We talked to Mike Colter and more at The Union premiere.
The Union hit Netflix this weekend and the new action flick features a star-studded cast led by Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg. In the film, Berry plays Roxanne, a member of a secret underground organization called The Union that takes on dangerous jobs the CIA can’t handle. The organization tends to recruit blue-collar workers, which leads Roxanne to seek out her high school boyfriend (Wahlberg) to help with a dangerous intelligence mission in Europe. ComicBook recently attended the movie’s premiere in Los Angeles and talked to the cast about Berry and Wahlberg’s onscreen chemistry. Some of the actors also shared their thoughts on the film and its titular organization.
“I thought it was kind of clever,” Jackie Earle Haley shared. “So you’ve got normally like the CIA and the NSA and the MI-6 and all of these things. And here’s J.K. [Simmons] and he’s like, ‘Well, I’m going to create this secret spy agency and I’m just going to go get that foreman from that factory there. I’m going to get this fighter from…’ You know what I mean? It’s just all these people and he kind of puts them together.”
“I think at one point before the start of the movie, each one of us was the Mark Wahlberg character that came in, total fish out of water, had to get trained, and then became experts, and then now we’re too recognizable for this mission,” he continued. “We need somebody that isn’t recognizable. So Halle must have told J.K. that, ‘This guy’s got some skillset,’ her old flame from high school.”
“It was great,” Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje added. “First of all, the cast that they had as part of that Union, one of the guys I got a chance to have a reunion with was J.K. Simmons, who I hadn’t worked with in 20 years since Oz. We did the groundbreaker show back then, so it was great to actually meet and see him, and us get to play again.”
“Look, it’s not a new concept, we’ve seen it, but it’s great because of the chemistry of the actors,” he added. “So that’s really what attracted me. It’s a stellar cast. And it’s mixed, it’s diverse. You got somebody from every nationality there, and gender. And I think it was representative of where we are today without getting too deep.”
“Well, I just think people have to realize that this is a popcorn flick where people can sit back and relax,” Mike Colter explained. “It’s a thrill ride. We’re going fast. Things are happening quickly. It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of comedy. It’s a lot of action. It’s a little bit of romance, and the set pieces, the locations are phenomenal. So I think they’re going to be stimulated from start to finish.”
The Union is now streaming on Netflix.
