00:00 There's a moment where you mentioned Helen Mirren that you've watched all the Fast and Furious movies.
00:04 Wouldn't you recognize her from the Fast and Furious movies?
00:06 Listen, bro.
00:07 [music]
00:24 Is that the first time you met The Rock?
00:25 I think that was the second time.
00:27 But I mean, it feels like the first time every time, you know?
00:30 It's sick.
00:31 Yeah.
00:32 Look, I might not have as much experience as you because I'm not super old like you,
00:37 but I've seen all of the Fast and the Furious movies, lady.
00:40 It's all about family.
00:42 There's a moment where you mentioned Helen Mirren that you've watched all the Fast and
00:47 Furious movies.
00:48 Wouldn't you recognize her from the Fast and Furious movies?
00:51 Listen, bro.
00:53 She was Hespera in that moment, and I was Billy Batson.
00:57 Yeah, no, you're right.
00:59 I mean, she should have been a line in.
01:01 And you look remarkably like somebody that was in one of those, so you should know it's
01:05 all about family.
01:06 Oh, yeah, yeah, totally.
01:07 [music]
01:08 What about the newcomers on the cast?
01:12 You got Helen Mirren, Lucy Liu.
01:13 What's it like having them on set?
01:14 The coolest.
01:15 Starstruck every day.
01:17 That was amazing because we had these three parts to cast, and we were like, "Well, let's
01:20 try and get the biggest, best actresses we can."
01:25 And they said yes, which was amazing.
01:27 Helen Mirren said yes.
01:28 Lucy Liu said yes.
01:29 And then Rachel Segler, who's amazing.
01:33 I hadn't seen her in anything when we cast her because West Side Story hadn't come out
01:36 yet, but yeah, she's just amazing.
01:39 This cast is stacked.
01:40 I mean, Helen, Rachel, Lucy, they're all incredible.
01:44 They're all so nice, so welcoming.
01:46 Helen Mirren is just the greatest.
01:48 Rachel and Lucy, I'm in love with all three of them.
01:51 They're my favorite girls in the world.
01:53 I love my life.
01:54 Second movies can be darker.
01:56 Empire Strikes Back type twists, anything's in store for the cast like that?
02:00 Yeah.
02:01 Yes, period.
02:02 No!
02:03 Because that would be-
02:05 You've been coached not to?
02:06 Yeah, it's hard.
02:07 You know, there's some darkness in there, certainly, and it gets pretty emotional.
02:14 This one has more action and serious moments as well because it's such a bigger movie.
02:19 The first one was kind of smaller and more personal.
02:23 And this one is personal too, but with big stakes.
02:26 Do we see some troubles for Billy, maybe?
02:30 You definitely will.
02:31 Yeah, I mean, he's matured a lot throughout his journey.
02:35 Billy's biggest thing, he's hyper-focused on maintaining his family dynamic with his
02:39 family, with the Shazamly.
02:40 And he doesn't really know what's going to happen when he's 18, so I think he's just
02:43 trying to be in the moment, be present, and enjoy being a superhero.
02:46 But I would say that this movie is definitely, it was very lighthearted, very fun, but you
02:50 definitely get to see the character arc.
02:52 The wizard gave me superpowers, and then everybody got superpowers.
02:57 Now everyone's kind of like doing their own thing, and I'm the only one trying to keep
03:00 it together.
03:03 You understand I'm a pediatrician.
03:06 Why does a pediatrician have the Annabelle doll in his office?
03:09 He probably didn't know about it.
03:10 She just shows up where she shows up.
03:12 No, but I love putting in little Easter eggs like that.
03:15 And there's more of that in the movie.
03:17 So like Easter eggs to other filmmakers and DC characters and all kinds of stuff.
03:23 There's already a superhero with a red suit with a lightning bolt on it.
03:26 Aquaman is literally huge and he's so manly.
03:29 And Batman is so cool.
03:31 And I'm just me.
03:40 You learn stuff from the first movie where it's like, "Oh, I wish I could have done that
03:43 differently or change some things up," which we were able to do in this one.
03:47 I mean, all kinds of stuff from little things like, oh, in the first movie, we tried having
03:52 a hood on the cape, which has in some comics.
03:55 And this one's like, "Oh, let's try doing it without."
03:57 And you learn how to do some things better.
03:59 We definitely were blessed to have really cool costumes in the first one.
04:03 But I think we just learned a lot of things.
04:05 We used to have practical lights in the costume to light up the gauntlets and light up the
04:10 chest, the thunderbolt.
04:12 But when you wire through a suit that you're doing stunts in and all that stuff, and you're
04:17 shooting, we shot in Toronto in the middle of winter, and wiring and all that electricity
04:20 does not work very well in really cold temperatures, batteries and all that jazz.
04:24 So we took all the electricity out of the suit, which was helpful.
04:27 But then also just had a cool redesign and gave it more of a, I don't know, kind of like
04:31 a metallic lust, kind of worn metal kind of feel to the armor, which ties it, I think,
04:37 more stylistically into a lot of the other armor patterns that you'd see in Wonder Woman
04:42 or Aquaman or things like that, you know?
04:44 In this world, there are heroes.
04:48 I put a pain in my city wherever I go.
04:55 There are villains.
04:58 Heroes don't kill people.
05:01 Well, I do.
05:05 Is the JSA formed in this movie, or are they coming together for the point of this movie?
05:11 I don't know.
05:14 You better ask Aldis.
05:17 Oh, God.
05:19 Dang it.
05:21 I can tell you that you're going to get it, of course, with Fate and Carter Hall.
05:29 You're going to get the old and the new.
05:31 You know, you're going to get OG, JSA, and then, of course, with Cyclone and Adam Smasher,
05:37 you're going to get to understand and see what it means to feel out people who are new
05:41 to the team, people who are just coming into discovering what this is.
05:45 And the bonds that you see formed there really represent what the fabric of the JSA is.
05:53 So that's all I can say safely.
05:56 What can you tell me about the team dynamic, and what do we know about them coming into
06:00 this film?
06:01 Absolutely.
06:02 So, Cyclone, played by Quintessa, so Maxine is her human name.
06:07 Maxine and Al, my character, Adam Smasher, they both provide very fresh and new but different
06:13 perspectives on Black Adam's whole ethos of morality, which, as we know, is much darker
06:18 than a usual moral compass usually turns to.
06:22 And so our dynamic, though, also, that's kind of maybe something that separates us a little
06:27 bit.
06:28 We're both in a different direction, but at the same time, we both are meta-humans who
06:34 are going to learn what it means to be a superhero, which I love.
06:38 You have Aldous and you have Pierce Brosnan, who are playing Hawkman and Dr. Fate.
06:44 They've done this for a long time.
06:45 They're fully-fledged superheroes, and they get to kind of champion us and recruit us
06:49 to the JS.
06:50 So that dynamic of having these masters, these Jedis, if you will, teaching the younger bloods
06:56 how to do this, that's part of the dynamic as well.
06:59 But I just think it's so exciting.
07:00 You get to watch two meta-humans learn what it means to become superheroes.
07:04 My vision is you'll meet the future.
07:08 You have two choices.
07:09 You can be the destroyer of this world, or you can be its savior.
07:17 Going all the way back to Gene Hackman in the first Superman, you get these great character
07:21 actors to play major characters in it.
07:24 So you get Pierce Brosnan.
07:26 What's that like?
07:27 Bro, Pierce, bro, that is a career highlight.
07:33 God dang it, it's fricking 007.
07:37 No, Pierce is one of the coolest brothers ever.
07:40 And the thing is, the thing that really impressed me the most was the fact that he's accomplished
07:44 so much in his career.
07:46 He literally is Hollywood legend royalty, right?
07:49 But he's still, when he got set, we stepping onto those beautiful sets we had built.
07:55 He's equally excited as we are.
07:57 He maintains the wonderment and the excitement.
08:01 And I love to see that because no matter how much you do in your career, you don't get
08:06 jaded.
08:07 You still have something that can keep that imagination, that creativity, that love of
08:12 the craft alive.
08:14 And he's so humble about it too.
08:16 You know what I mean?
08:17 He really is, man, that brother's a blueprint in how to be a superstar.
08:22 When we cast Fate, it just clicked.
08:24 When we cast Pierce, it was like, "Oh, there it is."
08:27 And he came in on day one with his charm, the accent, the swagger.
08:33 There's a great line in the movie that we always talk about that we love from him where
08:37 he's consoling someone and they just basically ask if things are going to be all right.
08:41 And he just delivers this great line where he's like, "We're going to take care of it.
08:45 It's what we do."
08:46 And you believe it.
08:47 It's Fate.
08:49 It was a dream to have on set.
08:50 And you could just feel when he'd walk on set, it just lifted up the entire cast and
08:54 they were just so excited to be with him.
08:55 And he really bonded with all the young actors and with DJ.
08:58 Oh, I'm telling you, it's pretty cool.
09:03 But he did.
09:04 He was the last person that we cast in the movie.
09:07 And it really was exactly what we needed.
09:10 He was the glue of the film and of the JSA.
09:12 And Pierce said to us, we were bonding with Pierce.
09:15 We were hanging out.
09:16 It's what producers want to do.
09:17 He's a legend.
09:18 And he told us, he said, "You know, I've always wanted to play a superhero.
09:23 All my peers are in Harry Potter."
09:26 And Hiram and I were kind of like, "That's crazy that he's never been part of one of
09:30 these universes before."
09:32 So what an opportunity for us to really have him at the core of this movie.
09:37 And Dwayne and him have such a cool thing happening.
09:39 So it's really, it was a real honor for us.
09:43 Black Adam.
09:45 What have your powers ever given to you?
09:54 Nothing but heartache.
09:56 Actors are always trying to get into some type of superhero franchise.
09:59 Now that you're in one, what are the challenges that really come with it?
10:02 Man, doing right by the fans, of course, right?
10:06 You really want to, you know, there's of course going to be an expectation.
10:10 You have the graphic novels, you have the comics.
10:12 You want to do right by that.
10:14 And I think that's probably the most important thing to all of us is really doing justice
10:18 to that.
10:19 No pun intended.
10:20 I love that there's not a whole lot of major expectations of previous versions of your
10:25 character.
10:26 Is that kind of freeing that you can be one of the first ones to bring him in live action?
10:29 Absolutely.
10:30 Absolutely.
10:31 I mean, there's definitely other takes of it, of course, that have come out on a screen.
10:34 But this is really the first time that we've seen Adam Smasher as a young man.
10:39 You know, as a young metahuman.
10:42 And even in the comic books, he's always like much older and has, you know, he's a fully
10:47 formed superhero.
10:48 And so with this, it's nice to be able to have a starting ground that's still not the
10:52 origin, but it's a starting ground that we can grow into that place in the comic books
10:58 and then beyond it, hopefully.
10:59 What does it mean to represent DC in two major properties here?
11:04 That's pretty special.
11:05 Yeah, it's really special.
11:06 What?
11:07 They getting it.
11:09 It's very special, man.
11:11 For me, it's amazing just because one, how rare of an opportunity is that?
11:17 And then to be doing it, you know, it's the first for like it's first time we get Jon
11:23 Stewart as Green Lantern.
11:24 First time he gets his own film.
11:25 This is the first time we get to see Hawkman in a film, in a feature film.
11:29 So it really is a grand opportunity, great privilege and something I'm very proud to
11:34 have been able to be a part of.
11:36 What was it like in Hall H?
11:37 What was that energy like to just premiere the footage?
11:39 Yeah, it made me like emotional.
11:40 You know, like it was just very special and something I'd never felt before.
11:46 And just seeing like to see so many people be so like connected to like us and like want
11:51 to be here to like see this film that we did was just like, wow, like this is real, you
11:57 know?
11:58 You do, you feel it.
11:59 You feel especially being in Hall H, six thousand, seven thousand people.
12:03 And it's actually quite affirming because you see like Jama coming on and Dwayne and
12:08 they've been working tirelessly for five years.
12:11 Jama, right?
12:12 You know, and then and then to play that little sneak peek and to hear the reaction, to be
12:16 a part of that reaction just makes you feel so good.
12:19 I just got goosebumps.
12:20 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
12:26 I think so.
12:27 Well, yes, but also then there's like there's I second guess myself sometimes, but I but
12:31 I I do have a solid ground when it comes to Freddie.
12:34 Like playing Freddie was almost second nature for me.
12:37 It's like I think if all of all the characters I've ever played, I think that Freddie is
12:40 most similar to me.
12:41 So it helps.
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