ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Trigger Warning star Jessica Alba and director Mouly Surya about Netflix’s new action movie. The duo discussed the film’s great hardware action scene and working with Anthony Michael Hall. The film begins streaming on Netflix on Friday, June 21.
“A skilled Special Forces commando (Jessica Alba) takes ownership of her father’s bar after he suddenly dies, and soon finds herself at odds with a violent gang running rampant in her hometown,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Jessica, you are just whooping some serious ass throughout Trigger Warning, and you’re looking so cool while doing so. There’s this scene early on where you’re using a broom, you’re using all these tools in this fight, just anything you can grab. Don’t get me wrong, it’s awesome seeing you with a machete and a gun, but there has to be something kind of special about doing these more eccentric fight scenes, right?
Jessica Alba: Yeah, it is really fun. I would say the sort of Krav Maga-style, I guess, is when you just take whatever is within arm’s reach to take your opponent down, and that like raw kind of gritty fight style is something I’ve always really enjoyed watching. So it was definitely something I wanted to bring into these fights.
Mouly, you’ve done these great thrillers in Indonesia, so it’s very exciting to see your take on an action movie like Trigger Warning. What was most interesting about really challenging yourself and getting to do something that has more action and is at a larger scale than your previous movies?
Mouly Surya: It was a great challenge. What was the American expression? The fish out of the water. It’s the fish-out-of-water experience. You flew here, drive on the opposite side of the world, and it’s a whole new thing. But I think I took it one day at a time. For example that hardware store scene, I’ve actually never seen a hardware store in America before. So when I saw it on paper, I was like, “Yeah, let’s see what happens.” Then I went on a scout, and I went to the hardware store for the first time and I was like, “Oh, wow. This is very interesting. I can do this, I can do that.” And then I talked to the stunt guys and worked on that scene.
So that was kind of like what I was trying to do in a way. That collaborative workspace and kind of like seeing it from a probably new perspective. Because [I’m working on] a set in America and seeing what I can do something [from] my perspective in a new space. [I got to] collaborate with all these great people. With the best stunt team in the whole world, I would say.
Jessica, you have these very intense scenes with Anthony Michael Hall, who has such an intense scene presence in Trigger Warning. What just stood out about acting opposite him?
Alba: I mean, it wasn’t that hard because he was so in the pocket, and it was wild because when you read it on paper and then when he would breathe life into it, it just had a weight and a gravitas to it. He had like a swagger where you were like, “Okay, I see how this villain is really operating.” Then, it was easy for me to show up, and it brought things out of Parker that I never anticipated until I was in that moment.
Mouly, do you think your next film will also be English, or what’s the current plan?
Surya: I’ve actually done my next film already in Indonesian. It’s in Dutch and Indonesian, so yeah, there’s some English in it as well.
Thanks to Jessica Albaa and Mouly Surya for talking to us about Trigger Warning, which begins streaming on Netflix on June 21.
