Matthias Schweighöfer reprises his fan-favorite role of Dieter in Netflix’s Army of Thieves, which is now streaming. Schweighöfer, who also directed the film, is joined by a cast that includes Nathalie Emmanuel, Ruby O. Fee, Stuart Martin, and Guz Khan.
“In this prequel to Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead, small-town bank teller Dieter gets drawn into the adventure of a lifetime when a mysterious woman recruits him to join a crew of Interpol’s most wanted criminals, attempting to heist a sequence of legendary, impossible-to-crack safes across Europe,” explains the official synopsis.
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ComingSoon’s Jeff Ames spoke with Army of Thieves stars Nathalie Emmanuel and Ruby O. Fee about their respective characters in the film and how difficult it was to pull off the intense action sequences.
Jeff Ames: Nathalie, I’ll start with you. Gwendoline kicks so much ass in this movie. How much fun was this character to play and how difficult were the fight sequences to choreograph and prepare for?
Nathalie Emmanuel: They were so fun. It was so fun preparing for this movie. The fights were really tough. They’re not like these straightforward little things. They were very complex, well for me anyway. I don’t know, there’s probably some stunt person that’d be like, “Oh, that’s pretty standard.” But I honestly, we did weeks and weeks and weeks of rehearsals. So much, so much stunt rehearsal and figuring out what works, what looks good, throwing in ideas, trying things out, getting things right, getting things not right. Finding a way to make it look awesome and so cool. It was just such an achievement. Honestly, I watched the movie and I think I might’ve cheered out loud. I was just so proud of the fights that I did, and I was like, just really happy.
I think I cheered out loud too. There were quite a few times when I did that.
Emmanuel: Yes. That was one of the times for sure.
Ruby, Korina is perhaps the most mysterious character of the film. We don’t learn too much about her and yet she makes important decisions that impact the story. What was your personal take on the character in terms of her background and what ultimately led her to Gwendoline and Brad?
Ruby O. Fee: I think in the beginning we did talk about her background, so why she was there and why she was doing what she was doing. The thing that we decided for her, Korina has a little brother and that’s who she wants to take care for. So, she was in this group to be responsible for another being, and of course, belonging to a family. There was like a huge thing. So she had this family in this group and she’s like a big sister just trying to like get the whole group together and keep them safe while checking stuff online and trying to hack into things and make everything work.
Nathalie, Gwendoline enjoys the strongest character arc in the film. In a lot of ways, I feel like Army of Thieves is about her evolution from thief to hero. In your eyes, what encourages this transformation?
Emmanuel: Well, a couple of things. I think when we learn about Gwen’s backstory, she grew up with immense privilege, immense wealth. I think what happens is that her whole world crumbles when she learns that her father was kind of crooked and was stealing from people and benefited from the housing crash. Just her whole world view of her life. It all just felt wrong, so she fleed.
So from being this kind of kid who starts stealing to get attention from her parents, she’s now in a way trying to challenge the systems or the institutions that she had benefited from growing up. Then I think the kind of biggest change happens when she meets Dieter because he basically challenges her whole life as it’s been since she kind of created her own family and sets up a team situation. They kind of change each other in the process and she, in a way, chooses to chase her dreams or chase her own mission instead of sticking to loyalties that maybe aren’t serving her anymore. So, yeah, there’s a couple of evolutions for her, but definitely, the biggest one being when she meets she meets Dieter.
