‘Safe House’ Exclusive Interview: Lewis Tan

Moviefone recently had the pleasure of speaking with Lewis Tan about his work on ‘Safe House’, his first reaction to the screenplay, working with the cast, shooting the action sequences and collaborating on set with director Jamie Marshall.

Tan also discussed his work on the upcoming ‘Mortal Kombat II’, Karl Urban joining the cast as Johnny Cage, and if we will see Shatterstar return to the MCU anytime soon.

Related Article: ‘Safe House’ Exclusive Trailer

Lewis Tan stars in ‘Safe House’. Photo: Kat Holt.

Moviefone: To begin with, can you talk about your first reaction to the screenplay and its action-packed twist on the genre?

Lewis Tan: Me and my team were looking for something smart and grounded. The action work that I’ve been doing previously has been a little more fantasy based with ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘Shadow and Bone’, and ‘Wu Assassins’, and this type of stuff. We were looking for something smart, grounded, but still had a very visceral and a powerful storyline that we could make into a great action thriller. Leon Langford wrote a great script. When I first read it, it felt to me like a little bit of ‘Reservoir Dogs’ in a way where it’s about these Secret Service agents that witness a terrorist attack in Downtown LA, and they get stuck inside of a safe house. Once they arrive at this safe house, they realize that one of them could be part of this terrorist organization or a rat. So, they’re trying to figure out who’s the rat while they’re being attacked by terrorists. So, it puts a little bit of a spin on that ‘Reservoir Dog’s pressure. It’s not just the police are coming, it’s like every few minutes there’s something that’s happening, and it just keeps elevating. So, Leon Langford wrote this great script, and I was like, “Oh man, this is exactly what we were looking for.” So, I was very excited. That doesn’t happen often either.

MF: You mentioned ‘Reservoir Dogs’, but the movie also gives off a ‘Die Hard’ vibe. Was that movie an influence on this project?

LT: Well, ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ came to mind, and ‘Die Hard’ came to mind. Things like ‘The Raid’, obviously this isn’t really a martial art action movie, but there’s a lot of action in it. But it’s like this boiling pressure pot constantly, but the pressure is derived by the drama too, and the relationships that these people have in the room, which I’ve never done anything like that before, and I’ve been really looking forward to doing it. Then when I found out who was cast alongside of us, everybody that’s in the cast are just killers. So, it was cool.

(L to R) Ethan Embry, Holt McCallany and Lucien Laviscount in ‘Safe House’. Photo: Vertical.

MF: In the movie, the characters don’t know each other and must learn to trust each other and work together in this heightened circumstance to achieve a common goal, which is not unlike a new cast and crew coming together to make a movie. What was it like working with the cast and getting to know them while the characters are getting to know each other?

LT: I see where you’re going with that. The movie set dynamic can be a little bit tricky because there’s a lot of politics involved, there’s a lot of egos involved, and yes, it does relate to these characters in some way. When you’re on a movie set, at least in my opinion, you try to create a family where you can create something, a piece of art, and you put the ego aside, and you put all these things aside, and you try to create a piece of art together. That’s the way I like to look at it, because I think that’s the way that great art gets made. These characters just don’t trust each other. They don’t trust each other, and they’re all from different parts of the government. They are forced to work together because of violent and life-threatening situations that are surrounding them at every given moment, but they don’t trust each other at all. This cast I trusted very well, Hannah John-Kamen I knew from before, fantastic actor. Lucien Laviscount, I met, but it was interesting because we shot this movie in LA, and it’s very rare to shoot a movie out here in Los Angeles. Who would’ve thought that that would be something that I would say, but it is. We were all just excited because no one’s shot in LA for a long time. So, it was one of those things where it’s like, “Okay, this is exciting. We get to shoot here in the streets of Downtown LA. We’re blowing up cars and doing all this crazy stuff.” We had a very limited time, very limited budget, and we all wanted to make it great. So, as soon as I met and Holt (McCallany) and Ethan Embry and all these guys that are now off doing great things, we were all like, “Okay, guys, we got three weeks. Let’s make this a banger.”

MF: Can you talk about preparing for the action sequences and how involved are you with the fight choreography?

LT: So, Jamie Marshall is no stranger to action. He’s worked on a lot of great movies like ‘Den of Thieves’, and Arnold Chun, the action choreographer/stunt coordinator, is a very close friend of mine. I worked with Arnold on ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End’, when I was doing stunts when I was 18 years old. So, we go way back. He’s super talented, and my approach when it comes to that is I like to work with really great talented people, and then those people mixed with my background in action, we collaborate, and we find a nice middle ground. That’s usually how it works, unless what they present is incredible and doesn’t need to be touched. But it’s nice to put a little bit of the character’s flair on it. So, there was some collaboration. We didn’t have a lot of rehearsal time. We had maybe a few days, which I’m used to at this point, but obviously, you wish for more. My character is a Secret Service agent. He comes from a military background. It’s not martial arts, it’s more realistic fighting and guns, and using whatever you can around you, smart, survival skills that a real agent would use. We had advisors there from SAS and from the police and people that were there to make sure that we were making it look authentic. I did my best to do that.

(L to R) Hannah John-Kamen and Lucien Laviscount in ‘Safe House’. Photo: Vertical.

MF: Do you think that the action says as much about the character as the story does?

LT: That’s a great question. Yeah, 1000%. It was the great Stella Adler that said, “Acting is everything else in between the words.” I agree with that because the words are only one part of it. It’s everything you say in between. It’s the energy that you’re giving off. When it comes to action, nothing speaks louder than action, right? Action speaks louder than words and that’s true. It’s like you can see how people respond and how they think and how their emotions are based on the things that they’re doing. So, that’s why it must be crucial, and it must be definitive and truthful within the character. In this case, it’s more like smart thinking and they’re in a situation where they’re dealing with the unknown and they’re trying to survive, and they’re using all the skills that they must survive. So, we put a little flair on it, you know what I mean?

MF: What was it like collaborating with director Jamie Marshall on set?

LT: Oh, Jamie Marshall is just a legend. He’s very calm and articulate. He’s very patient. He was under a lot of pressure, with a short amount of time, a lot to do, a lot of action, a lot of dialogue, a lot of everything. He was just very calm and collaborative leader of the set. He’s just got a great demeanor about him. He loves movies, and he’s very willing to sit there and discuss things. But we did three intensive days of preparation with the script. So normally, when you get onto a set, people talk, and then two hours go by of people trying to decide whether they’re going to do what the script says that day. But if you do it previously, then you don’t have to have those discussions on set, and things can be much quicker. So, that’s what we did. Jamie was like, “Listen, guys, now’s the time to say anything you need to say before we get to the set. Then we need to go, we need to run and gun because we got a limited time here.”

Lewis Tan in ‘Mortal Kombat’. Photo: Warner Bros.

MF: What can you tell us about ‘Mortal Kombat II’, which is scheduled to be released next year?

LT: Well, the reception we had at New York Comic-Con was incredible. Everybody went crazy over some of the footage that they saw. I believe there was a fight scene that they showed between Johnny Cage and Baraka. The fans are just the best fans in the world. All I can say is this, it was a learning process on the first movie. It’s a big IP. There’s 100 characters, it’s a lot to get right. The producer, Todd Garner, is smart. He listens to the fans, and he listens to what people are saying online. Also, he brought in Ed Boon (creator of the game) to really collaborate with us on the second movie. So, the second movie just feels so much bigger. We have the tournament, they let the fight team really run wild with this, which I was really hoping for, and they deliver. So, the film is beyond what I thought it was going to be. When I first saw it, I left the theater like, “Oh God, that is way better than I thought.” There’s a reason why they just greenlit a third one. That’s all I’m going to say.

MF: What was it like working with Karl Urban and can you talk about his take on Johnny Cage?

LT: Karl’s a gentleman, and a funny guy. He took it very seriously. He worked hard too; he knows the type of pressure that it is to play a character like that in a franchise like this that everybody loves. He’s obviously a seasoned legend, but he did a really great job. He did a different type of Johnny Cage than most people were expecting. He took a big swing on it, and it really paid off. He kills it in the movie. People are going to love this. It’s funny because my character in the first movie was the one that was like, “What is Mortal Kombat?” Now, Johnny Cage is put in that position of “What is this? And then what’s going on? How come he’s shooting flames out of his hands?” But as the film goes on, he sinks into that Johnny Cage superstar, and it comes out slowly. So, it’s a great performance and a good character arc, and it’s got a lot more places to go after this as well.

(Right) Karl Urban as Johnny Cage in ‘Mortal Kombat 2’. Photo: Warner Bros.

MF: Finally, when do you think we will see Shatterstar return to the MCU and is there any other Marvel character that you would like to see him team up with?

LT: I hope so, man. I think Shatterstar is such an interesting character, and if we made a movie about Mojoworld where it had this ‘Mad Max’ meets ‘Blade Runner’ type of vibe, that is very relevant to now, because Mojoworld is all about entertainment. They’ve got to the point in their world where they live stream these death matches, and it’s like watching Channel 9 at 1:00 p.m. in the middle of the day, some soap opera or something. So, I just think that if we’re not careful, we might be heading in that direction. But also, I think it’d be a hilarious and a fun film. So, yeah, man, I’m here. I’m ready to do it. But if not, there’s some other areas into the Marvel world that I could be venturing into. So, we’ll see. That’s all I can say. The Shatterstar character, it’s not been fully fleshed out yet. It’s just been cool cameos and funny scenes, but it hasn’t really been fleshed out, per se. So, I’d like to see it give its proper due diligence.

‘Safe House’ opens in theaters, on digital and On-Demand beginning October 31st .

What is the plot of ‘Safe House’?

Six federal agents in hiding after a Los Angeles terror attack grow suspicious of each other as they realize the perpetrator could be among them.

Who is in the cast of ‘Safe House’?

• Lucien Laviscount as Anderson
• Hannah John-Kamen as Agent Owens
• Ethan Embry as Sorello
• Lewis Tan as Agent Choi
• Holt McCallany as Halton
• Adam Levy as Victor

Lewis Tan stars in ‘Safe House’.

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