Kelsey Grammer Talks New Movie Turbulence, What’s Special About Avengers: Doomsday | Interview
ComingSoon spoke with Turbulence star Kelsey Grammer about the unique hot air balloon thriller movie. Grammer discussed filming in a partial hot air balloon, how the team had to get creative, and his upcoming MCU return as Beast in Avengers: Endgame. The film is out in theaters, on demand, and on digital on December 12, 2025.
“Zach and Emmy’s romantic retreat aboard a hot air balloon takes a terrifying turn when they are hijacked by a sinister third passenger with a link to Zach’s past. As the mystery of their secret relationship is revealed, their spectacular ride becomes a brutal mental chess match and a lethal battle high in the sky. Kelsey Grammer leads a brilliant cast in this psychological thriller that will keep you guessing until the very last moment,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: It’s obviously not practical to be shooting in the air for a hot air balloon movie, but I read that they had a partial balloon rig that they suspended from a crane for Turbulence. Can you talk about just the unique filming of this movie? I’ve never heard anything like this one.
Kelsey Grammer: Yeah. It was primarily just us in a basket on a soundstage. I did it with a foot that was in a cast the whole time. I had an operation on my foot to correct my flat feet, so I couldn’t really walk during that time. So, standing in a gondola, basically a basket of a balloon, made a lot of sense at the time. The only thing I had to do, my foot was on camera for about two seconds, and I think they painted it out, where I climbed up onto the rigging and tried to lower the balloon. It was fun to do it. It was creative. But yeah, there’s no Alps, there’s no crossing anything. We just sort of pretended, which is what we do. So, it was really cool
Those hot air balloons are not spacious. Those are not gigantic things. How was it filming in a cramped space? You couldn’t really move that much, and your leg was banged up too.
I think that’s kind of the engine of the film, that you’re sitting in it, it’s cramped, and tensions rise. Of course, there’s two people on board who are kind of not the most optimistic people or honest people. There’s two dishonest, and there’s two honest people, myself and the guy’s wife. We’re sort of along for the ride figuring out something we didn’t know about, which is kind of fun. But that tension in a basket just elevates the stakes. It’s a good device. I thought it was a neat script. I read it and I thought, “Oh, okay, yeah, this is worth playing.”
The film is shot a lot with handheld cameras, so the cinematographer is also in this basket with you guys. How was it just constantly having a camera up to your face? How is that experience?
It’s something you get used to. You adjust. I mean, I started out in the theater, you adjust to the idea that you are being bathed in eyeballs basically when you’re in theater. On stage, you think to yourself, you have to learn to love the kiss of eyes. That’s an expression that you just gotta get used to the camera being that other witness. It’s just a witness. It’s the first set of eyeballs that are gonna see the performance, and it’s there, and you pretend it isn’t.
But it is fun. You do have to kind of choreograph. There are many little fight scenes in it that were a little bit crowded. So, you just gotta know where the camera is and make sure that you allow for movement past him and not have it cause any troubles.
You mentioned the dishonest characters in this film, and Olga Kurylenko plays a fun one. She’s very mysterious, but you can just tell something’s just off with her from the get-go.
Kelsey Grammer: She’s got those crazy eyes.
Yeah. Your character gets way more than your character gets way more than he signed up for. What stood out about Olga as a scene partner?
She’s got the juice. She knows how to own being a nut, you know. She’s a little bit wild, and she claims it pretty aggressively, and that made it easy to work with. Acting is reacting. That whole idea. She was so clearly disturbed, it was kind of okay to just sit back and think, “Where’s this going?” and then you’d get to watch it. Then, of course, we all got involved.
One of my favorite shows is The Simpsons, and you’re the wonderful voice of Sideshow Bob. The first movie I saw had a scrapped scene with Bob in it, where he was chanting, “Kill Bart!” with the mob, and they’re like, “Uh… We’re only gonna kill Homer,” and he is like, “Oh, okay,” and loses interest. Are you hoping to be in the second Simpsons movie?
Well, they haven’t asked me, but I think what happens is, creatively, if it’s a Sideshow Bob story, it kind of eclipses the story. It just becomes a Sideshow Bob trying to maneuver into a position of killing Bart. If it’s not gonna be that story, I guess he could be sort of in the background a little bit, or maybe a call in from prison, a cameo. But I don’t think they can actually dedicate an entire film to a Sideshow Bob revenge plot. But you never know. I mean, I’d be delighted.
Next year is the 30th anniversary of Down Periscope. Like a lot of comedies, that was ripped by critics when it first came out, but it’s really found an audience over the years. How do you kinda look back on that film? Because it is very quotable.
Kelsey Grammer: What’s interesting is Rob Schneider and I became great friends during that filming actually. We’ve gone in and out for years, but we’re always still on each other’s radar. He’s a terrific friend of mine. The boys, the camaraderie in the shooting, and even Lauren Holly. I mean, she was such an integral part of the plot and took it with such a good spirit. She was a good egg, you know? You think, “Well, this has been a terrific experience.”
My desire to do that film came from my understanding of the military. I wanted to join the Naval Academy when I was a kid. My granddad died, and that dream sort of shifted to theater, which was odd. I loved being a boat captain. I’ve been a sailor my whole life. I was sailing since the time I was seven years old. I used to have a sailboat here. So my first film, which was my first sort of a lead in a feature film, was Down Periscope. It was because I loved the idea of skippering a boat, of being in charge of a group of men on a mission, trying to at least do their part to save the world.
That’s what I loved about doing the film, and I loved being on an old World War II boat, which was for real. One of my favorite pictures is — it’s sitting up in my office over there — is of the boat itself, not the Stingray, it was called the [USS Pampanito]. It actually was getting towed to the Golden Gate Bridge, and it was just like a shot out of World War II.
I thought to myself, it was like a way to salute the work that those guys did back during the war. My imagination just rose to it, and I loved it. You know, the critics, I mean, you know, we were the second movie that week. We were number two. It’s okay.
Next year’s also the 20th anniversary of X-Men: The Last Stands, so it’s just fitting that you’re returning as Beast. You’ve gotten to play like TV characters like Frasier Crane over decades, but it’s rare for that to happen in film. So, how special is it that you get to come back as Beast, and Marvel knows that people care enough about your portrayal of the character that they’re bringing you back?
Yeah, it was the secret, quiet passion and mind to come back to Beast because I love the character. I love him for what I think he stands for. I mean, to me, to my mind, he’s the Martin Luther King of the mutant community. He’s a man of stature, of integrity, who believes that what you do is who you are, and he’s done everything, and he stands. He was slow to action, but once being immersed, he is given no quarter and expects none. He’s an amazing character, an amazing man. I love playing him. I think people will be happy with what we’re doing when he comes back. But I’d love to see [what happens] and play him again. Honestly, to me, he is one of the great opportunities in my life.
Doomsday has the most stacked cast of any film I can think of. When you’re on something that’s obviously is gonna be monumental, not to say it’s overwhelming, but can you kind of feel that? Does it feel elevated in a sense?
Yeah. When we shot one of the scenes where there was a whole bunch of us standing around, I thought to myself, “Listen, it’s pretty cool [laughs].”
There’s an old saying, like if you’re doing a Shakespeare play, there are some lines in Shakespeare that are so famous, you kind of wonder how to go about them. The only way to really approach a famous line is to say it like it’s a famous line. That is to give it its weight. When you’re in that situation and that many famous people are together, you gotta play it like it’s famous. I think they’ve done that.
Source: Comingsoon.net