In Roland Emmerich's Moonfall, a mysterious force knocks the moon from its orbit and sends it hurtling on a collision course for Earth. With the world on the brink of annihilation, it's down to three unlikely heroes to mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space to make things right. However, it's then they find out that our moon isn't quite what we think it is.
Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, and John Bradley are the trio that finds themselves tasked with saving the planet, and we were fortunate enough to recently catch up with the latter to discuss his role as conspiracy theorist KC Houseman. With that in mind, we kicked off our chat off by asking the Game of Thrones alum what it was like to get into the mind of a quirky character like this one.
From there, Bradley talks about some of the crazy stunts he had to pull off in Moonfall, the challenges of creating chemistry with his co-stars in the midst of a pandemic, and going from fantasy to sci-fi.
The actor also weighs in on the possibility of reuniting with Kit Hartington in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. As you'll see in our exclusive video interview, he'd love to share the screen with any of his old Game of Thrones pals and is open to sharing the screen with Harington's Dane Whitman/Black Knight.
Moonfall is set to be released exclusively in theaters on February 4.
After watching the film and your performance, I’m curious: what did you enjoy most about playing a conspiracy theorist like KC and did your preparation and research take you to any particularly weird corners of the internet?
It’s funny, isn’t it? Up until a couple of years ago, you probably would have had to do quite a lot of digging to find out about conspiracy theorists and what they are and what they do. But nowadays, conspiracy theories are so much part of the mainstream and so much part of popular discourse, they just seem to be everywhere anyway. The thing about K.C. is he’s right. He’s scientifically proven to be right and that was the joy of playing that character. The moment where all of that study and obsession he’s had with people rejecting him and saying he’s crazy, the minute that he finds out he was right and the minute Brian Harper, an actual astronaut says to him ‘You’re not crazy. You’re right about all of this. This wasn’t a waste of time.’ That was all his Christmases come at once. It’s the only thing he’s wanted to hear his whole life. That moment of validation and acceptance. It’s a beautiful human moment for K.C., I think.
It’s a great character arc for you, and you get to balance that with a lot of action scenes as well. That water sequence, for example, looked absolutely brutal to film. What was that like for you?
It was brutal and I’m pleased it looked it as well because it really, really was. When you do these big effects movies and so much of it is VFX and green screen and imagination and you have to imagine what’s not there. But, believe me, gallons and gallons and gallons of water were there that day and myself and Patrick were looking out of the door of that hotel set where there was a huge ramp like a hundred-foot [tall] with gallons of water coming thundering down it right at us. Even though you know you’re safe and there are stuntmen around and you’re as safe as can be, it’s still gallons of water that are going to hit you right in the mush at any moment! Your heart does beat a little bit faster when you have scenes like that, so it was just nice, in amongst all the green screen and VFX, to get my hands dirty and deal with practical effects and feel what it’s like to be that character in that moment. It’s a completely different discipline, but I love them both.
You mention Patrick, and you guys have such a rapport and chemistry in the film, so what it was like finding that with him in the course of making the movie?
It came very naturally to us quite early on, but the pandemic didn’t help. Normally, you get to know people while you’re having dinner or when you’re having a drink with them, but we were in deep lockdown in Montreal, so there were no restaurants or bars. There was no social side of it at all. The only time we saw each other really was on set. It’s just lucky that I respect him so much as an actor and like him so much as a person. And Halle as well. The three of us had a really nice time working with each other. It all had to be at work. We couldn’t bring anything from the outside in, but we all happened to work really nicely [together] and it was a pleasure to act with them both.
I’ve got to ask as I know this is something a lot of our readers would like to know - someone else you had a lot of chemistry with on screen in Game of Thrones is Kit Harington, so what do you think the odds are you guys could reunite in the Marvel Universe now he’s over there playing Black Knight?
Oh, I’d love that. I’d love that. Any excuse to get back with Kit would be a real joy. In fact, when I saw the Eternals trailer at the cinema a while ago, I saw Kit and I saw Richard [Madden] in a movie together and I felt left out. ‘All my friends are hanging out without me and I don’t like it!’ I got a good bit of jealousy there. If I could work with Kit or Richard or anybody from Game of Thrones again, I’d be champing at the bit. I’m actually working with Benioff and Weiss at the moment on their new thing for Netflix and that’s a thrill. We’re always going to be a family. I love them all so much. Any opportunity I get to even see them socially is nice, but getting to work with them again would be a total dream come true. Absolutely.
Fingers crossed and one final question for you: of course, talking of Game of Thrones, that’s a huge fantasy world and Moonfall is a huge sci-fi world - what was it like to enter this world of sci-fi and what surprised you most?
What surprised me most was how hard it is. Talking from a VFX standpoint, I’ve done VFX and green screen stuff on Game of Thrones, but on that, they basically say, ‘Imagine you’re looking out and you’ve got thousands of soldiers coming towards you.’ You can conceptually know what a thousand men look like and can imagine them coming towards you. That’s one thing, but when you’re in a sci-fi world where you’re got no frame of reference for what the inside of the moon looks like, you have to really pull that out of your own imagination. It’s that complete blank canvas that Roland had to create this entire world on top of. That was it. The freedom of imagination, no rules, no frame of reference. You can just create whatever you want and, artistically, that’s very liberating for Roland and a very useful acting exercise for us as well.