Rege-Jean Page’s star is rapidly rising in Hollywood, thanks to his breakout role as Simon Bassett aka Duke of Hastings in Netflix series ‘Bridgerton’. Page is currently gearing up for the release of Netflix’s yet another highly-anticipated production ‘The Gray Man,’ in which he plays the CIA’s director Denny Carmichael, who is hellbent on capturing Sierra Six, a trained assassin part of CIA’s top secret program.
During a virtual roundtable interview with selective journalists from India, Page described the thrill of becoming the villainous boss and what it was like to collaborate with Anthony and Joe Russo for the film. Page noted that playing Carmichael was an interesting shift for him from what he has done previously in ‘Bridgerton’.
“I think that’s what every performer aims for,” Page said during the roundtable. “It’s always a shift. Like every job that I’ve taken on for the past 10 years, there’s been a shift from the previous one. I think that’s how you can tell that you’re doing it right. Like each character lives in their own world and their own environment has their own challenges, obstacles, and hopefully comes across in their own unique way. And so in that way, it was kind of exactly the same as it’s always been, which is a joy. It was turning up and kind of having the creative freedom to play.”
Page continued, “The first thing that Joe and Anthony said to me was kind of, we want you to bring your creativity to this, we want you to have some fun, we want you to bring something slightly unexpected to this part but also in the best environments, that’s always the job. So it’s been remarkably consistent with every new role that I’ve taken on. And it’s so quite familiar in that way.”
‘The Gray Man’ stars Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jessica Henwick, Dhanush, Wagner Moura and Alfre Woodard. Based on the novel The Gray Man by Mark Greaney, the screenplay is by Joe Russo, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. Page was all praise for Russo brothers and the “incredibly inspiring” cast of ‘The Gray Man’.
“I did not realise that we kind of push this thing out. It was super cool. The thing about having a cast of this standard is that it’s incredibly inspiring. It’s knowing that everyone on set is capable of incredible things. It’s seeing before your eyes that everyone is bringing their A game. Everyone’s bringing their A game in front of the best directors on the planet who have achieved and done everything under the sun and film, and and now just pushing themselves beyond their own limits. So I think the challenge is to keep up with that and the joy of a cast of this caliber is the ability to do that, and kind of raise the bar again. So I think that was the most fun thing about that,” Page added.
While talking about the preparation for his role, Page said, “I think there was a lot of psychological prep on this. And I think both Suzanne (Jessica Henwick) and Danny are manipulators. So I think that there’s a nice balance in the way the film is written and presented between physical action and psychological action in terms of how people manipulate others into their physical action. We very much send Ryan and Chris off to go kick each other whilst we sit back and kind of watch the chaos unfold. And I think that was great fun.”
‘The Gray Man’ was released in selective theatres on Friday (July 16). It will have a full-fledged release on Netflix on July 22.
