With director Michael Bay’s best film in years, Ambulance, now playing in theaters, I recently landed an extended interview with Jake Gyllenhaal, Eiza González, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II which covered a lot of different subjects. In the first part of the interview (which you can watch here), they talked about what it was like working with Bay, how quickly he changes what they’re filming, shooting the intense surgery scene in the ambulance, what it was like working with the drones, and a lot more on the making of Ambulance.
In today’s installment, Gyllenhaal, González, and Abdul-Mateen II talk about the most they’ve ever prepared for a role, the hardest take they’ve done, and the first thing you should watch if you’ve never seen their work.
Ambulance is based on a 2005 Dutch film of the same name made by Laurits Munch-Petersen and Lars Andreas Pedersen. Bay’s film, which was written by Chris Fedak, follows Will Sharp (Abdul-Mateel II), a retired veteran who needs money for his wife’s surgery. He goes to his adoptive brother Danny (Gyllenhaal), who involves him in a heist that quickly goes wrong, leaving them outrunning the cops in an ambulance with an LAPD officer in critical condition and an EMT (González) as hostages.
Watch what Jake Gyllenhaal, Eiza González, and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II had to say in the player above, or you can read exactly what they had to say below.
COLLIDER: Jake always knows how my questions will determine how much I enjoyed a movie.
JAKE GYLLENHAAL: Very true.
Right? He's informed me about this. You do not have to worry. This is a fucking good movie. Sorry for my cursing. I apologize.
GYLLENHAAL: No. That's actually another telltale sign.
Yeah.
EIZA GONZÁLEZ: That's good.
GYLLENHAAL: Cursing by you is actually an affirmative.
See what I mean?
GYLLENHAAL: There you go.
Listen, I got tons of questions and they're all over the place so let's get started. For all three of you, if someone has actually never seen anything you've done before, what is the first thing you want them watching and why?
YAHYA ABDUL-MATEEN II: A movie called All Day And A Night because that's the closest to me that I've ever seen myself on film. I maybe have three or four scenes in it, but I think it's nice. I play a lot of characters, but that's probably the closest that I've seen myself on film, closest to me that I've seen myself.
GONZÁLEZ: I would say I Care A Lot. I really like I Care A Lot, and I think it's the first movie that I was given the opportunity to play more of a grounded, realistic character and not…Baby Driver opened a door for me and characters that were big and very...character pieces. This is more of a grounded performance and it's a bit of a love story. It feels more of in the line that I like to do, the things that I like to do
GYLLENHAAL: Bubble Boy.
GONZÁLEZ: Yes. 100%.
GYLLENHAAL: Absolutely, I think. It's a good introduction.
I would agree.
GONZÁLEZ: I agree too.
ABDUL-MATEEN II: It was my introduction.
GONZÁLEZ: It's mine too.
GYLLENHAAL: Was it?
ABDUL-MATEEN II: Yeah.
GONZÁLEZ: Yeah. Bubble Boy.
ABDUL-MATEEN II: There we go.
GYLLENHAAL: They still wanted to work with me, so there you go.
GONZÁLEZ: Here we are.
GYLLENHAAL: There you go.
For all three of you, what is the most you've actually prepared for any role that you've done?
ABDUL-MATEEN II: Preparation is so different from job to job. Sometimes it's physics. Sometimes there's so much effort going into changing my body physically. Other times it's been the effort that it takes to learn a new language, to be able to speak a new language. It really all depends. You want an answer.
I would like one, but I didn't have to get one.
ABDUL-MATEEN II: Yeah. I think that's what my answer's going to be.
GONZÁLEZ: I prepared a lot for Baby Driver because I was really nervous, and funny enough he's talking about language and it was a language that I felt very stressed over because obviously English is my second language and it was my first movie ever in a different language. I was really nervous and I was stepping into a set with really incredible actors and I really wanted to be up to the level they were. I really, really, really, really overly prepared, even for my audition.
GYLLENHAAL: That's so hard. I can't even imagine doing a film in another language.
GONZÁLEZ: It's hard. This was really hard too. I would say this for the language because it's all the medical jargon and it has to be completely seamless. So obviously, that became really challenging when we were in a riding ambulance 100 miles per hour. You're so stressed over it that you can't even think about language truly.
GYLLENHAAL: Well, I have two answers to that. I would say the longest quite literally was maybe when I was preparing and trying to learn how to box for South Paw, but then the more philosophical answer to that which I know you'll be interested in, Steve, is I think you're always preparing for the next role and every single one is about preparation into the next. You carry with you all the stuff that you have in your life and you bring it into the work that you do and you learn and you evolve. Each thing you drag all the other stuff with you.
What is the hardest take you have ever done in any of your movies, either for camera reasons or performance or a mixture of camera and performance? Is there one that you will always remember as like, "Oh my God. That was another level?"
ABDUL-MATEEN II: Well, I can give you the literal answer which probably has something to do with Aquaman. It's the first Aquaman and I'm shooting in this tank that submerges. I have to finish the moment with my dad and then get to the other side of the tank before I'm completely submerged. By the time that I'm at the end of the take, it's like the water is up to my mouth. That was technically difficult to execute, but I think we're always in the middle of the most difficult takes in our lives, always preparing for the next take, because life will throw objectives at you and you have to be ready to take them on.
GONZÁLEZ: I think for me acting wise, it was a very hard scene that I had to shoot. I don't want to spoil it. In I Care A Lot something happens to her and I have to really cry and it's a very emotional scene and it really opened a can of worms for me. So it was really, really hard to disconnect from the scene afterwards. And then physically, I would say, funny enough, it's underwater too. I did this movie. When I started the film, I had an accident. I broke my collarbone and three ribs. So at the time that we were ending the movie, I had to do this stunt underwater in a tank and I was doing jujitsu underwater completely weighted.
GYLLENHAAL: With broken ribs?
GONZÁLEZ: It was on my third month. I had recovered. We left it until the last day of shooting, but I really wanted to do it. I really pushed my team because they wanted to do it with someone else. It was very challenging physically and it was scary, but I felt very satisfied when I saw the final cut. It was worth it.
GYLLENHAAL: Nothing, really.
Nothing. I could see that.
GONZÁLEZ: Nothing is hard for Jake, truly.
GYLLENHAAL: Not really. Look, it's acting so I don't know if you can call that hard, but I do remember one scene in this movie Stronger that I did not because it was difficult for me, but difficult to think about someone having gone through that for real. I think that sometimes being in that space and then trying to do that service is a strange thing in acting and performance because you're pretending. Getting into that space, trying to understand what was real, something that actually happened, that's hard.