Actor RICKY WHITTLE, on working in LAND OF BAD
SUCOPRESS/Raquel Laguna. Actor Ricky Whittle stars in LAND OF BAD, directed by William Eubank. In this interview, Ricky talks about working in the action-packed film, about his character, Bishop, and about filming in Australia. In LAND OF BAD, Air Force drone pilot Reaper (Russell Crowe) supports a Tier-One special ops team in the South Philippines when he has only 48 hours to drastically shift a mission gone terribly wrong into a wild rescue operation. Top-level extractors Cpt. Sugar (Milo Ventimiglia) and Sgt. Abel (Luke Hemsworth) are joined by a green Air Force officer, Kinney (Liam Hemsworth), before they redeploy on the battlefield to retrieve their captured man and a mysterious asset, both now hostages. As the eyes of the ground mission, Reaper becomes Kinney’s lifeline when the team is discovered by the enemy and the situation becomes a hellish full-scale battle. In the Land of Bad, you don’t leave anyone behind. The movie also stars Russell Crowe, Milo Ventimiglia, Liam Hemsworth and Luke Hemsworth. LAND OF BAD is in theaters now.
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00:00 I mean it's definitely special for my dad because he does the whole father thing.
00:06 he's always proud of anything I do. if I was an accountant, if I worked in the streets,
00:12 it wouldn't matter. he loves me whatever but to do a movie that's basically
00:18 surrounding his career in the military. he flew helicopters so he's gonna be really
00:24 proud of this one. he's gonna really enjoy it. it's his type of movie. I remember when Maverick
00:28 came out because Top Gun, if you had to win a competition and say what is Ricky Whittle's
00:33 favorite movie of all time, it was Top Gun because when I was a kid growing up it was the very first
00:38 movie I ever watched and I watched it in the air force you kind of had these big block parties and
00:43 they throw all the kids into one house, put a movie on and all the adults get drunk and have
00:48 a great time. so they put this movie on Top Gun. I watched it all the way through. the kids were
00:53 messing around, running around, I'm shushing kids like nine years old. I'm like shh you know because
00:58 I want to watch this movie. I'm so in. I ran outside, got my dad to rewind it and watched it
01:03 through again twice in a row and I've been obsessed ever since with Tom Cruise and Top Gun because
01:08 again that was my childhood. I lived on an airbase, I lived next to a runway, jets and
01:13 helicopters flying all over the place. so when Maverick came out I was like oh dad what do you
01:17 think and he was like well planes can't really. I was like I know planes can't do that but
01:21 and he's like no I love the movie. so I know there's gonna be moments in this movie where
01:26 you go well there is this one. I got dad, did you like the movie? and he's gonna love this.
01:31 he's gonna absolutely love it and I'm really proud of this one. it's an epic roller coaster
01:37 of a thriller. it's non-stop. Russell Crowe brings some beautiful warmth and heart to it as well as
01:43 the usual gravitas that he has and I'm excited. I read the script by Devin Frigero.
01:52 it was fantastic. layered characters. the director William Eubank is I feel honestly
02:00 the next visual genius director. he's the next JJ Abrams, the next Michael Bay. he is
02:06 just pure action. he's an incredible director and he elevates this movie so much and then to get to
02:12 play with an old friend in Milo Ventimiglia, to meet the royal family in Luke and Liam Hemsworth
02:17 was just a joy. they took us in, showed us around Australia. Liam and Luke took me home to meet
02:23 mum and dad, the original Hemsworths. so it was just all in all an incredible experience and I
02:30 can't wait for the world to see it. there's two sides of Bishop. for me when I read the character
02:37 that David Frigero wrote, he's this kind of badass tough guy. he's been in the military for years.
02:44 he's got hundreds of missions under his belt and to do one mission is intense enough in a
02:50 life and death situation and this guy has been through it all. so he's not scared of anything.
02:55 he doesn't flinch. he doesn't hesitate but then there's also this sarcasm and humor that he has
03:00 which really drew me to the character which I feel is more like myself being British. we're
03:05 very sarcastic as a people. we love to make fun of people, especially our friends and we always say
03:11 if we don't make fun of you that's when you should be worried because it means we don't care.
03:15 so if we make fun of you it means we love you. so Bishop really starts his character and his
03:21 journey off really clashing with Liam Hemsworth's character, really kind of making fun and poking
03:26 Liam Hemsworth's character which I found really fun because Liam's such a sweet guy.
03:31 but it's more about survival. they're in a life and death situation and Bishop's just trying to
03:38 show this new kid, this new rookie that if you hesitate someone dies and I like to think it's
03:45 really just a love story. it's me and Liam in a beautiful love story. it's almost like the
03:50 notebook. just the guy meets guy, guy hates guy, guy falls in love with guy. it's one for the
03:56 ladies on Valentine's Day weekend. Australia. I loved Australia so much I started house hunting
04:04 while I was there and that's a true story. I started like look I got a realtor. Kath, one of
04:12 our continuity ladies who helps us out throughout the whole script with script continuity and
04:20 things. she had a friend who was a realtor and put me on to a friend because I was that serious
04:25 about like I'm giving up life. I'm just gonna surf with the Hemsworth's in Australia. I'm giving up
04:30 acting. I'm moving to Australia. that is my life from now on. it's wonderful. it's wonderful other
04:35 than the fact that everything there wants to kill you. all the animals want to kill you. the insects
04:40 want to bite you. the snakes, the spiders, the scorpions. it's terrifying. I actually have this
04:45 one story where Milo who plays sugar in the movie, Milo Ventimiglia, saved my life where I was
04:52 literally just chatting away to a director in between takes and you've always got the prop
04:57 departments messing with things, fixing, making sure everything looks right and Milo who's kind
05:01 of like the papa bear of the cast was kind of he's always kind of making sure things were looking
05:05 were good. he comes up behind me and he slaps me on the back and I was like that was a bit tough.
05:10 he comes around with his knife. there's a spider, a white tip spider stuck on the end of his knife
05:16 that he's stabbed in my back on my pack that was crawling up my back and just went saved your life
05:24 bro. a white tip spider if that bites you can leave you with a flesh-eating disease
05:30 and at worst case scenario it can actually kill. so I basically owe my life to Milo Ventimiglia.
05:37 he is a true hero and I couldn't love that man more. I just want to work with good people on
05:44 good projects and this project has enforced that because everyone from top down from you know the
05:52 producers that were there with you know the Avenue and Highland from the director Will Eubank, the
05:59 writer Debra Friggio, the cast, the crew were incredible. everyone was just so positive and
06:05 it just changes your whole day when you enjoy your work, when you enjoy the company of the people
06:11 around you and everyone's working so hard in the same direction it makes life better you know and
06:17 long may it continue you know. I've already kind of attached myself to more projects with the same
06:22 groups just because they know how to put a film on, they know how to make it a positive environment
06:28 and atmosphere you know and it's a no idiot policy and you know it's a beautiful thing to
06:36 see on a set because I've worked with some kind of toxic people in the past and it's nice to see
06:42 that they're being weeded out and people can feel safe on set you know. Landerbad was a safe place
06:47 both physically with all the explosions and the landscape that we had in Australia because
06:52 that you know we had a lot of people keeping us safe and checking the weapons and emptying the
06:57 chambers and things making sure everyone was on top of that but also you know mentally you know
07:02 they wanted to keep everyone you know energized and happy and they did that and so you know you
07:09 want to take that into every project. My friend's got a tattoo that says positivity breeds
07:15 positivity and that's something I live by. I always say that you pay an actor for the preparation
07:21 not the acting. We do the acting for free and so there was a very quick turnaround for this. Normally
07:26 you want to get in shape for this kind of role because it's very physically demanding but I
07:31 remember my rep sent me the script on the Friday night. I met with Will Eubank, the director, on a
07:36 Saturday via Zoom and I was in Australia Monday. There was no turnaround so it's lucky that I always
07:42 kind of stay in shape and ready prepared just in case something like this comes up. So physically
07:48 I was already kind of at a level and then it comes down to the training that the little bit of training
07:54 that we were able to do that the couple of weeks before we started filming with the Australian
07:58 Special Forces and that was kind of just going over making sure you know we were you know good
08:03 with the weapons, with tactics, with technical kind of things you know simple things like
08:08 the go-to when you're holding a rifle is this and then when a Special Forces
08:13 operative says if you put your elbow like that it's going to get shot off you tuck that real
08:19 quick. So Paul Kael who was Australian Special Forces was very quick to kind of train us and to
08:26 take all the bad habits out and to kind of make us a bit more proficient and so yeah that really
08:31 helped with our shooting, with our movements, with our hand signals and understanding you know
08:37 that if we were actually in the field this movie spans two days and our Paul Kael said that
08:45 you probably wouldn't even speak during this whole time but it's Hollywood so
08:51 obviously you have to have dialogue in there but yeah that training really did help
08:55 us feel comfortable you know because once you feel comfortable and you have trust
09:01 then you can feel safe because at the end of the day we are dealing with you know
09:04 controlled explosions but they're still explosions in landscape and stones can be
09:09 you know projected in any direction we're holding guns with blanks but we've seen in the past you
09:16 know you can never be a hundred percent certain you can be but accidents happen you never know
09:22 and so it was always great to kind of have that preparation those professionals all around us
09:27 making sure that we were safe so then you just focus on the acting you know so once you get
09:32 get all that prep, once you start acting, it's a piece of cake.