Chris, how much of your stunts did you do? Was it a big percentage or small? How’d you keep yourself safe through it and did you ever think you were in any jeopardy?
Chris Pine: I did plenty of my own stunts. I enjoy doing them. I think most actors do it. You get to live out boyhood fantasies and people make sure that you’re doing it safely. I was on a very large motorcycle without a helmet for a lot of the time, which I’m not sure I would do again. I was driving through the streets of New York on the first day and it was a lot of fun.
The most fun I had I think and one of the best moments of the film from my point of view is the scene that I have with the security guy in the bathroom towards the beginning of the film when I first arrive in Russia. I didn’t get to do too much of it in the last Star Trek but I like that kind of hand-to-hand combat and I like the fact that Jack, as much as he had training in the Marines, isn’t a trained killing professional. And so, it was kind of a MacGyver moment of trying to figure out how to defeat the large bad guy when you’re not quite as big and not quite as ferocious or talented with your fists. We had a great stunt team behind us. Vic Armstrong, who’s been around for a long time, is one of the best in the business. He was our second unit guy and our stunt coordinator. That was a lot of fun.
What do you think of this film’s franchise potential? Do you think this one has it?
Chris Pine: Obviously, we’re in a corporate world and we’ll see what Paramount thinks of it and if people like it and come to see it. I would love to do it again. I think it’s a really interesting time for a spy franchise in 2014. We’ve seen it obviously done in the Cold War in the late 80’s and 90’s with Harrison and Alec, but right now, given the interconnectivity of the world, given kind of the gray morality of politics and spydom and all that, there’s great fertile ground to be mined for good stories.
Kevin, you were originally going to play Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October. I was wondering if you were already well versed by the time you came in to play the mentor role to Jack in this film?
Kevin Costner: The mentor role is always that thing of, what can you offer a younger man and what can you offer a younger woman. That thing is in your level of experience, and so that by definition is the mentor if you have a level of experience. If you read it on paper, that’s the role that was meant for me. It was inhabited perfectly.
Chris did his role, and what I liked about it was that I wasn’t just a person at a desk on a phone going, “Get the hell out of there. What the hell are you doing? Well, you need to do it faster.” Kenneth was able to say, “Wait a second. I want to incorporate some of your skill set into this.” So I could take the gloves off so to speak and become involved and bring a physical presence and team up with him at the right moment.
I thought that was unusual for the mentor role. Usually they’re back in Washington or they’re in a big, giant control room. In this instance, we were always fairly close together and trying to sort it out a little bit together. And, as the movie progresses, you see that he just possesses a lot of intuitive skills, whether it’s being out of set, how to survive or to process a lot of information in a very quick way, which I actually asked him a couple of times to slow down, remembering that I’m in another century (laughs).
Kenneth, I wanted to commend you on your Russian and wondered if you could talk about what you did to learn to speak Russian?
Kenneth Branagh: A long time in advance, I started to listen to Russian television, Russian radio, and a dialect coach who introduced me to the sound of the language. I wasn’t really familiar with all its varieties. It’s tonally a bit different with a little less range. Then I learned it phonetically while walking the dog. We have a dog in this movie. The next dog in the next Jack Ryan film, if there is one, will be my dog who can now speak Russian (laughs). I’m looking forward to seeing her in it.