ARTICLE
Luke Evans Recounts His Exciting Moments in Fast & Furious 6!
By InCinemas / 29 Aug 2013 (Thursday)
The powerful underworld figure and mastermind of the international crime syndicate, Owen Shaw not only caused an uproar against the police, he left Brian and his crew in a troubled situation.
In anticipation of the upcoming Fast & Furious 6 DVD release on 9 September, InCinemas managed to get hold of an exclusive interview transcript of Luke Evans. Find out more about the main antagonist, 'Owen Shaw' and his car fasicnation after the jump!
About Luke Evans
Luke Evans is a Welsh theatre and film actor known for his stage roles in Rent, Miss Saigon, Small Change and Piaf and for his film performances in Immortals (2011), The Three Musketeers (2011), Clash of the Titans (2010), and Tamara Drewe (2010). In Fast & Furious 6 (2013) he plays the villain Owen Shaw…
Q: Why did you want to make Fast & Furious 6?
Luke Evans: There are a lot of reasons. I think I was ready to play the bad guy and I also wanted to do something that was very contemporary, very now. I have done a lot of period stuff — action, epics, and this is the complete opposite. It is epic but it has a contemporary world, with fast cars, guns and everything that I wanted to just have a go at, and I liked the role. He came up very well in the script and he is very well written.
Q: How is your character, Owen Shaw well written?
Evans: I felt they nailed him; the writers nailed Owen Shaw. He had all the factors of what I feel is a good 21st century British villain. He is not just the obvious cat stroking, ‘Good evening, Mr. Bond’ type. So I thought that was great, a really good thing and attractive.
Q: The franchise is a huge commercial success…
Evans: It has become a commercial success but also the last film was received very well and Justin Lin, the director, is so great. I have worked with a couple of big directors who were able to multitask things, compartmentalize, direct so many things at once, but he is one of these directors who can do that but in the same breath he will come down to set and speak to you or come on to set and say, ‘Have you thought about this?’ And you think, ‘How on earth have you got time to even think about what my character’s intentions are in the scene?’ But he has! He has got this attention to detail that is really admirable when you think of the amount of stuff he has to deal with on a film the size of this. So I really enjoyed working with him and was pleasantly surprised at the amount of attention he gave to my character’s role and journey.
Can't get enough of Luke Evans and Fast & Furious 6? Pre-order your 2-Disc special DVD set with added featurettes!
(Find out more about the special DVD set of Fast & Furious 6!)
Bonus Features Include:
- Making Of The Fastest Of Them All
- Race Around The Globe
- Reuniting The Team
- Letty's Return
- The Mastermind And The Mole
- Planes, Tanks, And Automobiles From Interpol To Wembley: The London Chase
- Highway Heist: The Convoy Attack
- The Antonov Takedown
- It's All About The Cars Driving With Vin (Only Available in Blu-Ray)
- Gearhead's Delight (Only Available in Blu-Ray)
- The Flip Car (Only Available in Blu-Ray)
- Hand To Hand Fury (Only Available in Blu-Ray)
- U-Control Features (Only Available in Blu-Ray)
(Relive the exciting drifting moments with movie trailers!)
Q: You must have had great fun with the ‘flip car’ that Shaw drives?
Evans: Oh, yeah! Basically, it is based loosely on the F1 shape as you can tell when you look at it. It has those big, wide tyres and hugely low profile, very heavy, with this skeletal frame that was incredibly heavy duty and it could do what it was designed to do. It came from Justin Lin’s head, was put on paper and then designed by this incredible guy in LA who has worked with the franchise for the whole time and he is a very clever man. He built this car and when they took it to Glasgow it did it perfectly and they brought it back to London. When we shot it in London at Canary Wharf I sat in it and I drove it and I was like, ‘Is this the same car that has just flipped three police cars in Glasgow? That’s great.’ What is so good about Fast & Furious is that if they can do it for real, they will. It takes the element of CGI out of it and instead it has you thinking, ‘That is real, that actually happened.’
Also with that car, all the wheels can be turned at the same time so that it can manoeuvre very, very quickly out of situations, where it would not have to swerve. It could just move like a crab. And the noise! It had eight exhausts and if you just touched the throttle the sound of it was incredible. When we shot that scene where Shaw blows up all the pillars as he is driving through, it is all made of concrete and concrete does not give any soundproofing. So when I turned that car on everybody needed earplugs. It was so loud.
Q: Was it difficult to drive?
Evans: Yes, really difficult because it was a ratchet gearbox so it went all the way down. You had to get it all the way down to first, which was at the bottom. Strangely, fourth was at the top and there were a couple of things that you had to do but once you had got it, it was fine. I had a couple of false starts, though!
Q: Are you into cars yourself?
Evans: I am. Yes. That is a bonus. It’s great. I have lived in London since I was 17. I came here to study and I did not have a drivers licence at the time. It took me until I was 30 to pass my driving test because there’s no need to drive when you live in London. I got it when I first went to LA and I was told if you go to LA and you cannot drive, you are going to be stuck. I thought that this was an opportunity, a sign that I need to go so I did this intense ten-lesson course and passed first time. I have been driving only for four years. The irony is not lost on me that I have just done the biggest car movie in the world. It has always amused my friends that I drive all these fast cars and I have only had a license for four years!
Q: Taking up driving later in life means you get a less embarrassing first car maybe?
Evans: Absolutely. My first car was really nice, a Land Rover Discovery 4. It was a beautiful drive and then I got through a couple and now I drive an Audi. I drove an R8 for a while and then I got a speeding ticket and realised I have to be very careful where I drive that car. I think it is better to take that car to Germany or to a track, which is what I got to do before I did this film. I got to do a day with the Aston Martin people. I drove the whole range of Aston Martins round an amazing track. I took an Aston Martin from 0-165mph in like ten seconds. It was amazing.
Q: Tell me about your first day on Fast & Furious 6, because you shot a tough scene, which saw Shaw in a vulnerable position, staring down all these giant action heroes…
Evans: It was weird because they were in a bit of a rush. It was a big scene right at the end of the film. There were a lot of people in the scene and they needed to get it rehearsed and set very quickly so there was no time to be introduced to the cast. I had not met them and this was my first day and in the scene I get manhandled down the stairs, handcuffed, being dragged about by Dwayne Johnson (Hobbs). Then I was dragged in front of the whole cast who I had not even met and yet I was supposed to be thinking about all the characters and why I hated them in the film. I end up receiving a punch in the face from Paul Walker (Brian O’Conner) and get eye-balled by Vin Diesel (Dominic Toretto) and then end up, which is not in the film, kissing Gina Carano (Riley) on the way out! That was my first day on set and then they said, ‘Okay, cut. We can have a break now. Luke do you want to meet the cast?’ I was like, ‘I feel as though I have just met them!’ It was very strange and funny looking back at it.
Q: With The Hobbit (2012) and Immortals (2011) and Fast & Furious 6 (2013), do you feel as though your career is really taking off right now?
Evans: It is a slow burn. I do not feel as though it all has happened to me overnight. I feel I have been working and made some good films and some okay films. It is the way it is but I am building. I have just landed my first leading man, Dracula (2014) for Universal, which is a huge deal and I am very excited about that. It has also just been released that I am playing The Crow, or at least the offer has come in. So the wheels are moving and I am stepping up to the plate and it is getting bigger and bigger. I feel as though this is my time and this is my moment to take on a leading man and have it resting on my shoulders. But I have been building up to this point. It has been five years of hard work. But this is what happens when you start late in the business. You have a lot of catching up to do!
Q: Are you already percolating ideas for Dracula (2014)?
Evans: Oh, yes, massively so. The ball has been moving quite a lot in that realm because as you can imagine they want to take it to a whole different level. It is the original story of Dracula so it is something that is very exciting — to see the birth of this legendary character that Universal put on screen in 1932. That was 81 years ago. How exciting!