The Continental EP Shares the One Rule for a John Wick Prequel Series, Teases ‘Nasty’ Scene He Almost Toned Down
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The secret to spinning a tale in the world born of the John Wick action movies can be boiled down to four words.
Don’t bore the audience.
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That’s the No. 1 rule shared by executive producer Albert Hughes, who also directed the first and last episodes of Peacock’s The Continental: From the World of John Wick, a “three-part event” to be released Friday, Sept. 22, Friday, Sept. 29, and Friday, Oct. 6.
A 1970s-set prequel to the Keanu Reeves-led film tetralogy, The Continental stars Colin Woodell (The Flight Attendant) as Winston Scott, the titular New York hotel’s eventual proprietor played by Ian McShane on the big screen. But before Winston might even think of lording over this lodging for elite assassins, he has some very deadly business to tend to, involving the Continental’s current boss (played by Mel Gibson).
In addition to Woodell and Gibson, the cast includes Ayomide Adegun as a young Charon (based on the late Lance Reddick’s character in the films), Katie McGrath (Supergirl) as the ominous Adjudicator, Peter Greene (The Mask) as body disposal expert Uncle Charlie, Mark Musashi and Marina Mazepa as assassins Hansel and Gretel, plus Ben Robson (Animal Kingdom), Hubert Point-Du Jour (The Good Lord Bird), Jessica Allain (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Mishel Prada (Riverdale), Nhung Kate, Ray McKinnon (Mayans MC) and Adam Shapiro (Never Have I Ever).
TVLine spoke with Hughes about evoking that John Wickian vibe, not having his actors “imitate” Ian McShane and Lance Reddick, and more.
TVLINE | What makes a story “from the world of John Wick” feel like a story from the world of John Wick — in your point of view as a director?
Well, that’s an interesting question. It’s almost as if there are these loose rules that don’t feel too limiting, or aspirations. You have great sets, great costumes, idiosyncratic characters. Don’t bore the audience — that’s one big rule! This very mysterious mythology where you never quite answer all the questions for the audience. It’s kind of a nod to European cinema in a way; nobody talks about that with the John Wick films, but the last John Wick film had a very European ending even though the Americans sometimes take it quite literally. I didn’t take that ending literally.
They’re also good at locations. They’re good at the fights. They’re good at the color of the film. You have to come and kind of take that and put it in a 1970s [era] with two characters you’re familiar with (Winston and Charon) but who are younger, and then you have to introduce new characters to the audience — and that’s actually the bigger challenge.
TVLINE | Were you nervous, going in, about what streaming TV would allow you to show? Because I was impressed with how violent this is.
Well, I consume a lot of TV because I live in Prague — what else am I going to do but drink beer and watch TV? — and I’ve been so impressed with what direction it’s been going in, and I am sure you’ve covered it for a long time. It’s like the land is moving, in a way. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, actors and directors from the feature space looked down on TV. Now they’re running to TV. The best stories are there, the best writers are there, the best directors are going there now. Netflix “owns” half of them now. [Laughs]
And with streaming in particular, I noticed that they can slap on a “TV-MA,” whatever that is, but it’s not as strict as the MPAA, so it’s actually more freeing. I found that I was not told to cut back or cut down on anything. In fact, I wanted to tone something down — it’s a scene in Episode 1 where the Adjudicator (Katie McGrath) is lording over her henchman who’s punching this guy in a chair, and the sound effects are nasty. My editor was just staying there and I was like, “I don’t know, man, I think it’s too much,” and he goes “It’s Wick, man! It’s the Wick world. It’s not too much.” So we were like, OK, let’s just keep it in and if the studio complains about it then I know that I’m kind of right. Nope. They didn’t complain about it, so it’s still in.
TVLINE | You mentioned the Winston and Charon characters. Was there any nudging of Colin Woodell or Ayomide Adegun to emulate any aspect of Ian McShane or the late Lance Reddick?
No. I think we purposely, consciously said that we cannot imitate them. The benefit with Ayo is his parents are Nigerian and they live in London, and in that household he heard that accent, so it’s quite natural to him. It’s not his accent; he [usually] sounds British.
With Colin in particular it was about, “No, we don’t want to imitate him. You’re giving an impression of the vibe, the swag, the attitude [of McShane’s Winston Scott].” Sometimes it’s simply in how he says something, because he’s very wry and sardonic. But it’s not about trying to copy an accent, because Ian McShane is tricky in a way. He’s done so many roles that are fantastic and people say, “Well, he has an accent.” Sometimes he does more American and sometimes he does more British and sometimes it’s more transatlantic. He kind of slips and slides.
TVLINE | There’s no imitating the distinctive timber of Ian McShane‘s voice, you can‘t imitate being a lithe, 6-foot-2 Lance Reddick….
Yeah. I recently heard myself at [age] 20 on a video on YouTube, and I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t even put a sentence together!” I’m mumbling. I had to learn how to enunciate and talk, to talk to people like you, and that was the kind of method of going into this series. You’ve get to reverse-engineer everything, asking, “What is the younger version of yourself?”
I always do this bad analogy of a baby rattlesnake. They say a baby rattlesnake is the most dangerous because they pump all the venom in you, and that means you die right away, but that also means they could die because they’re now defenseless. So, the rattlesnake has to learn how to grow up and sparingly use it and play “the game of chess of life” a lot better. The older Winston has mastered the game of chess, and the younger Winston hasn’t yet, but what the younger Winston has that the older Winston has is they’re quite clever. They’re thinkers.
TVLINE | I don’t suppose that Ian, or Lance before he passed in March, got to see any of this?
I don’t know that Ian has yet, but we were talking before the strike because of obviously the press [tour]…. Lance, I don’t think so…. God bless him. [Shakes head, thinking of Reddick’s passing] F–k.
TVLINE | Were you involved in the casting of Mel Gibson?
All of the casting, yes. We all did it together — Lionsgate, Peacock and producers, yes. It was the usual process. You know, in Hollywood it’s always like five names for this one role and then you go about systematically seeing who’s available, whose people respond…. I don’t think most people know that some actors just sit on scripts and don’t read them for months and months and months.
TVLINE | Mel of course comes with a lot of baggage for things he has said and done in the past. Did that give you any trepidation? Did anybody on the cast have concerns about working with him?
I was more focused on what I grew up watching — these very passionate performances from Lethal Weapon, my favorite movie Road Warrior…. He has this quality that I find in other actors — Shia LaBeouf has it, Tom Cruise has it, Tom Hardy has it — where when I watched the roles, I believed them. Like, I can see Shia LaBeouf in Transformers and be like, ‘He’s buying into this world.’ And that’s what Mel has. The personal life stuff, that’s not my place to get into. I’m just trying to do my job and appreciate a person who knows what he’s doing in front of the camera and behind it.
TVLINE | Because in Episode 3 of The Continental, we realize that Cormac has his own very strong “opinions.” I was curious if anybody had the thought, “Hmm, should we dial this back to maybe not evoke what we’ve heard about him in real life…?”
[Hughes sheepishly smiles on the Zoom] You see me smiling. You see me smiling. I think there’s something in there like, “He was right for the part.” You’ve seen the third episode, right? The character goes off the rails and it was… it’s a fun episode, let’s put it that way.
TVLINE | Talk about the role of music in the series, because there are a ton of excellent needle drops.
Well, that comes from my past in film with my brother [filmmaker Allen Hughes]. We always were into needle drops. We’re big Scorsese fans and we love how he handles them. Like, I don’t think there’s score in Goodfellas; it’s all needle drops and it’s either counter-programming in a way or counter contrast to a scene. It’s irony, which [Quentin] Tarantino deals in a lot. We’re all from the same generation that’s influenced by the generation before us, and Scorsese for me was the first with flamboyant use of needle drops.
I’m a biracial kid with a white Armenian mother and a Black father. He’s listening to Isaac Rose and James Brown, while she’s listening to Pink Floyd and Creedence [Clearwater Revival], but I was never able to explore that side with my mother. My brother and I were dealing with a Black culture and Black music, which is fantastic of course. We downloaded a lot of soundtracks but now I’m able to use my favorite band of all time, Pink Floyd, and I’m also a Santana fan, a ZZ Top fan… It’s fun because it’s also helpful for the audience to get into a nostalgic period.
It also helps with levity, which is really important in the Wick universe. Wick is more humorous in the way they handle violence. In The Continental, there’s some verbal humor and then there’s also musical humor or counter-programming that is nodding to the audience to let them know it’s OK to have a good time. We’re not dealing with social issues, we’re not dealing with race, religion, war…. “You’re here to have a good time. It’s OK. Release.”
Want scoop on The Continental, or for any other TV show ? Email your question to InsideLine@tvline.com, and it may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!
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