Frank Grillo (Kingdom, Captain America: Civil War) goes on an E-ticket thrill ride in the new Netflix film Wheelman, available today, who is just out of prison, but is in debt to the mob and has to pay off his IOU before he can be free and clear.
“He owes the mob this one job, but ultimately he just wants to reconnect with his daughter, have a relationship, and be a regular guy, and it’s just not happening,” Grillo tells Parade.com in this exclusive interview. “Not that night, and that’s where you get the conflict and the tension.”
What starts out as a simple bank robbery turns into a high stakes race-to-survive when things quickly go bad. With a car full of money and his family on the line, the clock is ticking to figure out who double-crossed him and the only person he can trust is his 13-year-old daughter.
During our conversation, Grillo talks more about racing through the streets at Boston late at night, working with wife Wendy Moniz, will there be more Purge movies in his future, and more.
This movie was very stressful to watch because there’s so much that can go wrong at any moment. What was it like to film? Did you feel that tension when you were filming it?
Yeah, we were under a time constraint. Obviously, we were shooting at night, and it was the first time that Joe Carnahan and I were producing a film, and I knew that if we didn’t keep the tension in the script, the way it was setup, we would have a pretty big failure on our hands. So, there was a lot of that sense of we’ve got to keep this tense and interesting. It was a lot of work, but about midway through, we had the feeling that we had something cool.
So tell me a little bit about Wheelman, and this is my pun for the day. What drives him?
I often say you come to a place in life when you’re a man, where you’ve run out of time, and you have to make a choice, and that’s either live a simpler life that is maybe not as exciting, but you take care of your family, and you be a stand up guy, and I think that’s Wheelman. I think that’s what this guy is going through.
Did you have to take driving lessons? I talked to Ansel Elgort when he did Baby Driver, and he did.
Yeah, I did. You know, I worked a little bit with some [stunt drivers] just for a day, but I race motorcycles and stuff. I’m a bit of a speed demon. I know my way around a car pretty well, so I was confident.
The great thing about the people in Boston is they really laid out the red carpet for us. They closed streets down, so I knew it was safe enough that I could go a little crazy, but it was me. Mostly 90 percent of it is practical. It’s me driving and talking at the same time. So it was fun. I mean, listen, I got to be a wild man for 19 days.
As an actor, when you don’t have your whole physicality because you’re stuck in a car, is that harder?
Yeah, it is hard because you can’t be too big. You can’t do too much because I have a camera in front of my face mounted on the car, or I have a camera in the car on the side of my head. So, I really had to prepare this movie. This was a great opportunity for me, and so I prepared a lot, so I knew where this guy was emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, psychologically, and physically at any given moment in the film. I was always in it, and there was nothing manufactured about it. It was a great experiment that I think we pulled off.
You have an executive producer credit on this. How did you go about making that transition to working behind the camera?
Joe Carnahan and I had been looking to do something together since we did The Grey, and he found this script through Jeremy Rush who was a PA at the time. We brought it to CAA, our agents, and we said we want to produce it. We have a new company. We want to be boots on the ground. Netflix came in and they bought it and they agreed we should produce it and we were off to the races.
I just did another TV show for Netflix that we produced, and another film called El Chicano that we produced. So now our company is going to do The Raid and three other films that are in the pipeline, and so we’re off.
Does having a business degree from college help you be a producer?
Not at all. I don’t know what it helps you with, but it’s generally not that. You know Hollywood is a business based on relationships, like many businesses. So it’s really about knowing how to execute, and Joe and I have been in the business long enough that we both know how to execute, and then just maintaining great relationships, so that’s the struggle.
Wendy Moniz, your real-life wife, plays your wife in this. You met onGuiding Light, so what’s it like to work with her all these years later?
It’s so funny because for the past three years, I was doing a show called Kingdom, on DirecTV, and so we hired her. Wendy came and played my love interest for one season, I think eight episodes. So we had just worked together about a year ago, very closely, very intimately, and then, obviously, had done Guiding Light, and she was on another pilot for a TV show of mine, Battery Park, so I’m used to working with her. I think she’s amazing. She’s working on Yellowstone right now with Kevin Costner, Taylor Sheridan’s new show.
When I look at your roles from Kingdom to The Purge franchise and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, it seems as if they’re all very physical, tough guys. Is that something that you relate to, or is it typecasting?
You know, it is a little bit of both, but, I think, I found this niche like Liam Neesen did with Taken. You know I’ve got chops. I can act pretty well. I’m a blue-collar guy. I’m an authentic guy. I did grow up fighting and I am a bit of a rough-around-the-edges fellow, and people believe me when I’m in those situations. So in my later career, it’s turned into a real cottage industry for me. I think once or twice a week I get offered a film that is very physically oriented, so that seems to be where I’m going. I love it and I have fun doing it. I love to stay in shape, so it’s all worked out well.
Is there possibly another Purge movie in the future, or is that over?
Definitely. There’s a Purge 4, but I am definitely not in it. Those days are over for me.
Any other sequels that you’re going to be doing?
I have a movie coming out called Beyond Skyline, which is a sequel, and I just was in a movie in China called Wolf Warrior II, which just made $900 million in China. It’s the second largest domestic film in the history of movies, behind Star Wars. So, now I have a very big presence in Asia, which is great for our business because that’s a burgeoning film market. I don’t think I have any more sequels. I think I’m done with sequels.
I’m going to do a movie called Donnybrook with James Badge Dale and Jamie Bell, which is based on a novel, and then we’re going to do a movie called Decoy with Andy Garcia and Tyler Posey, and then I have another movie after that. That’s what life is now.
So few soap actors will make the transition. Why do you think you were successful? Is it because you only did the one contract?
I wasn’t a soap actor. I got there. I knew what it was. I knew I was only going to be there for a short time. I tried to make the best of it. It was fun for a minute. I was young. I got paid a little bit of money, but that was never my trajectory. From about a year after I got on the show, I wanted to get off the show. Melodrama and daytime television wasn’t what I was looking to do with my life.
Wheelman, written and directed by Jeremy Rush, begins streaming on Netflix today.
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