"Shazam! Fury of the Gods" stars Zachary Levi (Shazam), Asher Angel (Billy Batson), Jack Dylan Grazer (Freddy Freeman), director David F. Sandberg and "Black Adam" stars Aldis Hodge (Hawkman), Noah Centineo (Atom Smasher), Quintessa Swindell (Cyclone) and producers Hiram Garcia and Beau Flynn discuss their DC movies in this interview with CinemaBlend.
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00:00 There's a moment where you mentioned Helen Mirren that you've watched all the Fast and Furious movies.
00:04 Wouldn't you recognize her from the Fast and Furious movies?
00:06 Listen, bro.
00:07 [music]
00:24 Is that the first time you met The Rock?
00:25 I think that was the second time.
00:27 But I mean, it feels like the first time every time, you know?
00:30 It's sick.
00:31 Yeah.
00:32 Look, I might not have as much experience as you because I'm not super old like you,
00:37 but I've seen all of the Fast and the Furious movies, lady.
00:40 It's all about family.
00:42 There's a moment where you mentioned Helen Mirren that you've watched all the Fast and
00:47 Furious movies.
00:48 Wouldn't you recognize her from the Fast and Furious movies?
00:51 Listen, bro.
00:53 She was Hespera in that moment, and I was Billy Batson.
00:57 Yeah, no, you're right.
00:59 I mean, she should have been a line in.
01:01 And you look remarkably like somebody that was in one of those, so you should know it's
01:05 all about family.
01:06 Oh, yeah, yeah, totally.
01:07 [music]
01:08 What about the newcomers on the cast?
01:12 You got Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu.
01:13 What's it like having them on set?
01:14 The coolest.
01:15 Starstruck every day.
01:17 That was amazing because we had these three parts to cast, and we were like, "Well, let's
01:20 try and get the biggest, best actresses we can."
01:25 And they said yes, which was amazing.
01:27 Helen Mirren said yes.
01:28 Lucy Liu said yes.
01:29 And then Rachel Segler, who's amazing.
01:33 I hadn't seen her in anything when we cast her because West Side Story hadn't come out
01:36 yet, but yeah, she's just amazing.
01:39 This cast is stacked.
01:40 I mean, Helen, Rachel, Lucy, they're all incredible.
01:44 They're all so nice, so welcoming.
01:46 Helen Mirren is just the greatest.
01:48 Rachel and Lucy, I'm in love with all three of them.
01:51 They're my favorite girls in the world.
01:53 I love my life.
01:54 Second movies can be darker.
01:56 Empire Strikes Back type twists, anything's in store for the cast like that?
02:00 Yeah.
02:01 Yes, period.
02:02 No!
02:03 Because that would be-
02:05 You've been coached not to?
02:06 Yeah, it's hard.
02:07 You know, there's some darkness in there, certainly, and it gets pretty emotional.
02:14 This one has more action and serious moments as well because it's such a bigger movie.
02:19 The first one was kind of smaller and more personal.
02:23 And this one is personal too, but with big stakes.
02:26 Do we see some troubles for Billy, maybe?
02:30 You definitely will.
02:31 Yeah, I mean, he's matured a lot throughout his journey.
02:35 Billy's biggest thing, he's hyper-focused on maintaining his family dynamic with his
02:39 family, with the Shazamly.
02:40 And he doesn't really know what's going to happen when he's 18, so I think he's just
02:43 trying to be in the moment, be present, and enjoy being a superhero.
02:46 But I would say that this movie is definitely, it was very lighthearted, very fun, but you
02:50 definitely get to see the character arc.
02:52 The wizard gave me superpowers, and then everybody got superpowers.
02:57 Now everyone's kind of like doing their own thing, and I'm the only one trying to keep
03:00 it together.
03:03 You understand I'm a pediatrician.
03:06 Why does a pediatrician have the Annabelle doll in his office?
03:09 He probably didn't know about it.
03:10 She just shows up where she shows up.
03:12 No, but I love putting in little Easter eggs like that.
03:15 And there's more of that in the movie.
03:17 So like Easter eggs to other filmmakers and DC characters and all kinds of stuff.
03:23 There's already a superhero with a red suit with a lightning bolt on it.
03:26 Aquaman is literally huge and he's so manly.
03:29 And Batman is so cool.
03:31 And I'm just me.
03:40 You learn stuff from the first movie where it's like, "Oh, I wish I could have done that
03:43 differently or change some things up," which we were able to do in this one.
03:47 I mean, all kinds of stuff from little things like, oh, in the first movie, we tried having
03:52 a hood on the cape, which has in some comics.
03:55 And this one's like, "Oh, let's try doing it without."
03:57 And you learn how to do some things better.
03:59 We definitely were blessed to have really cool costumes in the first one.
04:03 But I think we just learned a lot of things.
04:05 We used to have practical lights in the costume to light up the gauntlets and light up the
04:10 chest, the thunderbolt.
04:12 But when you wire through a suit that you're doing stunts in and all that stuff, and you're
04:17 shooting, we shot in Toronto in the middle of winter, and wiring and all that electricity
04:20 does not work very well in really cold temperatures, batteries and all that jazz.
04:24 So we took all the electricity out of the suit, which was helpful.
04:27 But then also just had a cool redesign and gave it more of a, I don't know, kind of like
04:31 a metallic lust, kind of worn metal kind of feel to the armor, which ties it, I think,
04:37 more stylistically into a lot of the other armor patterns that you'd see in Wonder Woman
04:42 or Aquaman or things like that, you know?
04:44 In this world, there are heroes.
04:48 I put a pain in my city wherever I go.
04:55 There are villains.
04:58 Heroes don't kill people.
05:01 Well, I do.
05:05 Is the JSA formed in this movie, or are they coming together for the point of this movie?
05:11 I don't know.
05:14 You better ask Aldis.
05:17 Oh, God.
05:19 Dang it.
05:21 I can tell you that you're going to get it, of course, with Fate and Carter Hall.
05:29 You're going to get the old and the new.
05:31 You know, you're going to get OG, JSA, and then, of course, with Cyclone and Adam Smasher,
05:37 you're going to get to understand and see what it means to feel out people who are new
05:41 to the team, people who are just coming into discovering what this is.
05:45 And the bonds that you see formed there really represent what the fabric of the JSA is.
05:53 So that's all I can say safely.
05:56 What can you tell me about the team dynamic, and what do we know about them coming into
06:00 this film?
06:01 Absolutely.
06:02 So, Cyclone, played by Quintessa, so Maxine is her human name.
06:07 Maxine and Al, my character, Adam Smasher, they both provide very fresh and new but different
06:13 perspectives on Black Adam's whole ethos of morality, which, as we know, is much darker
06:18 than a usual moral compass usually turns to.
06:22 And so our dynamic, though, also, that's kind of maybe something that separates us a little
06:27 bit.
06:28 We're both in a different direction, but at the same time, we both are meta-humans who
06:34 are going to learn what it means to be a superhero, which I love.
06:38 You have Aldous and you have Pierce Brosnan, who are playing Hawkman and Dr. Fate.
06:44 They've done this for a long time.
06:45 They're fully-fledged superheroes, and they get to kind of champion us and recruit us
06:49 to the JS.
06:50 So that dynamic of having these masters, these Jedis, if you will, teaching the younger bloods
06:56 how to do this, that's part of the dynamic as well.
06:59 But I just think it's so exciting.
07:00 You get to watch two meta-humans learn what it means to become superheroes.
07:04 My vision is you'll meet the future.
07:08 You have two choices.
07:09 You can be the destroyer of this world, or you can be its savior.
07:17 Going all the way back to Gene Hackman in the first Superman, you get these great character
07:21 actors to play major characters in it.
07:24 So you get Pierce Brosnan.
07:26 What's that like?
07:27 Bro, Pierce, bro, that is a career highlight.
07:33 God dang it, it's fricking 007.
07:37 No, Pierce is one of the coolest brothers ever.
07:40 And the thing is, the thing that really impressed me the most was the fact that he's accomplished
07:44 so much in his career.
07:46 He literally is Hollywood legend royalty, right?
07:49 But he's still, when he got set, we stepping onto those beautiful sets we had built.
07:55 He's equally excited as we are.
07:57 He maintains the wonderment and the excitement.
08:01 And I love to see that because no matter how much you do in your career, you don't get
08:06 jaded.
08:07 You still have something that can keep that imagination, that creativity, that love of
08:12 the craft alive.
08:14 And he's so humble about it too.
08:16 You know what I mean?
08:17 He really is, man, that brother's a blueprint in how to be a superstar.
08:22 When we cast Fate, it just clicked.
08:24 When we cast Pierce, it was like, "Oh, there it is."
08:27 And he came in on day one with his charm, the accent, the swagger.
08:33 There's a great line in the movie that we always talk about that we love from him where
08:37 he's consoling someone and they just basically ask if things are going to be all right.
08:41 And he just delivers this great line where he's like, "We're going to take care of it.
08:45 It's what we do."
08:46 And you believe it.
08:47 It's Fate.
08:49 It was a dream to have on set.
08:50 And you could just feel when he'd walk on set, it just lifted up the entire cast and
08:54 they were just so excited to be with him.
08:55 And he really bonded with all the young actors and with DJ.
08:58 Oh, I'm telling you, it's pretty cool.
09:03 But he did.
09:04 He was the last person that we cast in the movie.
09:07 And it really was exactly what we needed.
09:10 He was the glue of the film and of the JSA.
09:12 And Pierce said to us, we were bonding with Pierce.
09:15 We were hanging out.
09:16 It's what producers want to do.
09:17 He's a legend.
09:18 And he told us, he said, "You know, I've always wanted to play a superhero.
09:23 All my peers are in Harry Potter."
09:26 And Hiram and I were kind of like, "That's crazy that he's never been part of one of
09:30 these universes before."
09:32 So what an opportunity for us to really have him at the core of this movie.
09:37 And Dwayne and him have such a cool thing happening.
09:39 So it's really, it was a real honor for us.
09:43 Black Adam.
09:45 What have your powers ever given to you?
09:54 Nothing but heartache.
09:56 Actors are always trying to get into some type of superhero franchise.
09:59 Now that you're in one, what are the challenges that really come with it?
10:02 Man, doing right by the fans, of course, right?
10:06 You really want to, you know, there's of course going to be an expectation.
10:10 You have the graphic novels, you have the comics.
10:12 You want to do right by that.
10:14 And I think that's probably the most important thing to all of us is really doing justice
10:18 to that.
10:19 No pun intended.
10:20 I love that there's not a whole lot of major expectations of previous versions of your
10:25 character.
10:26 Is that kind of freeing that you can be one of the first ones to bring him in live action?
10:29 Absolutely.
10:30 Absolutely.
10:31 I mean, there's definitely other takes of it, of course, that have come out on a screen.
10:34 But this is really the first time that we've seen Adam Smasher as a young man.
10:39 You know, as a young metahuman.
10:42 And even in the comic books, he's always like much older and has, you know, he's a fully
10:47 formed superhero.
10:48 And so with this, it's nice to be able to have a starting ground that's still not the
10:52 origin, but it's a starting ground that we can grow into that place in the comic books
10:58 and then beyond it, hopefully.
10:59 What does it mean to represent DC in two major properties here?
11:04 That's pretty special.
11:05 Yeah, it's really special.
11:06 What?
11:07 They getting it.
11:09 It's very special, man.
11:11 For me, it's amazing just because one, how rare of an opportunity is that?
11:17 And then to be doing it, you know, it's the first for like it's first time we get Jon
11:23 Stewart as Green Lantern.
11:24 First time he gets his own film.
11:25 This is the first time we get to see Hawkman in a film, in a feature film.
11:29 So it really is a grand opportunity, great privilege and something I'm very proud to
11:34 have been able to be a part of.
11:36 What was it like in Hall H?
11:37 What was that energy like to just premiere the footage?
11:39 Yeah, it made me like emotional.
11:40 You know, like it was just very special and something I'd never felt before.
11:46 And just seeing like to see so many people be so like connected to like us and like want
11:51 to be here to like see this film that we did was just like, wow, like this is real, you
11:57 know?
11:58 You do, you feel it.
11:59 You feel especially being in Hall H, six thousand, seven thousand people.
12:03 And it's actually quite affirming because you see like Jama coming on and Dwayne and
12:08 they've been working tirelessly for five years.
12:11 Jama, right?
12:12 You know, and then and then to play that little sneak peek and to hear the reaction, to be
12:16 a part of that reaction just makes you feel so good.
12:19 I just got goosebumps.
12:20 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
12:26 I think so.
12:27 Well, yes, but also then there's like there's I second guess myself sometimes, but I but
12:31 I I do have a solid ground when it comes to Freddie.
12:34 Like playing Freddie was almost second nature for me.
12:37 It's like I think if all of all the characters I've ever played, I think that Freddie is
12:40 most similar to me.
12:41 So it helps.