On the set of The Losers, Jeffrey Dean Morgan has a big grin on his face, even though he looks like hell close to the end of the dayâs shooting. In addition to makeup bruises up and down his face, Jeffrey has been shooting a secret scene we arenât privy to but which involved intense action in his characterâs black blazer, not the most pleasant attire for San Juanâs unforgiving humidity.
Q: What has shooting this film been like? We see a little bit of makeup on your forehead.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan: Thatâs not makeup. That was a head-butt that went awry. It been awesome. Other than the unrelenting heat that youâre now experiencing. Itâs been a really great shoot and a really great cast. Itâs fun getting to work every day unlike âWatchmenâ where I worked once a week. Iâm here every day and thatâs a lot of time to interpret this character and have fun with it. Itâs good.
Q: Tell us a little about the character.
Morgan: Frank Clay is a special forces colonel and itâs about this group of guys who kind of get set up and itâs the story of revenge and Iâm the leader of this group. Thereâs a lot of kicking ass. A lot of explosions. A lot of fights. A lot of all the stuff that we go to movies for. What this is is Joel Silver doing what Joel Silver became Joel Silver for doing with the âDie Hardsâ and the âPredators.â Itâs very much a movie reminiscent of those old kind of action movies. Thereâs some tongue-in-cheek humor and a little sex. All that stuff that we like. All the stuff I like.
Q: Coming off of âWatchmen,â how is this character similar or different to playing the Comedian?
Morgan: This guy has a real, actually much better sense of humor than the Comedian did. Heâs not nihilistic. Itâs completely different. This is much lighter. A much lighter load for me. Thereâs also kind of room for me to interpret this as a project where, in âWatchmen,â you had to â look, I was playing the Comedian in the most revered comic book ever written. I was confined to that. In this, I could fine-tune a lot of what I thought Frank Clay is and get to play with it a lot more. In âWatchmenâ I didnât want to change an ounce of the dialogue. For this, I could play around and have more fun. Itâs more freedom as an actor to just mess around with stuff. Itâs very refreshing.
Q: In the comic book, Clay is kind of the guy who takes the sh*t with Max most personally. How do you work in being the leader and the guy who has to pull things together for everyone else?
Morgan: As a character? He does take the stuff with Max exceedingly hard. Harder than everyone else. He probably makes a lot of bad decisions along the way. I think a lot of this movie has to do with Clay not coming to terms with the fact that heâs not doing whatâs best for his team.
Q: We heard that you were doing a little diva stuff and just didnât want to talk to us. Is that true?
Morgan: I canât believe the way words leak around here. Is that the director that told you that? Because if it was then itâs true. No, I was going to have lunch with you, but my dog came out and crapped in front of everybody so I had to go clean it up.
Q: What is the story on this dog? You saved a dog while you were here?
Morgan: I did. The first week of filming. He was hanging around base camp and was just a pup. He was maybe four months old and somebody hit it. They were like, âWe have to put this dog downâ and, instead, I paid the vet bill. There are so many strays. Theyâre everywhere.
Q: Whatâs his name?
Morgan: His name is Bandit. Or Bandito while weâre here.
Q: So this is a permanent addition to your life?
Morgan: I think it is. Well, yeah. After paying the $4,000 vet bill, he better learn to be my good dog now. Because heâs not very good at this point.
Q: What was the scene that you were shooting just now?
Morgan: We were filming a moment when Aisha confronts Clay. Itâs kind of towards the end of the movie and thereâs kind of a big, final showdown. I just escaped this van being held by guards. We come around the corner and Aisha is on my tail and she confronts him about the killing of her father and asks me if I did it. So we have a little tense standoff there. Youâll have to see what happens. Itâs a good movie, you guys. I see every f*cking movie there is, like you guys do, and the script just reminds me of the scripts that I loved when I was a kid. The good, old-fashioned action movie. Itâs a popcorn movie in every sense of the word. It has a little bit of everything.
Q: Coming off of âWatchmen,â were you concerned about doing another graphic novel adaptation?
Morgan: No, I love it. We talked briefly about that. Thereâs so many people now. Itâs kind of an untapped world, this comic book world. I read the same scripts over and over again and comic books are just apt. Thereâs this big, wide universe out there. If youâve seen the stuff that has come out and the stuff that theyâre making, itâs a trend thatâs going to continue for a while. Iâm happy to be in this world. Iâm loving it. I love this. I could do comic book movies forever.
Q: Are there any other comic book properties that you have your eyes on?
Morgan: You know, theyâre making âLoboâ right now. That would be cool. âLoboâ would be very cool. I donât think that Iâm as big as Lobo is, but if you could, like, transplant Mickey Rourkeâs body on my head, that would be just great. But I donât know. Itâs an untapped world for me as well. Every time I kind of hear about something I go out and get the book or I look it up on one of your guysâ sites. Weâll see. Youâre always looking for material thatâs kind of smart and fun and this seems to be where it is right now. The studios are really gravitating towards it. More than Iâve ever seen them gravitate towards anything in a long time. Comic books are really the thing right now and I donât see that going away for at least the next couple of years.
Q: Well, you do have an in with Joel Silver doing this and doing that.
Morgan: Thatâs true. And I think that Akiva Goldsman is doing it as well. So I do have an in. Iâll be elbowing somebody soon.
Q: Have you had a chance to check out the longer Directorâs Cut of âWatchmenâ on DVD?
Morgan: No. I think that when I saw you last at the âStar Trekâ premiere, I think I left immediately after that and went to New Mexico and shot âThe Resident.â I came straight from New Mexico to here. I havenât been home since May. April. I havenât been home since April. I havenât seen my house. And no one sent me a âWatchmenâ DVD. *ssholes. I donât know if youâve seen much of Puerto Rico, but I donât know where the Blockbuster is. So I havenât found my local Blockbuster yet. I hear that Iâve got a couple at home, so Iâll see it soon. I hear itâs cool. Itâs got some cool stuff and Zack [Snyder] does some nifty things. Iâm anxious to see it.
Q: This is the first big movie that youâre really carrying. What is that like, for you, playing the leading man?
Morgan: I have to be a lot more serious and on-time. Set an example. No, you still do the same character work. You just donât have a lot of down time. On this movie, I donât know how long weâve been here. I think two months. I think I had one day off and that day off I spent on the set. I think thatâs the one thing that changes. It is different. Thatâs only kind of a joke when I say that you have to set an example. Thatâs kind of the job of anyone who is in the kind of position that Iâm lucky enough to be in right now. I am in every scene and you want to make sure that you know your job and do your job right and donât f*ck around too much. I want a studio to take a chance on me after this movie as well. Joel [Silver] and Akiva [Goldman] and Warner Bros. have put a lot on me and given me a lot of trust. A lot of that has to do with coming off âWatchmen.â Itâs just a big deal for me. I hope that weâre making the movie that I think we are making. The stuff Iâve seen is awesome and Iâm exceedingly proud of it. I think itâs going to be a really great, fun movie.
Q: Was there anything in the graphic novel that really helped you identify with your character or did it all come from the script?
Morgan: No, I enjoyed the graphic novel a lot. I think that Andy [Diggle] and Jock did an amazing job. Itâs a very smart graphic novel and it has a certain flow to it that really moves. I think thatâs a trend in the graphic novels that have come out in the last five to ten years. I think that the way it moves is unlike comic books as they were when I was a kid, which Iâm sort of used to. But, certainly, as I did in âWatchmen,â itâs a great place to kind of jump off and start going into this and having all the initial meetings. There were all sorts of conversations about the changing of the wardrobe. Iâm always a stickler. I was like, âthe guy wears a black suit. Thatâs all he wears. Heâs got one, maybe.â Thatâs it. It doesnât matter the situation. Having a graphic novel like that is, like ââWatchmenââ just such a great foundation. Then, as an actor, thereâs more that you can bring to it and pile on. But I always go back to that. In my trailer, Iâve got big posters of Clay and other characters. Clay is a hard man and I think that what Iâve brought to him is a little bit more of a sense of humor. A little bit more of that âLethal Weaponâ kind of sense of humor. That kind of buddy thing. Weâre trying to do that and I think weâre accomplishing it very well.
Q: Weâre hearing a lot of âLethal Weapon,â âDie Hard.â Is that kind of the mood or tone of this one?
Morgan: Yeah. Originally, when I first met with Joel and Akiva, it was kind of the template and the pace we wanted for this movie, to be very reminiscent of those films, which got me very excited. It was really the kind of movie I wanted to make. If Iâm going to do this and go on to be a lead in a studio film, thatâs what I gravitate towards, those types of movies. This is, I think, Joelâs movie to bring him back to the movies he made 15, 20 years ago. Thatâs the movie we all wanted to make.
Q: How awesome is it firing all these guns and doing all this action?
Morgan: Itâs super-fun. The guy thatâs training us is named Harry Humphries. I donât know if youâve every heard of him, but he did all the [Jerry] Bruckheimer [films] and all the âDie Hardsâ and that type of stuff. Heâs an amazing dude and heâs got all the stories. I was talking to him the other day and we were talking about something hurting on my body. I think we were doing a fight sequence and he said, âWell, it doesnât hurt as much as getting shot three times.â Heâs just that guy. Itâs awesome. Itâs fun as hell. Shooting guns and fighting are two of my most favorite things to do at this point.
Q: How did you work on âWatchmenâ actually help you as an actor in this film?
Morgan: The training we did on âWatchmenâ was kind of so intense. I remember talking to you guys about the fight sequences and all the training we did. I had no time to do the training before this film. I came straight from another movie and started working immediately. All the training I did was actually with a lot of the same stunt guys. I was able to walk right in and know what I was doing. So that helped. All the exclusive fight training for âWatchmenâ helped a lot with this one. I fight a lot in this movie, too.
Q: How do you expect fans of the graphic novel to respond to your take on the character?
Morgan: The scriptâs great. Jamie Vanderbilt who wrote it is an amazing writer. I think the only thing that might be⌠well, no because thereâs a sense of humor in the graphic novel as well. Clay in the comic doesnât have maybe as much as a sense of humor as I do in the movie, but even then I play it pretty straight. I play it pretty f*cking straight. Itâs maybe not as accurate as, say, the Comedian was, but Iâm having a little more fun with it. I think people should be real happy. Fans of the book are going to like the movie because itâs really fast. Thereâs no time for getting bored. âWatchmen,â I understand a lot of peopleâs reaction and why they didnât get it. If you werenât a fan of the graphic novel, you werenât going to get it. Anybody can see this movie. Itâll make fans of the graphic novel happy and people who have never seen the graphic novel happy.
Q: Were you able to riff offscript at all or was everything pretty tightly scripted?
Morgan: No, no. I get to adlib. Not a lot but if thereâs something shooting that day and I come up with something, generally whatever my idea is, it can be worked in because I put enough thought into it. You just check with people first. You donât just throw it out there. You donât want to ruffle too many feathers. But they were real good on letting me kind of run with it.
Q: We heard thereâs a bit of a competition to be one of the two people who gets to say âF*ck.â
Morgan: Thatâs so true. You know, the funny thing is, everybody says âf*ckâ in every scene. Every scene, someone is saying âf*ckâ in the hopes that itâll make it into the movie. Iâm waiting. I know when my âf*ckâ is going to come. I have it in my head. I know my âf*ck,â dammit, and Iâm choosing it. I sort of called the producers and said, âLook, if Iâm going to be the lead in this movie, you have to give me one of the âf*cksâ. I donât even care about the money thing. I just gotta say âf*ck.'â Itâs funny, though, in a PG-13 movie. I never even thought about that before. You know, on âWatchmenâ you didnât even think about stuff like that. You forget and then you start to get into the scene where itâs going to get jumbled up. Invariably, you want to say âf*ckâ. Especially in the middle of a fight or one of these action sequences. Thatâs just kind of the natural reaction. There have been a lot of âf*cksâ and none of them are going to make it. My âf*ckâ, though? Itâll be there.
Q: Do you have any plans to go back to âSupernaturalâ or are you too busy with films?
Morgan: I donât know. I just read somewhere that [Eric] Kripke wants me back. That guy, I think heâs probably lying, but if it is, in fact, their last year, Iâd like to come back. If it really is going to be cancelled after this year, Iâd like to come back. Iâve been saying for the last four years that that storyline got cut out too soon. Iâd love to go back for at least one episode or something. I love those guys. I love Jared and Jenson so much. Weâll see. No one has contacted me.
Q: Iâve heard that heâs planning on wrapping up the arc that started with season one this season and possibly doing a new kind of thing.
Morgan: I heard that, too. Getting new actors and everything. Jared and Jenson wouldnât even be in it. Just to fulfill his seven years. I donât know if thatâs even allowed and, by the way, I canât imagine Warner Bros. saying,âYeah, thatâs cool. You can get rid of Jared and Jenson.â They were going to, like, take on secondary characters, maybe. I just donât see that happening. If you take out Jared and Jenson, youâre going to lose 90 percent of your audience, probably. I canât imagine them doing that, but it makes for a great radar if you say that kind of stuff. I canât imagine that. Warner Bros. is just like, âYeah, whatever dude. Weâll see you next year.â But yeah. Iâd love to go back. I donât know how Iâd find the time, but weâll see.
Q: For you, what has been the most challenging of these action-based set pieces?
Morgan: Well, everythingâs a lot harder as you get older. Iâm 43 now. The pavement gets harder. Take two. Take three. I canât get up anymore. Even getting out of bed in the morning is now an effort. Any of the fight stuff. I donât know if youâve talked to Zoe yet, but any of the big fight between the two of us the last couple of days. Itâs in a hotel room and itâs burning around us and, by the way, it really was burning. I like to try to man up, especially when thereâs girls around and theyâre going to be hitting you with stuff. You want to take those hits. You say, âOh, sure. You can hit me with that chair. You can throw the TV at me.â Because you donât want to be a big pussy. Let me tell you something: until you get hit by a TV four times or a chairâwhich is balsa wood by the way, but the cushion is still steelâI got a bruise from here to here that looks like a two by four. You know, itâs not cool anymore. Iâm not going to be a man anymore. Iâm just going to sit in my trailer and cry and let stuntmen do it. Itâs the fighting stuff. Any of the hand-to-hand stuff. We had a sequence that was out in the jungle and we were running after a helicopter. It was maybe a 75 yard dash. I ripped my hamstring because it was the five of us, all the guys. Weâre in our jungle gear with all our weapons. Weâre loaded up. We had 60 pounds of extra stuff on us on a 150 degree day. Weâre just sprinting and, of course, your ego gets you and it turns into a race. Halfway through, it doesnât matter what order you were in anymore. Youâre just trying to beat the other guy up the hill. Iâm way too old for that stuff, trying to chase Chris Evans up a hill. Heâs just 25 years old. I ainât gonna win and I ripped my hamstring. Everything gets harder as you get older, man. I canât really pick out one thing thatâs difficult. Itâs all hard.
Q: How does that affect filming, when you injure yourself in that way?
Morgan: Well, I havenât missed a day. Iâve had to go to therapy every morning. I have a therapist come and run electrodes through my muscles and ice up a lot. You just keep working. You work through it.
Q: It seems like one of the big differences between this and âWatchmenâ is that Zack does everything so stylized and this seems so fast. Is that a splash-of-cold-water kind of change?
Morgan: âWatchmenâ we took like nine days to film an opening fight scene. That fight scene, I canât remember, came out to, like, 2 minutes long. We shot a longer fight scene than that in two days here and it was all us. Yeah, I got a little spoiled with the Zack Snyder way of shooting an action sequence. You shoot one punch and it takes half a day. Itâs not the real deal. And by the way, he makes you train like youâre going to be in fights, but he shoots them so stylized and different. Sylvain is a much, much different director than that. We also donât have 120 days to make a movie. Weâre shooting this in 50 days. You feel that. My body feels it. Iâm ready to take a nap and ice for a while after this scene.
Q: Weâve seen how quickly youâre shooting today. Does that help you, as an actor, keep moving?
Morgan: I like it. I feel like if you shoot one scene all day long or you take two days to do a scene, that scene is going to be stale. My feeling is that the first two takes are going to be the takes that you want. Those generally, in my experience, are going to be the best takes. Then youâre just hoping that the camera got it. A lot of why weâre doing scenes more than one or two times is because the camera went out of focus or we have to be in a different spot or they caught something that maybe they didnât see in the rehearsal. So you do a lot of that. Also, youâre trying to shoot a movie in 50 days so just inherently have to move faster. You donât have the luxury of shooting a scene in a day. A three page scene, in some movies, you can shoot in one or two days, depending on if thereâs action or non-action. Even if itâs just f*cking sitting out talking. In this movie, weâre ripping through it. Big action scenes are being shot fast. Thatâs rare. Weâre blowing sh*t up. There three to four cameras going so that helps.
Q: Youâve been shooting for a number of months. Are you thinking about a break after this or are you thinking about just jumping back in?
Morgan: Iâm jumping back in. I go to work on something about ten days after Iâve finished shooting this. I donât know if I can say. Itâs a remake of a movie that I love. I donât know if I can tell you yet. I knew you were going to ask. F*ck. âRed Dawn.â I just love that f*cking movie, ever since I was a kid. I guess Iâm more or less the old Powers Booth character. Thereâs all the kids and Powers Booth is the pilot that lands in the film and kind of helps them take down the bad guys. Blow communism away. Itâs a really good, young cast. Iâll be the old guy in it, which is cool. The guy who is directing it is Dan Bradley who is the second unit director on all the âBourneâ movies and the âSpider-Manâ movies. Heâs the real deal. A real good, action director and apparently a really good, stylized director with actors anyway. Iâm very much looking forward to it. But Iâm going straight from here to Detroit which I canât imagine at this point.
Q: Does Bandit get to come along?
Morgan: I think Bandit and Bisou, both my dogs, get to come along for that one, yeah.
Q: Did you go into any comic book stores when you were research for âThe Losersâ?
Morgan: Yes. I went into a comic book store in New York and there was Comedian shit everywhere. It was pretty amazing. I didnât even get the graphic novels. The comic book store I went to in New York didnât have them, so Iâve got about 50 loose comic books.
Q: When you were buying it, were they just sort of smiling?
Morgan: Yeah, I actually signed a bunch of sh*t for them. I ended up signing a bunch of Comedian dolls and said, âGood luck trying to get a couple extra bucks on that.â
Q: What did you think the first time you saw your image and the merchandising everywhere?
Morgan: It was awesome. I mean, who doesnât want to have a little doll that looks like them?
Q: Will you get action figures for this one?
Morgan: I donât know (to publicist:) Are we gonna have action figures for this one?
Publicist: I donât know. I hope so.
Morgan: Although I will dress like Clay for Halloween every year now. Itâs an easy costume.
Q: I noticed your watch. Is that a thing for the movie, these watches?
Morgan: Itâs mine. This is my watch. I have this weird allergy where metal canât touch my skin. I was wearing handcuffs yesterday and I get these weird little rashes. This is my own watch and we broke it yesterday when I was strangling a guard. I ripped the little thing right off it. But do the other people have cool watches? Because mineâs the coolest. And Iâm going to say âF*ckâ in the movie.
Q: What are the pros and cons of shooting in Puerto Rico?
Morgan: Initially, you get that excitement. You guys just got here, right? You have that excitement. F*cking Puerto Rico. Nice weather. But after youâre here about two weeks, it sucks. The humidity. It hits you and you realize that your underwear is never going to be dry again. Youâre constantly sweating. You canât sleep. Puerto Rico is beautiful. I mean, I love it. But itâs hard to film here. Itâs hard to film an action movie here where youâre outside and youâre running around all day. And in a black suit. Awesome idea. Iâm glad I fought for it. But the beaches are beautiful. The waterâs insaneââŹÂŚ Right down the road. Itâs pretty. I hope you get to do something besides sit here all day. Dude, the waterâs so warm. The best part is that you go work every day and, at the end of the day, you jump in the ocean. Itâs like a bathtub. And thereâs no sharks. I did my research.
Q: You mentioned fighting for the role. Did you have to fight for this role?
Morgan: No, I didnât. I read this script initially almost four years ago. Pete Berg had written it and was directing it at that point. I had just started a movie called âAccidental Husbandâ and this script somehow came to me. I donâ t know why. I loved it. It was the one movie that I kept track of for three years. They had initially talked to me about wanting to do âJonah Hexâ and I sat down with Akiva. Warner Bros. really wanted me to do it and Akiva was also attached to this. We started talking about it and I said, âThis is the movie I really want to do.â By chance, I sat next to Pete Berg on an airplane and I was like, âHey, man. I really love your movie âLosersââ and he was like, âIâm not directing it anymore. But I might stay on as a producer.â Well the next day, literally, I landed in L.A. and met with Sylvain. We had lunch and we talked about it and that was it. That was all it took. Itâs always been a really good script. Weâve just tweaked it and Jamie Vanderbilt is awesome. Every rewrite has only gotten stronger and better and faster. I was thrilled the minute I got the call. Then there was a chance that I wasnât going to be able to do it because of the other movie I was doing. I was freaking out because, really, I was wanting to do this movie for so long. I love this character. There was a lot of âWhy is he doing this after he just did âWatchmenâ?â But theyâre totally different characters. Just because they come from the same genre of graphic novels, otherwise theyâre completely different. I think the best stories right now are coming from that world. Iâm just happy my footâs in the door. Like I said, I am not scared of a graphic novel. My agentâll say âWell, itâs another graphic novel.â I donât care. Itâs better writing than anything else thatâs out there. The characters are much better.
Source: Silas Lesnick