In 21 Bridges, Det. Andre Davis (Chadwick Boseman) devises the desperate but ingenious plan to close down Manhattan, to enable him and his team to entrap two perpetrators, who’ll have no place to flee in the sealed-off island.
But, Andre also finds himself in kind of an arranged marriage. He’s saddled with a new partner: drug enforcement task force narcotics detective Frankie Burns, portrayed by Sienna Miller.
Screen Rant had the chance to speak with both Boseman and Miller about working together.
Screen Rant: First off I just wanna say, I had a great time with the film. I really enjoyed it. One of the things I liked the most was seeing you two as a pair. What do you both learned from each other while making this film?
Screen Rant: So let’s go back to the accent you did in this Sienna..
Chadwick Boseman: Oh, let me start. I think it’s hard to pinpoint an actor and what you take from them necessarily. It just sort of absorbs. I was never like..“Oh man, he does..” or “She does..” You can say that about every person in this movie. But what I really appreciate about Sienna is that there’s a strength there and there’s a flexibility. And there’s always gonna be strength and flexibility. But there’s a strength and flexibility that she shows with everything she does. And she questions…like she’ll question after she does something if it’s good and you’re like “Yeah, but that was like some of the dopest work I’ve seen.” And like, “Why are questioning the accent still? The accent’s tight! What are you talking about?” But the fact that she’s still searching is part of the reason why she is who she is and she’s as good as she is.
Sienna Miller: Awww. I was astounded by working with Chadwick. I’d seen a lot of his films, most of them I think, and I’d never seen him be the same in anything. And to see him play this character and to be so immersed in it and to be at the level that he’s at as an actor and the same thing, searching, trying different things, no one take was the same, he can pull up little things that he can fix or adjust. He’s charming and he’s considerate of everyone and just an insanely powerful talented human being. So I didn’t stop, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. And seeing sometimes I have to be like…“no no no, you have to respond because I would be intrigued by what he was doing. She’s just got this magnetism. He’s a movie star.
Screen Rant: Let’s go back to that. I saw this interview you did in which you said there’s this word that an actor has that’s there in for figuring out the accent. What was the word for this film?
Sienna Miller: Oh back to that!
Screen Rant: Awwww.
Sienna Miller: OH, I can’t remember!
Screen Rant: Totally not a problem. Chadwick, as I’m watching the film, I feel that Andre sees a parallel of his life in Michael in the fact that both loss somebody. Do you see that as a sort of commonality between the two?
Chadwick Boesman: I remember you doing that though.
Sienna Miller: What did I do? What was the word?
Chadwick Boesman: I just remembered you continuously saying the word.
Sienna Miller: Yeah, there is always a sound, but yeah… I can’t remember, which is so annoying for you. There would have been one. I remember doing another movie where I had to get an “A” sound though and that stuck in my head.
More: 21 Bridges Official Trailer
Chadwick Boesman: I think that’s one thing. I think the first thing is he’s assets, based upon the crime scene, that only one of them is in fact a willing killer. First I have to be safe. And it doesn’t mean I’m safe, but I have to worry about this person a different way than I have to worry about a different person. And I think we get a run down of what their histories are. And it’s not just that he’s loss someone but I think I can tell he’s resilient in that loss. That he’s taking that loss in a particular way. Where I can’t talk, he can also lose someone and be the wrong person to put that much trust in. But it’s the way he sort of handled that situation, that I felt I could give him a little more leniency.
- 21 Bridges Release Date: 2019-11-22
