ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Carry-On star Sofia Carson about getting to film in an actual airport, jumping into a role that involves a lot of action, and exploring more emotional moments in the movie. 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.
Tyler Treese: While Taron Egerton gets most of the action, you get a little bit too. You have a really fun scene where this van is chasing you while you’re on foot. How was it filming that sequence? It’s a real highlight of the film.
Sofia Carson: Thank you for saying that. That makes me really happy. It was my first action film, my first big action sequence. And, you know, the stunts in the film are pretty extraordinary, and our stunt team and our stunt coordinator were just such incredible artists, and it was exciting to collaborate with them to bring this moment to life. To me, it was a really important storytelling moment for Nora, and for any woman and girl watching this film, because I didn’t want Nora to ever feel like a damsel in distress, and in her action sequence, I wanted her to be able to save herself. And so they worked with me to kind of choreograph that and bring that to life. It was really exciting to film.
I wanted to ask you about working with Taron because he has a natural charm to him, but throughout this movie, he’s forced to act so awkwardly because he can’t say what he is actually going through. So how is he as a scene partner?
Oh, Taron is probably one of the most young, talented actors of our generation. He’s extraordinary, and it’s always exciting to have a scene partner of his caliber. And most of my scenes, almost 90% of them, were solely with Taron and really developing that relationship between Nora and Ethan and making sure they felt really grounded and real, and in some way, they kind of are like the heart of the film, their love and Nora’s love for Ethan. So it was really beautiful to bring that to life.
That’s such a key point because, for all the tense action there is, if you don’t have that emotion, it’s not really gonna register. The whole storyline with Ethan giving up on his dreams, and Nora is about to be a mother and really wants him to be fully engaged with living, I really liked that. What do you like most about the emotional grounds that you got to explore here?
Well, there was so much to play with. I loved what Nora symbolized because Jaume [Collet-Serra, the director of the film] described it quite beautifully, saying that she is the spark that ignites Ethan in a lot of ways. Because even though her career has blossomed, she’s the youngest director of operations at LAX, which is a really big deal. You see how she carries herself with such confidence and bravery, and she’s fearless. She sees in Ethan what he stopped seeing in himself a long time ago. In a lot of ways, she saves that part of him, and she ignites within him to find that bravery that always existed, which kind of allowed him to overcome this extraordinary circumstance that he was put in.
You guys got to film at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport for some of this film. How is that experience? Because it adds a whole lot to this film and it’s almost a character in and of itself.
Very well said. The airport is completely a character in and of itself in this film. It’s cool because, well, first of all, as actors, it’s always a privilege to work on practical sets. So, you actually have the physical world built all around you, which is so cool. We literally transformed an entire airport into LAX. And also, the airport is something that’s so familiar for so many people, and yet we’ve never really seen behind the underbelly, the inner workings of an airport. So it’s kind of really cool to see it come to life and become such a character of this film and also kind of see behind the curtain of what it takes to run an airport and to allow hundreds of thousands of people travel safely.
That’s a great point. My last question for you, Carry-On has some similarities to Die Hard and Die Hard always has that debate of if it’s a Christmas film. So I want to ask you, is Carry-On a Christmas movie?
I think Carry-On is, as Danielle Dedwyler said, a “Christmaction” movie just as Die Hard was. It’s a Christmas movie and an action movie in one beautifully wrapped package.
Thanks to Sofia Carson for taking the time to talk about Carry-On, which is now on Netflix.
