by Gill Pringle
Aussie director Patrick Hughes became great pals with Ryan Reynolds in the process of making hit R-rated action comedy, The Hitman’s Bodyguard four years ago.
And what do good mates do? They tease and torture one another mercilessly. Which is exactly what Hughes does in the sequel, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, reuniting the original cast of Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson and Salma Hayek along with newcomers Antonio Banderas and Morgan Freeman.
“Poor Ryan just goes through the absolute wringer,” laughs Hughes with more than malevolent delight at how he literally tortures Reynolds’ disgraced bodyguard, Michael Bryce, returning to the therapist’s couch in this sequel, desperate to redeem himself.
“Michael Bryce is suffering no matter what he does. The rule when I was developing the script is that nothing goes in his favour. If the first film put him in therapy, then this one’s going to put him in hospital. I wanted him to be hit by a car, run over by a boat, punched in the face, shot, stabbed, burnt, and drowned,” says the director, talking to us from his home in Los Angeles.
“Ryan Reynolds has got it all – he’s hugely talented, just gorgeous looking. Maybe that’s why I just loved any stunt that hurt Ryan. You’re not allowed to hurt people in real life – that’s just wrong, and besides, he’s my friend. But apparently when you make a movie, you just put it in the script, and you can hit them with a car,” he adds with glee.
“The greatest thing to come out of this franchise, is the friendships that were formed, and Ryan is someone that I admire on so many levels. He’s a writer and could be a wonderful director if he ever wanted to pursue that. He’s hilarious and just has this incredible gift. But also, he’s got a beautiful soul and we have really genuinely become close friends.”
To this end, Reynolds was the first person Hughes pitched as he was dreaming up this sequel. “He’s given me wonderful advice, so when I was developing the script, Ryan was the first person I pitched for what I wanted to do next.
“Ryan and I have a text chain that you could spend weeks scrolling through. I would text him with a crazy idea and say ‘Hey, what if we did this?’ And he would reply, ‘Yeah and what if we did this . . .?’ And then we try and one up each other and sometimes we go way too far but sometimes that’s where the gold is and that’s certainly how we came to the conclusion – without spoiling the plot – of who plays Michael Bryce’s father.”
For his part, Reynolds does not seem to mind the damage, considering it all part of the fun. “The humour and absurdist behaviour is the connective tissue of this movie and I personally love and embrace that – and I love laughing at myself. Movies are a great way to escape. I’m super comfortable in this kind of world and I’m lucky to do it,” says Reynolds.
Of course, there would be no sequel without the “wife” of the title being on board – Salma Hayek.
If Hayek’s fans were shocked by her R-rated language in the original, then there was no holding her back in The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard.
Game for anything, the 54-year-old actress totally embraced the sequel’s conceit that she is now longing to start a family with her hitman husband, Darius Kincaid; Jackson reprising his original role.
“Before I sat down and wrote the script, I cooked up the story and my first port of call was to pitch it to Salma and Ryan to get across the mechanics of what I was doing. Salma absolutely loved it. She was like, ‘let’s go there; let’s do it’. I wanted to explore that notion of someone who’s been pursuing their career and left it too late to have kids – obviously she’s had a career as a murderer and a con-woman. But it’s still a career! I wanted to explore that mid-life crisis where she decides she now wants to be a mother.”
Fortunately, Hayek had plenty of ideas of her own on how to develop her character of Sonia Kincaid.
“I’m not a middle-aged woman,” says Hughes, somewhat superfluously. “So, I wanted her involvement from the ground up and she brought so much to it. Her character is crazy but in an awesome way, and Salma embraces that craziness!
“I told her that I felt it was a great opportunity to play with ‘delusional’ crazy. Like with a scene on a ferry with Ryan’s Michael Bryce where she talks about having a baby and he raises the question, that perhaps most of the audience is asking, that there’s an issue of biology here. Like, maybe she has missed that window.
“Salma is crazy but good crazy; like a crazy ball of energy and creative storyteller in her own right,” he adds.
If Hayek can appear demure in many of her roles, then Hughes dissuades us of that notion, noting how he cut 70% of her character’s foul-mouthed expletive-laden lines from the final cut.
“Oh God. She took it way further than me. Going back to that ferry scene where Ryan suggests maybe biology is the reason she’s not pregnant, and she’s blaming Sam’s sperm. But then Salma took it to the next level by saying, ‘No, no, no, it’s not only that – but maybe my ‘uterus’ is too tight.’ That was all Salma. She came to me on the day and says, ‘Hey baby, Patrick, you know what I’m thinking for the scene, I’m thinking maybe my pussy is too tight…’” he says, doing a terrible impression of Hayek’s sultry Mexican accent.
“And I was eating muesli at the time, and I spat muesli across the fricking room! I had to go to Ryan and say, ‘Heads up! She’s gonna go south on this one so be ready’, and he was amazed, saying, ‘Oh my god, she’s gonna go there!’
“So, she just absolutely embellished and owned Sonia Kincaid and that role wouldn’t be what it is without her involvement and amazing collaboration.”
If Hughes broke into Hollywood 11 years ago with his debut feature film, western thriller Red Hill, starring another Ryan [Kwanten], then he has not worked at home since, swiftly moving on to direct The Expendables 3 in 2014. Early next year, his next action comedy The Man from Toronto, starring Woody Harrelson and Kevin Hart, will be released, pitching the world’s deadliest assassin and New York’s biggest screw-up in a case of mistaken identity at an Airbnb rental.
But he longs to return to Australia, and now he believes it’s the right time, thanks to the new Australian film rebate: “This means I can finally go home and shoot movies in Australia. Obviously, I’ve been pursuing the Hollywood career and Red Hill opened all those doors for me over here. But there’s been several attempts where I’m like, ‘It would be great if we could shoot this in Australia’. But with the two Hitman movies, it was still cheaper for me to shoot a film in London than it was in Melbourne or Sydney,” says Hughes who shot The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard in the UK, Croatia, Italy and Slovenia, also utilising Millennium’s Nu Boyana studios in Sofia, Bulgaria.
“At the end of the day, and this is no big secret, you are chasing tax breaks all around the world. And I understand from a studio’s perspective where it’s like, ‘Where are we going to get the most bang for the buck? Who is offering the best rebate?’ But, tied with that, you want to have the world’s best crews at the same time, and I think Australia has all that to offer and now with the introduction of the new rebate that’s certainly what I’m planning for my next film.”
Naturally, we are curious, but his lips are sealed.
Hinting that he may be lining up an Australian cast, instead we ask him to name his dream Australian cast.
“I’d really love to work with Hugh Jackman, Cate Blanchett and Eric Bana. I think Rose Byrne is fantastic too,” he grins.
The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard is in cinemas June 24, 2021
