Ghosted is now streaming on Apple TV+ and ahead of its worldwide debut last week, we caught up with director Dexter Fletcher (Eddie the Eagle; Rocketman) to talk about helming the Chris Evans/Ana de Armas romantic action adventure comedy.
The film follows, salt-of-the-earth Cole Turner (Chris Evans), who falls head over heels for the enigmatic Sadie Rhodes (Ana de Armas) — but then makes the shocking discovery that she’s actually a CIA agent. Before they can decide on a second date, Cole and Sadie are swept away on an international adventure to save the world.
Speaking with Fletcher, he tells me about what initially caught his eye when talking to Chris Evans about Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese's screenplay, casting Ana de Armas to replace Scarlett Johansson, making Captain America more relatable, those massive cameos, and a whole lot more!
Read on for our full interview below and please remember to SUBSCRIBE to my channel!
ROHAN: What initially piqued your interest about the Ghosted script and convinced you to direct it? Were you looking to do something different after doing a few consecutive biopics?
DEXTER: Yeah, I'm someone who's lucky enough to just, you know, I get sent scripts and stories to tell and I really make my choices based on what I feel my instinctive responses to them are, and sometimes they're biopics and they’re true stories, or the retelling of actual events, because I mean, The Offer is one person's recollections of the making of that film, and lots of people are involved in that film, and probably, if you ask someone different, their recollections will be different, so, again, it is perspective.
But for myself, personally, if I read it, and I think there’s something fun here or there's a story, I can tell here, I know what that is. There's something I can get my take into, then I don't care if it's fiction, if it's a true story, if it is improvised or whatever. I mean, obviously, I didn't consciously choose three, four biopic kind of projects, back to back. That was just how the cards fell, and I didn't also go, ‘I'm not doing any more biopics,’ I just responded to Ghosted in a very positive way, and I love Chris Evans, and he and I hit it off, and there was a lot of really good, exciting elements for it.
ROHAN: Speaking of Chris, it's hard to forget that he is Captain America and doesn't quite look like someone that would typically get ghosted. What conversations did you have with Chris to make him feel more Cole Turner rather than Steve Rogers? I noticed he gets to show off his physical comedy quite a bit...
DEXTER: Well, he's great at that. That's what he brings to the table. That’s why I knew that as well. I mean, I remember in one of his earliest movies and I found him very funny, and so, I knew he was a great physical comedian, and I knew that we would have that, but also, I mean, I get your point. The truth is that he doesn't actually technically get ghosted, he gets ignored for a while, because she's at work, she's on a mission. So, she can't actually go, ‘Hey! Someone's shooting at me at the moment, I'll text you back later.,’ She's just busy, and he's just needy and impatient, and that kind of - it doesn't matter how good looking you are, you can still be needy and impatient, and that can be quite off putting, and I think that's the fun that we have, and I think part of the great humanizing of Captain America, if that's what you want to call it, is his family.
If you look at that family, those scenes with his family, where his little sister seems to be the only one who's got a grip of reality. You know, Mum, obviously just adores her son, regardless of what he does, and encourages him, in fact, to chase this girl across the other side of the world. And dad, obviously, just wants him to leave and move out and become who he’s supposed to be, but these are very relatable family situations that, hopefully, the audience can go, I recognize that, but that make him like an average normal man, which is what he is. We don't get that with his superhero work. That's not there.
So, I think this is the great skill of Chris, as an actor, that he fits into that family, that family unit is really relatable, really genuine, authentic, and that he has this great physical comedy, and that he's not precious about pulling the rug from people's expectations of him, because I know throughout the film, it was like, well, when's he gonna really, when's he gonna get a shield and start bashing everyone? And, we just laughed and laughed as we went on. Even a bit right near the end, where they're crouched down in the middle of a gunfight and she says, ‘Are you ready?’ And he says, ‘For what? No, no, I'm not ready. I'm absolutely not ready!’ He's still being very authentic, because like, if I was in the situation, I'd be under the table, hiding, and just trying to stay alive, and that's what he's doing. He's just trying to stay alive, and that's, I think, relatable.
ROHAN: I know Scarlett Johansson was initially cast, but had to drop out. What was the process behind casting Ana de Armas? Was it a pretty quick conversation between you and Chris? Did you rewrite Sadie at all to better suit her?
DEXTER: We added stuff. I mean, I love her heritage and her background and stuff, and, after talking with her about it, I didn't want her to try and do an American accent or have to do an American accent or any other accent other than her own. I thought that gives her an authenticity and an appeal that was really great and relevant. Why should she have to affect something else just because it was written as a North American, you know, that doesn't necessarily follow. We adapt with that.
And, it was very quick, as soon as it was obvious that it couldn't work with Scarlet, because of the scheduling issues that came up. I said to him, about Ana, and he said, ‘I'm thinking exactly the same thing.’ So, it was a very quick conversation, and the studio were like, if you could do that, do it, and so, Chris made a call, as he does, and then, the next day, or a couple days later, I was on the phone with Ana and she'd read the script, and she was like, talk to me about what you want to do. What's the story?
The other great thing, aside from her performance in Bond, which was so standout and so exciting, was that Ballerina was prepping, but then it got pushed and she had a window. So, we we got really lucky, you know, those sort of things don't happen very often. So, she was like, ‘Well, look, I've got some months off.’ And, she literally went from the set of Ghosted to the set of Ballerina. I think she had like three days off or something crazy like that. We took it right to the wire.
So, that was just a bit of movie magic and good fortune, really, that worked in our favor. And, the fact that they're friends, yes, helps enormously, because they sit in the corner laughing about jokes that only they get, there was such a history, and I don’t know what it is they're chatting about half the time, but they're in the corner, laughing and making silly faces and enjoying themselves, which is really great. But, look, they've never been romantically paired before, and I think that, for them, was an interesting element to this. It's not a given, you know, that kind of chemistry is not a given, but they're both brilliant actors, and they do enjoy each other's company. So, yeah, I was very, very fortunate.
ROHAN: Since this film blends so many different genres - romance, action, comedy, drama - is any element more challenging to direct than the other?
DEXTER: I don't know. I mean, I think, for me, what I always strive for in my storytelling, no matter how fantastical it may get, even with something like Eddie, you know, it's a sort of fantastical retelling of a true story. It's a heightened version, but there's got to be a very, very clear idea of keeping some authenticity in there, so that it's a recognizable, relatable story and experience for the audience, that the relationships feel authentic, you know, the journeys. I'm very particular about sharp left turns, where you go, ‘Well, why the [frick] do they make that decision?’ That doesn't track with what happened earlier, you know. just for the sake of the storytelling, just for the sake of convenience. And it's problematical, but it does seem, in my experience, to give the film its tonal Northstar, and I don't know if it's true, but it seems like you can get away with anything if you, you know, I mean, obviously, you can't just keep piling stuff on it, there’s a breaking point.
But, what I was very particular about on Ghosted was really creating an authentic feeling first date, that really interesting and connected first date that you really root for those two, so that when all the other stuff happens, you're still rooting for that relationship to make it through, to work out. It's very romantic comedy in that respect. It doesn't shy away from it, and it's still a romantic comedy right to the end. It just happens to be that the obstacle is her job. So, hopefully, that's what allows us to spin several plates at once, you know, the comedy, the action, the romance, the drama, there's even drama in there.
ROHAN: The film features some very major cameos from - SPOILER ALERT - Marvel stars Sebastian Stan (God), Anthony Mackie (Grandson of Sam), and Ryan Reynolds (Jonas), as well as John Cho (Leopard). I can guess how some of those came together considering your leading man, but can you tell me more about shooting that sequence and bringing them all on board?
DEXTER: Well, that's four nights on the set that we built out in Atlanta. We recreated that market, from a small town in Pakistan, and it was a joy to do that. We had 400 extras and food and goats and camels and everything there, and I was quite clear with those actors that came in, that they were there to play the characters and not be themselves, if you see what I mean, because yes, they're instantly recognizable, and there's obvious connections throughout a certain universe that make it very painfully obvious how they got there. And, some other people, I just said, look, I love this actor, can we just ask him if he'd be into it, and he was.
So, again, it was about treating it like the sequence that is, not as a ‘Oh, here's a really good moment to stick in all these recognizable faces.’ It's a really important moment where we understand that Cole and Sadie are being hunted by some very serious individuals, and that they're in a world that is really dangerous and kind of crazy, and that she's actually protecting him from one way or another. So, and it just happened to be that they came there to act, those guys. They didn't come to just pose and look good, although they can do that very easily as well. They came to create their characters as much as everybody else.
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Salt-of-the-earth Cole falls head over heels for enigmatic Sadie — but then makes the shocking discovery that she’s a secret agent. Before they can decide on a second date, Cole and Sadie are swept away on an international adventure to save the world.