Anthony Michael Hall is embracing evil. The veteran actor stars opposite Jessica Alba in Trigger Warning, a new revenge thriller coming to Netflix. Trigger Warning sees Hall suit up as Senator Ezekiel Swann, a crooked politician with a pair of “Cain and Abel”-esque sons, Jesse (Mark Webber, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and Elvis (Jake Weary, It Chapter Two), bent on maintaining control over their home county.
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“The stakes are high in this. It’s good versus evil. It’s a revenge thriller,” Hall told ComicBook. “I had a great time playing this part. When you play a bad guy, it’s kind of no holds barred. You can kind of pull out the stops and have fun with it.”
Hall had the opportunity to take extra ownership of Senator Swann, imparting some of his trademark comedy into the antagonist.
“I think the onus is also on giving some humor to the character,” Hall continued. “There was a scene where I sit down with Jessica and my character makes a comment, which we were both kind of playing it straight, but when we saw the film with an audience at a screening, it got some laughs. Things like that are fun when you’re playing a character and you think it’s one thing, but then an audience might have a different reaction to it.”
Beyond dialogue delivery and story sequences, Trigger Warning packs itself with innovative action captain by Alba’s Parker, an active-duty Special Forces officer. Trigger Warning‘s fight scenes are bolstered by Thunder Road Films, a production company responsible for critically-acclaimed action flicks like John Wick, Monkey Man, and Sicario.
“I have done action in a lot of films throughout the years, but this one, not so much. Senator Swann, it’s more like he’s pitted his sons, not just against each other, but they’re all complicit in the bigger story,” Hall teased. “This movie was produced by Thunder Road. They really attacked each day in terms of getting the shots and really mapping out the plan for the shoot. We also had (action designers) 87eleven. They do all the John Wick stuff. They are just incredible.
“They were there about five or six weeks before we started production. When I got to set, we had choreography and fight training, but they also had pre-visualize all the sequences and worked out all the fights and the stunts. It was really cool to have all those elements, to have a core group of women leading the charge to have this great stunt team that’s at the top of the industry.”
Alba herself was one of those women who pushed the boundaries in the stunt game.
“Jessica was great to work with. She’s a lot of fun but also she was very serious when she was on set and went about her business,” Hall praised. “She has such a history doing action that she was like having another fight coordinator on the set. She was really involved in every detail. She really knows her stuff. I think the execution of it was very important to her on set and she made sure of it.”
Trigger Warning premieres on Netflix this Friday, June 21st.
