When I saw Luke Bracey in The November Man, I thought it would be great to talk to him as an action hero on the rise. He wasn’t available at the film’s press junket this month because he’s filming Point Break. So when they offered a quick phone interview with Bracey one Sunday morning, where he was calling from somewhere an hour outside the location in Austria to get a signal, I went for it. November Man stars Pierce Brosnan as retired spy Peter Devereaux, who is called back into action and faces his former protege, Mason (Bracey). Relativity has already green lit a sequel and the film only opens this weekend!
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CraveOnline: They’ve already announced The November Man 2. Is Mason in any of the Bill Granger books and could he be in the sequel?
Luke Bracey: That’s funny because I just heard it first from you. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon here and I woke up about half an hour ago. We shot until about seven in the morning last night, so I wasn’t aware of it. That’s good news.
Yeah, they announced it last week so that shows a lot of confidence in the movie.
Oh, fantastic. I’m very excited. While we were making it, there was always the possibility and it’s something that you’d hope for, but that’s great news. I’m very happy. I had such a great time making it.
Pierce and his producers were developing it for six or seven years. When did you become attached?
I became attached not long before it actually occurred, maybe a month or so before I headed off to Belgrade. When an e-mail comes across that says Pierce Brosnan and Roger Donaldson, an action movie set in Europe in the summer, it was something that I really, really wanted to do. Actually, the first audition I thought I’d screwed up. I thought I didn’t do a great job and I was very happily relieved when they called me back the next day. I went in and I read again a couple of days later, and I got the job.
Why did you think you blew it?
I don’t know. I think in the audition process that Roger Donaldson, the director, made me keep doing over and over again and I didn’t know if it was because I was really bad or if he was just checking something out. There’s a lot of self-doubt when you go into these auditions. They’re these squat gray rooms and there’s a couple of people in there and a camera and you’ve got to pretend you’re chasing Pierce Brosnan down the streets of Belgrade. You can kind of get a little in your head about it all but I was glad it came across.
So the action is part of the audition? They see how you look chasing someone?
Well, that’s the hard bit because you’re in this room. You can’t really do a chase scene so you’ve got to do a lot of pretending. That’s the challenge involved. It was something that, as I said, when it came across my desk I really wanted to do it and I was just over the moon that I got it.
Given your background on soaps and Selena Gomez movies, was action always something you wanted to do?
Yeah, it was. I really wanted to do an action movie. I kind of want to do every kind of movie. It wasn’t just one particular genre of movie that I like to watch, so there’s not really one particular genre of movie that I want to make. I felt really fortunate that my first action movie got to be with James Bond. I got to learn from Pierce about the whole genre and the way to approach these kinds of movies in terms of when you’re filming them, taking care of yourself and all the physicality and intensity involved in them. Yeah, I’d always wanted to do an action movie because you’re running around, shooting guns and fighting people. It’s just like being a kid again. It was an absolute blast.
Did you ever try to get in Expendables 3 because they were recruiting a new young cast?
No, I didn’t. When that was going down, I may have been filming November Man so I don’t know. Maybe one day. I don’t know, because I’m so new on the scene, I’d feel a little bit of a fraud coming into a movie like The Expendables with so many well-established and much loved action heroes. I’d feel a bit out of place, so maybe in a few years time.
I know Point Break is going to be a very different take on the story, but will there be a scene where you fire your gun in the air and scream?
[Laughs] There might be but I think you’re going to have to wait until July next year to check that out. It’s been a lot of fun actually getting involved in this movie. It’s a dream of mine and yeah, there’s a couple of little homages there. Hopefully you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
But talking about getting into action movies, is Point Break the ultimate?
For me, at least. I loved the original my whole life and watched 1,001 times. Yeah, when I heard that they were looking at me for it, I said, “I’m going to get this. No one else is going to get it.” I was very fortunate that that happened. It was definitely the role I wanted most out of anything that I’ve ever gone for, so I was over the moon when I got it.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
