I was lucky to see “Rebel Moon” on the big screen, and it kicks ass! The interesting thing right now, though, looking at you two sitting together — you’re mortal enemies in the film. Presumably you’re enjoying each other’s company today.
Ed Skrein: We are.
Sofia Boutella: Yes.
On set, did you purposefully ignore or try to keep yourself separate from each other to help build the tension for those scenes together — especially when combat is involved? Did you keep out of each other’s way?
Boutella: I made sure I annoyed him. [laughs] I made sure I went into his trailer and asked him, “Hey, do you want this jersey instead?” This is a true story — we exchanged T-shirts. He said, “No problem.” There was one [day] … We all had gray T-shirts, and there was one pink one. I don’t know what happened. Then, [I said to him], “Do you want to exchange? You want this one? The pink one?” I’m like, “He is probably so pissed with me right now.”
Skrein: No — I said to you, “Pink’s my favorite color.”
Boutella: No. [laughs] For me, it’s that last scene, that last fight scene — I will never forget that. To have to hold a gun and be in a scene of such violence at 7 in the morning is … You have to really tune your brain to a certain place and do that continually for so many days. It’s quite something to condition your mind to go there. That was a lot for me.
That’s why in that fight scene that we have at the end of movie number one, in between takes, in order to stay in that element, I would try to … It was hard. We had to rehearse it together and everything, but I tried to maintain the focus to be able to stay in that level of violence internally. Otherwise, I wasn’t going to show up. But we did find, within that, ways to still make it fun. I’m not going to say that I could not make it light, personally. It was hard.
