-Hey, Charlize. Nice to see you again.
-Hi. Nice to see you. How are you?
-I'm well. Obviously,
I would prefer to be seeing you in person.
I do appreciate you making the time.
Are you having an enjoyable summer?
-Yes, I am. Listen, I mean,
not without mentioning
everything that we've been going through,
I will say it's been really, really nice
to spend time with my kids and to just be home.
I'm always craving more of that.
So I've taken full advantage of that.
-And it should be noted
that when you have a big movie like this,
someone like you who's the star of it
would have to be doing so much press on the road.
It must be kind of nice to just be able to do it from home.
-Yeah. I don't think we're going to go back to the other.
[ Laughs ] -Yeah.
I mean, it makes sense to have to leave home
for six months to make a movie, but it always seems like
such a bummer to have to then leave home
for another two months to talk about it.
-Yeah, I don't know. I might disagree with you.
I'm trying to figure out how I can just do
everything from here. -Oh, even the movie?
Well, I should stress
that I feel like I really enjoyed this movie.
I loved the comic it was based on.
I feel like "The Old Guard," if you shot it at home,
would be considerably worse.
-[ Laughs ] Now, that's a good friend.
You just gave me the honest God truth,
so I will take that.
-You, uh, play one of a group of immortal soldiers.
-Yeah.
-Your character may be, um, 6,000-plus years old.
Ya look great. I don't know what the secret is.
-[ Laughs ] Yeah.
-Do you ever -- Like, playing a character like this,
did you think about what it would actually be like?
Would you be somebody
who would be in for another 6,000 years of living?
-Mnh. I don't know about that.
I think, you know, when you just think about it,
my reaction would be, "Oh, my gosh!
More time with people that I love."
Like, of course, that sounds really nice.
But, ultimately, I think having to live for a very long time
must feel incredibly lonely.
And I think the idea of losing people that you love
over and over and over again,
I would have a really hard time with that.
-Yeah, and the movie, it should be noted --
This is a super-fun action movie.
But it's also really sad at times,
and I think it does a nice job of looking at that, as well.
I also want to give you a shout-out for this --
As an action-movie star,
which, let's be honest, you fully are now.
I feel like you are at the forefront
of fight scenes that take place in enclosed places.
I feel like you've had some
really good stairway fights in some films.
This has an airplane fight, a hallway fight.
You're getting very good at close fighting.
-Wow. Thank you.
You're just coming with so many compliments.
Can we just FaceTime every morning?
Can I start my day with you? -Yeah.
I would super be down for it. Yeah.
-It is fun. It is actually --
The challenge when you have a set piece kind of dictate
the space that you're going to be able to utilize,
it's really fun to have that.
Um, yeah.
I mean, listen, I am inspired by fights.
Like, you know the bathroom fight in "Mission"?
-Yeah.
-Yeah. I mean, I love fights like that.
So, um, I think it's always --
The set piece plays a huge part in it.
And when you have a lot of space,
I think you lose some of that intensity
of, like, people being right on top of each other
in the hand-to-hand combat style.
So, where else can we have a fight scene?
Hmm. -That's true.
I feel like -- I mean, you guys --
'Cause I feel like there's obviously the bathroom fight
scene in "Mission."
And then this has an airplane fight scene.
But have we seen a really good airplane-bathroom fight scene?
-[ Laughs ] -That would be like --
Now we're making it as small -- -Now we are literally just --
It's body-to-body contact.
-Yeah, exactly. -That...amazing, though.
-No one wins in an airplane-bathroom fight.
That is one of the adages. -Yeah.
No, everyone's a loser in that for sure.
-You have an ax in this film.
And, uh, you seem very comfortable with the ax.
Does something -- Does work go into looking
like you know what you're doing with an ax?
-[ Laughs ]
It's a mixture of work, and then also I was advised
by my incredible fight coordinator, Danny Hernandez,
to just walk around with the ax at all times.
So he gave me an ax.
It was rubber, but it still looked very, very real.
And he just said, "Listen, just keep it with you at all times."
Like, he's like, "Even if you go for a drive,
if you go to a restaurant" -- This was back before lockdown.
"Like, if you go gro-- Just have it in the car
even if you just hold it, or if you're in the kitchen cooking,
like, just twirl it a little bit."
So, you know, I take direction very seriously.
So I did that.
And then I remember one night I went out to dinner,
and the valet pulled my car around,
and he just got out of the car, and he just -- his face just --
He didn't say anything, and I couldn't quite understand it.
I was like, "Did I tip him?
Is it because I -- Did I not tip enough?"
And then I got in the car, and the big ax was just lying there.
And I was like, "Ohh!" -Yeah.
And it should be noted it's not the kind of ax
where somebody might've thought you were doing some woodworking.
It's definitely, like -- It's definitely a menace ax.
-Yeah. It's like a prehistoric, like...
-Yeah. -...double-faced ax
that just looks like it is going to hurt you by looking at it.