ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Carry-On star Taron Egerton, where he discussed the fitness levels it required to run so much, acting without a scene partner and wearing an earpiece, and getting to witness Jason Bateman become a villain. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, the action thriller is now streaming on Netflix.
“A young TSA agent (Taron Egerton) fights to outsmart a mysterious traveler who blackmails him into letting a dangerous package slip onto a Christmas Eve flight,” says the logline for Carry-On.
Tyler Treese: I really enjoyed Carry-On. There’s a lot of running in this. You’re doing all-out, Tom Cruise-style runs. Is that something you’re really thinking about before filming? Like do you have the form down? What kind of prep goes into that?
Taron Egerton: Yeah [laughs]. It’s so hard, running is really ingrained in you. I think your style of running, it’s hard to change, you know? It’s not an easy thing to alter. I did think about it a little bit. I wanted to not look too ridiculous doing it, but to be honest, Tyler, I also didn’t wanna look too refined doing it, because the movie kind of lives and dies on him seeming like he’s not that great at things. You know, he’s an ordinary guy who’s a little bit useless in some respects, kind of rising to the challenge. So my vanity meant that I tried to make my run look not look too ridiculous, but my kind of creative hat also said, “Hey, you don’t want to go full Tom Cruise.”
Early on, in a lot of your interactions, you are just talking to yourself because you have an earpiece in. How was that experience? Obviously, the audience is hearing Jason Bateman do this phenomenal job. Did you have any audio to play off, or how was that?
Jason did the first couple of days, so I had Jason in my ear, and then actually I had my dialect coach who could sort of chime in and say, “Hey, you are butchering that New Jersey lilt that you are reaching for.” So that was helpful too, but I always had an actor reading in even when it wasn’t Jason. I had an actor reading in the lines which was really helpful.
Jason’s phenomenal in this. It is so fun seeing him play a villain. How is it getting to see this very intense side from him as a scene partner?
Yeah, I was really excited at the prospect of Jason playing the role. I think he’s an amazing actor and obviously somebody that we know. I mean, you know, his work in Ozark speaks for itself, but he’s somebody that we know for having done a lot of comedy work and for being a really likable persona, I think. And there’s something about seeing him subvert that and play someone so awful and so abjectly terrible, that is really exciting, and he does an amazing job. It was great working opposite him. I’m really proud of the scenes we did together.
I read that some of this was filmed at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. That had to be a very unique experience. How was that?
It was awesome. You know, I had no idea before arriving in New Orleans that they were gonna do such a kind of extensive, practical transformation of an airport wing. It was huge. It had to be for me to be able to run up and down the length of it, you know. So it was a really, really extensive bit of set decoration and a lot of tremendous work done by a number of different, very talented people. And it was really good to be able to, for the reality of it, to feel like you were actually in an airport. We were shooting and there would be airplanes taking off in the background of shots. And that’s amazing, really.
Yeah, it really makes the film special.
Yeah, it gives it a real flavor. You know, when I, at the climax of the movie, and I’m racing down the runway, that was all quite a high-security thing because we were filming adjacent to working runways, so we’d have to get clearance to do it because it’s very dangerous filming out on runways like that and there’s very high-security protocols and people with long-range weaponry and all sorts of things. So it felt quite exhilarating and exciting to do all that practically.
And that comes across in the film. And my last question, this is gonna run into the Die Hard debate. Do you think Carry-On is a Christmas film?
I do, Tyler. What do you think?
I think so. The last line of the film has you mentioning Christmas. So yeah, that speaks for itself.
I think so. I think it’s a Christmas film if it makes you feel like it’s Christmas. Die Hard makes me feel like it’s Christmas. So for that reason, I think it’s a Christmas film.
Thanks to Taron Egerton for taking the time to talk about Carry-On.
