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‘Mile 22’ stars Mark Wahlberg, Lauren Cohan, and Ronda Rousey open up
Los Angeles — Mark Wahlberg has always impressed us as someone who loves Filipinos and the Philippines. He has been an avid supporter of Manny Pacquiao and has always told us how much he admires Filipinos’ sunny disposition and love for life, music and the arts.
We talked to Mark recently for his latest action thriller film, “Mile 22,” as well as his co-stars Lauren Cohan and Ronda Rousey, and talked more about the Peter Berg-helmed film, how he juggles his life as actor and businessman, and his kickass co-stars.
Below are excerpts of that conversation and our chats with Lauren and Ronda as well:
Mark Wahlberg:
On being a risk taker:
I’m very willing. I think early on, I never really just took any part. For me, it was about finding the right parts with the right filmmakers to grow strategically as an actor, to get to the point where I could make more selfish choices based on the fact that I had more responsibility, being above the title and therefore the movie’s success would fall on my shoulders and failure as well.
But I like taking risks. I’ve taken some pretty big swings. And things that I thought were ridiculous in their presentation and pitch — a guy and a talking teddy bear smoking pot was not a no-brainer — I take risks. I think being a father and a husband, sexuality [has become] a thing I may be a little bit more resistant to but just stuff like that.
I’m always willing to take risks and try new things. That’s how you stay ahead of the curve.
On working on his fourth project with director Peter Berg:
I think because we just have a great chemistry. We push and challenge each other. He was an actor before he was a director, so he’s very good with actors and sensitive to the process.
We’re actually starting another film in September together. He’s like my brother. But again, I think we bring the best out of each other and we have very similar taste in material. And for me, it’s good because I can go from that to, I just did “Instant Family”, I literally went on to “Instant Family” seven days after finishing this. It’s a completely different movie, it’s a family film with a lot of heart and emotion and humor. So I get to change it up. He’s now still living in this world; he’s still cutting the movie today in his last road to the finish line to get the movie out on the 17th.
We had one fight, one fight…that was enough. After that, it was all love. He got a little taste and that was it. Pete’s a guy’s guy. He reminds me a lot of my other brother, where you want to test somebody mentally but he’s also a very physical guy so he wanted a little taste of that too. Like all my older brothers, I’ve got my space on the food chain for a reason.
On his kick-ass female co-stars Ronda and Lauren:
I think the cool thing about Ronda is everybody expected her to just be beating everybody up and she really gets to show her dramatic skills. And if there’s action that she’s involved with, she’s handling weapons and things of that nature. And Lauren was just fantastic. But yeah, these women really exist. And it’s nice to show really strong powerful women in the film.
I was so happy for Ronda to be able to show her acting chops. I think she’s going to have a fantastic career. She could always go to just straight action and beating everybody up but she’s also funny, she’s witty, she’s all those things, really smart. It was cool having her there.
Lauren Cohan
On kicking ass with Mark Wahlberg:
I can almost exclusively talk about kicking ass. What was special for me about this film is these characters, especially Alice as a character with two distinct responsibilities, a responsibility as a mother, to try to maintain a connection with her family and her daughter and also uphold a really great responsibility to her country.
And what was most fascinating is the fact that these characters need to isolate themselves and keep a huge amount of secrecy in what they do and how that impacts them personally. And that was new territory for me to try to explore that, the sanity and the loss of sanity in that environment.
The most honestly surprising thing with Mark is that he's so likable as a person and so willing to play really unsavory, seemingly unrelatable and unlikeable characters.
And when I watched the film, I knew that on set, and then when I watched the film, the way his charm just pours through into everything, even being this incredibly isolated and unsympathetic man in the movie. So that was fun for me. And then on just on a practical level, how we all dive in and sort of roll with the style of a very improvised set was good, and being a part of a team with Mark and Pete, who have already done this so many times before and done it so well I felt like I was in good hands. You know that notion of like, well you wouldn't be back if it wasn't good?
On how it was to combine the maternal parts of the character with kick-ass fire:
So that's my favorite part of Alice and a big part of that movie that was such a pleasure to touch on because the requirement of these Black Ops is that it's not “no man left behind,” it's “every men left behind.”
If somebody is impairing the strength of the team as a whole, you have to cut off the weak link and move forward, and this is what these operatives are trained to do. But Alice is at a point where she's literally going to lose connection with her own child, and I think that is ripping open her ability to compartmentalize her life that she has been to this point. And that to me speaks to humanity as a whole and speaks to juggling these different responsibilities and to being in denial of the true thrust of your soul and of your heart.
And we do get to see in this film the necessity to keep it contained and the un-deniability of human emotion breaking you open. And so those glimpses for me, to explore and to portray were overall the really compelling part of the role.
On spending her teenage years in England:
Yeah, I used to go back less because coming back was so difficult and heartbreaking. And now I think I've adjusted to the idea that you can be in both places, you don't have to make hard and fast decisions about where you live or what you do. And this show “Whiskey Cavalier,” which I actually forgot to touch on in the last question, shoots in Prague, so my parents are overjoyed because they still live in England as does my youngest sister. So I'll be back there and I'll get to sort of reacquaint myself with them.
Christmas, I always go and usually a trip in the summer, and two of my siblings have moved here, so we tried to use that device to draw my parents back over to the US more because we lived here when we were kids.
Ronda Rousey:
On turning into an actress now from a professional wrestler:
Actually, I always wanted to act when I was a kid. And I used to see the little fires with the “call a number for acting lessons,” and I would take it to my mom and she would be like, "no, it’s a scam! You are not doing this, it’s a scam."
And twice I was walking around, and someone came up to my mom and handed her a business card if you ever thought of your child doing acting, give us a call. "It’s a scam, you are not doing it!" So it was something that I always wanted to do, but I just felt like it wasn’t in the cards for me.
I guess the world has a funny way of working things out, things that I tried to ignore and were not for me somehow keeps coming back. I wanted to be a Marine Biologist as a kid, and I ended up doing “Shark Week.” I always wanted to be an actor, now I’m in “Mile 22,” and I have always loved wrestling, and now I am a wrestler. And it’s crazy to see life just fall into place and bring you places you never expected, but always dreamed of.
On using martial arts and fighting as her way of communicating:
It actually was a way to communicate. I was born with a motor speech disorder called Apraxia, I have a vocal cord around my neck, and I have a lot of trouble speaking. I understood everything but when I spoke, the words came out sounding like gibberish, and no one could understand me. I went to speech therapy for many, many years to be able to talk at all.
And so I had a hard time making friends and stuff like that. We were born in California, and when I was three, we moved to North Dakota, and so I had a lot of trouble talking and making friends, so we moved from North Dakota back to LA.
My mom put me in Judo, she had been a World Champion Judo herself, She was the first American to win the world championships back in 1984. And she kind of kept that a secret from us, we didn’t really know, because she was a doctor of Psychology, so I always thought she was a college professor and I didn’t know that she was secretly like a Judo ninja.
So she took me to visit all of her old teammates that opened up Judo clubs, and all moved back to LA and I needed something where I would have to communicate with another kid because I had a hard time talking and because I had a hard time speaking and doing something physical, was like my way to communicate. It makes sense of how I fight is like having a conversation. I think a lot of people really reveal themselves when they fight. That’s why I say I am a hugger, you feel people’s body language the way you are communicating. And so yeah, it was like a real release for me since a very young age.
On feeling that her success is in a way a kind of revenge for her past:
Well, my mom always said that success is the best revenge. And I think that what it really taught me is that all the negative things or all the bad things that ever happened to you, you take that energy, and instead of spending it hurting other people, spending it on improving yourself and on your own success and your own future, I think that is the best way to focus all that vengeful
On marriage:
First anniversary coming up, I am excited. I was surprised how different it was. I thought it would be just the same, because we were already living together and nothing really changed, but on and off it is different.
I think I feel more entitled to be more affectionate in public, because I am like, I don’t know, I wouldn’t say more tactless, but it’s my husband, I can talk about anything I want, it’s not like I am being inappropriate, it’s like, this is my husband. So yeah, I am a lot I think more affectionate all the time cause I feel entitled, because like who can tell me not to kiss my husband in public? F*** you. So I like it, it’s good.
On being an optimist:
I am an optimist, but a lot of people take my way of optimism as pessimism because I am a very big doomsday prepper but that’s because I am convinced that if the shit goes down, I am going to make it.
So I am being very optimistic, and I am like okay, it’s my duty to the world to survive, and I feel like I am in an Oberian gold mine and you got athletes and doctors and good vision and teeth and like I have got to stick around. Have you seen “Idiocracy?” I have to contribute somehow. So I am trying my part.
On female wrestlers turning into actors:
I think that window is always open and it’s not always open very wide, but it’s always there. And I think the men have done a great job of paving that way for us already, but yeah, there’s definitely a lot of work left for the women to do, which is encouraging as well, to know that we have so much more progress that we can still make. — LA, GMA News
