Taron Egerton Embraced Flaws & Bond With Ana Sophia Heger for She Rides Shotgun | Interview
She Rides Shotgun stars Taron Egerton and Ana Sophia Heger spoke to ComingSoon about their new crime thriller. The duo discussed their real-life bond, Egerton playing a heavily flawed character, and its tense action scenes. Lionsgate’s She Rides Shotgun is now playing in theaters.
“Marked for death by unrelenting enemies, Nate must now protect his estranged 11-year-old daughter, Polly (Ana Sophia Heger) at all costs,” reads the film’s official synopsis. “Shy, precocious, and wary of her father, Polly is swept up in Nate’s dangerous plight as they flee to evade the corrupt sheriff and brutal leader of a gang who will stop at nothing to protect his criminal interests. With scant resources and no one to trust, Nate and Polly form a bond forged under fire as he shows her how to fight and survive — and she teaches him what unconditional love truly means in this intense, moving story about loyalty, strength, and redemption.”
Taron, viewers are going to naturally be suspicious of your character at first. He is a former criminal. He has face tattoos. It looks like he’s abducting his daughter. What did you find most interesting about playing a very flawed man, but one who’s really trying to do his best in what is inevitably gonna be a very messy and bloody situation?
Taron Egerton: Well, I think it felt exciting to me for all those reasons, because often in film things have a veneer of artifice that isn’t really reflective of real life. I think the messiness of this story, the imperfectness of this story, and Nate’s deeply flawed nature, I think are all very reflective of how life often is. Life often is messy, and you often don’t get the outcome you want, and things don’t work out in the way you’d hoped.
Whilst that is, of course, sad, it also feels real and important and soulful. And playing Nate, you know, my job is not to judge him. My job is to love him enough to do him justice. And I found him very easy to love because I can see how he got there. You know, [I] think he was an impressionable young person who was led by his older brother and he went down a very specific path that he was led down. And I think he’s filled with remorse and regret about it. The movie is him taking a chance to try and do a really good thing, and I love that about him.
Ana, you are absolutely great in this movie as well, and I saw Taron had a lovely Instagram post with a photo of you, and he said, “It was refreshing to meet someone as strange as me.” I thought that was so funny. I saw your parents call Taron the greatest mentor we could have asked for. How special was this bond that you two have clearly developed on and off set?
Ana Sophia Heger: Oh my gosh. I bonded with him so easily, and he was so nice. Even though this movie is very intense and dark, he always kept it light and happy, and made me always comfortable, and it was super easy bonding with him.
It’s great that you get to get into the action too. How was it doing some action sequences?
Heger: It was cool. I didn’t get to see all of the action, but the action stuff I did get to see, it’s all very safe. Nothing was real.
Egerton: That was very well said!
Heger: Thank you [laughs]. I just have to feel like, “Oh my gosh, my dad is fighting with people, and I just have to imagine how it would feel seeing him fighting against these people.” But in real life, it wasn’t scary or anything because everything was super safe.
Thanks to Taron Egerton and Ana Sophia Heger for taking the time to talk about She Rides Shotgun.
Source: Comingsoon.net