Continuing his hunt for the High Table, John Wick has found a new path to reach his target in John Wick: Chapter 4. Hoping to earn his freedom by taking down the High Table, John Wick's plans are turned on their head when a dangerous new adversary comes into play, the Marquis Vincent de Gramont. The Marquis has been sent to take down the Baba Yaga no matter what it takes, which will turn old friends into enemies, but John Wick won't back down from his goal.
Director Chad Stahelski once again helms the newest installment of the John Wick franchise. The star-studded returning cast of John Wick: Chapter 4 is led by Keanu Reeves, Ian McShane, Laurence Fishburne, and the late Lance Reddick. John Wick: Chapter 4 also introduces a number of new characters played by the legendary Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgård, Hiroyuki Sanada, Shamier Anderson, Rina Sawayama, Scott Adkins, and Clancy Brown.
Screen Rant spoke with Scott Adkins about playing Killa in John Wick: Chapter 4. He broke down how he lost himself in the character including how he found the voice and explained what makes John Wick and Stahelski stand out as great action franchises and filmmakers respectively.
Scott Adkins on John Wick: Chapter 4
Screen Rant: John Wick is one of the only franchises that keeps getting better and better with every single installment. It feels like the stunts get heightened every single time as well. Can you talk about performing with those prosthetics on?
Scott Adkins: I'm a big fan of the John Wick movies. I've known Chad for a while. I've been bugging him to put me in them since the first one, and finally got the call on John Wick 4. And he's like, "Yeah, but the only catch is, do you want to play this character? I've got this idea of [you] playing this character you're going to be in a fat suit." So I relished the challenge. I was really excited to create a character and disappear into the role. Putting those prosthetics on; three and a half hours to get them on, hour to get it off.
Start with the face, and then you put on this cooling suit, which was this colostomy like thing coming out that plugs into an ice bucket and cools you down when you need it, and then you put the fat suit on. Quite the rigmarole to go through, but worth it for a John Wick movie. If that's what it's going to take to get me in a John Wick film then that's what it's going to take.
How did the prosthetics change your approach to the stunts?
Scott Adkins: You wouldn't call [John Wick] realistic, but there is an element of the action that is very grounded and real. All the martial arts is properly applicable in reality, they're doing realistic type of stuff. It's heightened, isn't it? It's not like there's people doing somersaults on wires and everything. So we wanted to keep it grounded with his fighting style, but we also wanted to sell the weight, that he's a bigger guy.
It's not just me in a fat suit. We wanted to sell that this guy is heavy and it is hard for him to move around. Yet in his past life, he used to be this deadly assassin himself and he knows how to throw down. So we came up with a kind of Mike Tyson style to the way he fights, but he can still bring it out when it counts. We didn't want to do a load of triple kicks and everything.
I'm a huge fan of your work. I love the genres that you perform in, but you're working with two amazing performers in this, Keanu Reeves and Donnie Yen. Can you talk to me about your working experience with them and the collaboration process working with them?
Scott Adkins: Well, it was great to sit down and play that scene with Keanu and Donnie and Shamier Anderson as well. And I really enjoyed acting against the three of them. And of course, I worked with Donnie before. That was an amazing experience. I have so much respect for the man. He's brilliant in the film. He's brilliant in everything he does. He's one of the best to ever do it, and it's an absolute pleasure to share the screen with a legend like that.
Same can be said for Keanu, who is one of the greatest action stars we've ever had. Think of the amount of top quality action films he's done, all The Matrix, Speed, Point Break, four John Wicks now. And Shamier Anderson, great actor. But I was surprised when he started moving because he's a real martial artist. I was like, "Man, this is going to be great." And of course it is to work with all three of them.
Absolutely. How do you approach the character of Killa, and did you craft a backstory for him as a part of your performance?
Scott Adkins: Yeah, a little bit of the backstory in my relationship with John Wick and how I feel about him and the other characters, but I just wanted to disappear into the role as much as I could. So I started with the voice. Once I found the voice, I found a way into the character. Started off with the voice and then the laugh came, and I just felt that he would be this jolly, bigger chap who's obviously pretty mean-spirited, but there's a jolliness to him as well.
I based the voice on, I need to look up his name 'cause in the other interview I forgot, but the guy that plays the Gestapo dude in Raiders of the Lost Ark. "What should we talk about?" Yeah, that's where the voice came from. And that was a way in, and everything sort of just grew from there. And then you get the costume on and the suit and start to see how the guy moves.
It's a leap of faith actually going into it because everything was coming together at different times. And eventually there I am fully formed in the costume with the character and the voice and the teeth and everything. I'm like, "Oh, it is going to work."
I know you talked earlier about how the John Wick franchises elevate with their stunt work. Can you talk about the most challenging stunt to perform in this film?
Scott Adkins: There's a sequence where Keanu's raining down punches on me through the rain. So there's like a waterfall and he's the other side of this wall of water. I'm just seeing these punches come through the water, and I've got water coming in my face as well. So I'm trying to keep my eyes open and react to the punches at the right time, but I'm only seeing them at the last minute. Things like that you don't think about.
You've worked on a number of action films, which are incredible. What sets John Wick apart from most action franchises?
Scott Adkins: Because it's done by people that really know how to do it. The first time Hollywood could legitimately compete with Hong Kong or Chinese filmmaking was The Matrix. But it was because it was Yuen Woo-Ping there doing it. Now it's the first time that Hollywood competes and does it as well as the Hong Kong guys. And so when Donnie's in this movie now, he's able to be in an American movie looking as good as he does in his other films because it's directed by someone who gets it and understands it. And that's the difference.
Speaking of somebody that gets it and understands it, can you talk about collaborating with Chad Stahelski? How does his experience as a stunt performer and coordinator set him apart from other directors?
Scott Adkins: He's one of the best martial artists I've ever met in my life. He knows so many different styles, and he's proficient in so many of them. He's really good, and you wouldn't want to mess with him, trust me. So you're talking to someone who's got this encyclopedic knowledge of martial arts anyway, and he's such a great astute filmmaker. If you come up through stunts, you're going to learn loads about the filmmaking process anyway, so that's a great way to get introduced to being a director second unit, into directing.
So when it comes to making an action film, he's very good at thinking outside the box, "Okay, let's bring dogs in and dogs are going to throw people with Aikido moves. Let's have a fight in a mirrored place like Enter the Dragon. Let's have a fight with all the glass." He thinks outside the box and does new and inventive stuff that you haven't seen before. And he's so interested in the cinematography looking as good as it possibly can. I mean, a John Wick movie looks like nothing else, right? It's impeccable. And the production design and all those things is what makes Chad Stahelski a force to be reckoned with.
I know you auditioned for the role of Batman a while ago. With James Gunn's DCU introducing a new Dark Knight, are you still interested in playing Batman in The Brave and the Bold?
Scott Adkins: I'll just say no. I'll just go with no. I'll just be happy to get some nice roles in bigger movies. Big movies like John Wick. We'll leave it at that.
About John Wick Chapter 4
Following the events of Parabellum, John Wick has found a new path to defeating the High Table and is taking the fight to them. But before he can try to earn his freedom, a powerful new enemy will turn even more people against Wick, including one of his oldest and most dangerous friends.
Check out our other John Wick: Chapter 4 interviews: