ComingSoon caught up with Lukas Haas about his latest movie, High Rollers. The sequel to Cash Out, the heist film sees Haas reunite with John Travolta and Quavo. Haas spoke about the unique situation of filming a sequel before the first movie is out, talked about working on Spider-Noir with Nicolas Cage, and reflected on slapping friend Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception. High Rollers is out in Theaters, On Demand, and on Digital starting today.
“Master thief Mason (John Travolta) is living the criminal’s dream: island-hopping with his crew and the love of his life, Decker (Gina Gershon), while floating on a sea of stolen cash. But his dream is shattered when his nemesis, the ruthless Salazar, kidnaps Decker and forces Mason and his crew to attempt a near-impossible casino heist in exchange for her return. Hedged in by Salazar’s equally ruthless rivals, and with the FBI on his tail, Mason gambles everything in pursuit of both the big score and the ultimate jackpot: Decker’s life,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: We spoke about Cash Out last time, and it’s very unique to shoot a film and its sequel before the first film comes out. What was the biggest challenge going back to shoot that in a short turnaround? I assume there’s also positives because obviously everybody had that built-in familiarity and I think that shows in the film as well.
Lukas Haas: Yeah. It was basically just kind of funny. It was funny to be on set making the second one when the first one hadn’t even come out, you know what I mean? But everybody loved each other and had a great time on the movie. It just kind of was familiar, like you said. There wasn’t really anything difficult about it. It was just more like a joke on set, you know what I mean? We would laugh about the fact. How well the first one had done. It hadn’t even come out yet, and we’re like, “Oh, wow. The first one did so well. We’re here for a second one.”
The film was shot in Mississippi and at the Scarlet Pearl Casino Resort. It gives High Rollers a really unique feel. What really stood out about shooting there?
The South is awesome and Biloxi is a place I’d always heard of. There’s even that movie, Biloxi Blues. It was funny ’cause I didn’t really know what that place was. I didn’t realize that it was sort of like a Las Vegas of the south, you know? There’s a bunch of casinos there. We stayed in a different casino, so it was funny living and working in two different casinos for a few weeks, a couple of months, whatever it was. You go to work, you go into a casino, you get home back from work, and you’re going to a casino.
When you’re bored, you just go down to the casino and wander around, see what’s going on, see who’s there. There was always somebody from the movie there, so you could just make a little circle and you could always bump into somebody. There was actually something kind of fun about that, and being in the south in general is awesome. I was introduced to Waffle House, which I’m very thankful for.
You weren’t living before that. That changes your life.
Exactly. I had no idea what I was missing all these years.
You mentioned being in the two casinos. There’s a very tense poker match that winds up being one of the highlights of the film. Are you a big poker guy?
I am not the biggest poker guy, but I do play it, and I have some friends that play. So, I’m not like the best player, but I do enjoy it. It sure is a lot of fun. I would venture to say I was one of the more experienced players at that particular table in the movie, you know? I was sort of helping people know the lingo and stuff, you know what I mean? How to play with your chips and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, you can tell when somebody like doesn’t know how to move their chips around. You did a good job teaching everybody.
Get ’em off the top. It’s funny what a big deal just the chips thing is ’cause real players, they futz around with their chips and when they throw them in, they throw ’em in a real sort of blase casual way, generally. But when you don’t really know how to play, you’re sort of worried about your chips and you sort of push ’em in, you know? Stiff. it’s funny, you don’t even really think about those little things.
This year is the 15th anniversary of Inception, and that movie is still just as beloved now and is a real trip to watch. How special was that filming experience? Obviously, you don’t get much better than Nolan.
You really don’t. That was incredible. What a cool experience. Obviously working with Chris was incredible. He’s just one of the best directors out there. But it was also just a cool experience because we were traveling. That little bit of work that I did in the movie, it was in like a bunch of different places: Tokyo, London, somewhere in Morocco, and a little bit in LA. So it was just amazing. You never get to travel like that and be working on an amazing film at the same time. It was a really spectacular experience for sure.
You got the slap around your buddy Leo for a bit in that film. Obviously, you guys go way back, so how was it actually working with him and getting physical? That had to be pretty fun.
It was fun. But honestly, I was like a little nervous to slap him. I’m not a very [physical guy], I’m not a fighting type of guy. I don’t really. So, he is like, “Come on. You can hit me harder, buddy. You can hit me harder than that.” So the way I had to like get myself [amepd up] to really slap him and slapping him.
You’ve got Spider-Noir coming up with Nicolas Cage. That show is kind of like a pulpy throwback, but is also superhero related. What’s most exciting about joining that project?
Well, it was just an incredible project. Everybody involved was amazing. Brendan Gleason, he plays my boss. Just getting to, to do that noir thing. It was very genuine film noir, the way they filmed it, like the long shadows.
We filmed it in — I think it may come out in both black and white and color, but when we filmed it, the monitors were all black and white, so you got this feeling and it looked very, very authentic. To the point that I would actually go and look at the monitor and think I was looking at some older footage, but it was actually just a monitor of what was on the camera at the time. They did a beautiful job with the filters and all that stuff, making it look like genuine old 1930s, black and white film. But obviously, just the writing, and Nic is incredible. It’s just a really fun project and I cannot wait to see how it turns out.
Thanks to Lukas Haas for taking the time to talk about High Rollers and his career.
