy?
You always want somebody who is nimble in comedy, but the actors we cast in the film also have a depth to them that is undeniable. Lil Rel Howery is the perfect example of a guy who we cast thinking he would be firing off joke after joke and how great it would be to have him take some of the load off me, allowing me to push the narrative a bit more. But in addition to being funny, Rel was also heartbreaking. He is beautiful in every scene, and that’s the stuff you can’t plan for and that’s the stuff that you’ve got to be ready to bottle as soon as you see it, and thankfully we did that and captured some of those moments on camera.
What is the significance of the Blue Shirt Guy in the story?
The blue shirt was my wife’s suggestion. She didn’t suggest the actual blue shirt but she gave us the impetus for the idea. I was shooting a movie in Abu Dhabi and was looking to find a way to make Guy look and feel very real and grounded within his world, but also iconic at the same time, and that’s a tough thing to do. We had him changing his outfit every day like everyone else in every other movie, and then it was Blake who said we should think about a Halloween costume. Some of the best movies have characters that spawn Halloween costumes where trick-or-treaters show up and you immediately know who they are dressed as.
So I kept thinking about Guy through the lens of trick-or-treaters and Halloween and people dressing up and asking myself, “what is something that everyone would just immediately recognise?” and the blue shirt and khaki pants sort of stuck with us. From then on we stopped calling him Guy and started referring to him as the Blue Shirt Guy, which is even more of a generic thing to call somebody who doesn’t have an inner world or identity or anything, which spoke to his journey as well.
How would you describe Taika Watiti, who plays Antwan?
Taika is just a beast. We could have cut an entire film of just his outtakes, of just the stuff we didn’t use. He is a legend in every moment. The stuff he does and the way his mind works and how quick and reflexive he is, it’s just unreal.
Are you a big fan of video games?
I played video games as a kid but didn’t grow up with that culture. Video games are addictive and fun and I spent time playing Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto and some of those other open-world, violent videogames just to learn the constructs. The thing that I took away from those games, particularly during the pandemic, is that they offer a conduit to accessibility and community, and for a lot of people who are alone it gives them the ability to jump into this videogame world which is a community and it gives them access to that feeling of togetherness, which is so absolutely imperative to mental health. I look at videogames through a completely different lens now because of how our world has changed the way it has, and I have nothing but respect for the gamer culture.
What do you think makes this a movie worth heading to the cinema to see?
At the end of the day, this movie is just an absolute fastball of joy. It leaves you walking out of the theatre the same way I felt when I walked out of Back to the Future when I was a kid – like I was three feet off the ground. I felt a real and palpable elation after seeing that film. I dare you to not walk out of this film with a huge grin on your face. It’s just one of those kinds of films that I think is long overdue. This film is one of those visceral experiences, and it’s heartbreaking to think about the possibility of audiences not seeing a movie like this on the big screen. Assuming that all the safety protocols are in place, I can’t wait for people to experience this on the big screen with that sound that reverberates in your chest. It’s a huge part of the experience, and this is a movie with tremendous scope to it, so seeing it in that format is so important.
Free Guy is out in cinemas on August 12.
