Jason Wong has built a steady career of impressive performances over the last decade, lending his talents to the likes of movies like ‘The Gentlemen’, ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’, ‘Wrath of Man’ and ‘The 355’ and TV work including ‘Silent Witness’. His latest project is ‘Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant’ – out now on Amazon Prime – a timely, powerful and emotionally-challenging war drama, co-starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Dar Salim.
I caught up with Jason to discuss the making of ‘Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant’, his work on another huge blockbuster release of the year ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves’, his preparation for the roles, his thoughts on the industry and his future endeavours.
First of all, congratulations are in order for two of the biggest films of the year – The Covenant and Dungeons and Dragons.
Thank you very much!
So we’ll start with The Covenant, I thought it was fantastic, with a really emotional story at its core. Could you tell me about how you got involved with the project, and a bit about the premise of the film?
Yeah, I got approached with ‘The Covenant’ in the early stages of casting. And I knew they were making this war movie because, you know, I know that whole team quite well. And they were talking to me about it. And then one day one of the producers just looked at me and went, ‘you want to be in it’? And I said ‘Yeah!’ I asked what character do I get to play? ‘We don’t know yet, we’re trying to work that out’, because a lot of the time with Guy Ritchie’s scripts and stories, they try to find the right characters to fit in the right dynamics. So they had to find that whole aspect. So they just needed to see how it was going to fit dynamically. And so I didn’t know until pretty close to shoot day, which character I was playing. I knew I was gonna be a part of the unit, but I didn’t know exactly which character, so I think I got told in November. I had to wait the whole of Christmas to figure out what part I can read. They had given me the script. And then around January, they finally said you’re playing JJ. And I was like, ‘Alright, great!’ So that was a really nice moment. And then that was the first time I didn’t actually have to audition for a film. So it was nice, because I know that they know what I can do, and what I can’t do. They knew my strengths. And they know I can play military personnel quite well.
And the premise of the story, it’s actually a really interesting position, as you’ve seen. It’s looking at the Afghan war from a different perspective – it’s not really focusing just on the American story, but the primary focus is looking at the interpreters, how we treated them, how they walk around with that level of fear, how they put their families and their lives at risk. And that’s the first time I believe we’ve seen that on cinema or on TV. It’s the first time we’ve really explored that storyline – one that’s really undervalued and something that we don’t talk about enough. I mean, we see it in the news about how we just sort of abandoned all the interpreters and they’ve had to scramble to find their way out of that country – because we did make them a promise, and the whole reason why they interpreted for us is because we gave them immunity. They said, ‘we will give you free passage to the countries that you work for’. And then after that, we went MIA, and then we sort of closed the door on that, and then left them to fend for themselves. So that’s what we’re really focusing on – the character of Ahmed (Dar Salim), and how John Kinley (Jake Gyllenhaal) was a character that has made a promise to this person, and was going to try and save his life. I’m part of Kinley’s unit and that whole storyline as we see how some of the Afghan interpreters have a slight mistrust with them, which we tried to explore. And of course, this is warfare, so there’s a lot of soldier banter in there as well. It’s one of those cinematic films that I don’t think we’ve seen from Guy in a long time, and it was really interesting to see how he was going to position it.
When we premiered it in the US in LA, it was surprising because when I watched it in the cinema, people were cheering, people were crying. There were people in attendance who served during Afghanistan, there were active service personnel present as well. And they were like, you guys got it down to a tee – the way your position, the way you guys react to stuff, how deadpan your jokes are, like your banter between your characters. And there was a realism for them. And they were cheering and crying. It just went into eruption, there was clapping I was like, ‘Whoa, what is this’? Because we don’t get that reaction in England, Americans are a lot more vocal in the cinema. And it was amazing to be around that. And also, I know this film will probably end up streaming in the UK or in Europe. But this film is really played for the cinema. You get these big epic wide shots and it’s beautiful. It’s meant to be Afghanistan, but we shot in Alicante and just the grittiness the grading is amazing. It’s a shame that people won’t get to really experience it on a big screen.
So you mentioned the location shoots – that must have been challenging even though you weren’t in Afghanistan. But the heat, the vast environments that you had to cover, the physicality… can you talk a bit about that, and how you handled all of that pressure?
I’m not gonna lie, the environment was beautiful, because we shot that in February, January and March. So it was beautiful spring weather – another good thing! So it looks like it was really hot. It wasn’t because it was also hair, makeup and everything. So actually, the weather was incredible. And we had a great time, which was in the Southern District zones and stuff like that. So that was great. But the physicality though that was a different ballgame, because we were special forces operators. So I did a lot of training in the UK. I spoke to a lot of former forces members in the British Army – past and serving members – and a lot of people who work in the counterterrorism armed police realm, about their mindset before they go into clear a room, how they move and their posture and what they’re thinking before they enter into a space. Because these guys are trained warriors, right, they’re the samurais of our time. So the way they hold their selves, the heightened awareness – they’re constant. They are really intelligent people looking at how situational awareness is always on for them.
So that heightened tension I had to really adapt to, and I was watching a lot of videos documentaries and films set during the Afghan war. And and that gets into your mindset – to a point where I came back from Quebec from LA County when we finished filming, and I found I was still dressing like a lot of the Special Forces guys when they are on their downtime – I was still like in the hiking boots, polo shirts, jeans – my posture, the way I was carrying myself, the way I was just looking around scooping stuff out… like when I went to any event I was like, looking for the exits etc! So it does carry with you because you have to immerse yourself in that sort of water. We did a lot of training with our military advisor – he was a former Green Beret. He was the first Afghan born US Green Beret. And he was advising us, and he’s even in the film. So he did a lot of weapons and tactics training, and we did movement drills with him. Things like how to hold the gun, basic things like the different ways of changing your magazine etc.
As for the physicality – that was really important. And there was one shot which I’m sure you’ve seen, when I had to check for clues of a Taliban ambush. I had to run up that hill. Yeah, that hill was steep as hell! It really was! It was a pretty high incline and I would say, about 60 feet up. And Guy goes ‘Jase, when I call action, you and (Rhys Yates) are going to run up to the top of the mountain. I asked Guy if anyone had gone through it first, and he says ‘no, just run out there and figure it out’! And that was full on! It was steep and we literally were bear-crawling up that hill. Adrenaline really kicks in and you have to refine that to calmness. So yeah, a lot of that training was there. And the terrain there was difficult – a lot of dust on set. Literally one guy’s job on-set was to throw dust in your face! So there’s a lot of that going on!
Another reason why these films work so well is you’ve got to believe the camaraderie between the people, and we certainly get that in this film. So how did you guys develop that kind of camaraderie? And are you still in contact with the cast?
I love those boys. We see each other, we have a WhatsApp group. And the camaraderie was real from day one. We all went out on the first day that we got the boys together. And we went for an Indian curry. We’re in Alicante in Spain, and we we went for an Indian! And every night, every lunch, every breakfast we were always together and luckily we just all got along and the one thing that we just bonded over is a genuine friendship. I think because a lot of us were all working class lads. So we’ve got each other’s dialogues. And we all get along. I see them all the time.
These films hinge on the believability factor. And we have that with this film. Talk to us about your leading man Jake Gyllenhaal and how you found working with him. And did you learn from him and his performance?
Jake is one of the great actors, right? So he’s the generation above me, and he’s one of the top guys. He’s there with Leonardo DiCaprio. He’s there with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. You know, he’s up there. So it was a great opportunity to learn. He’s an actor’s actor. So when I was on set, and I wasn’t doing anything, I was there watching the monitor screens. I was like, Oh, wow, why did he do that? Because of his level of experience, he’s a grandmaster in acting – he knows the angles. He knows the small things. He knows how you can channel stillness and make that look powerful and give that energy at the same time. So absolutely. I watched him and Johnny Lee Miller, (who you wouldn’t even recognize) because he’s a chameleon. I watched him a lot, because he’s been one of my favorite actors ever. I’ve admired his work, and Alexander Ludwig as well. Like, I think he’s so fearless on screen. But Jake, obviously you expect him to give a great performance – you expect nothing less than he will give you nothing less. He knows where the scenes and the where the energy needs to be and where the edits are going to be, he can sort of imagine where the director is going to go with it. And so I was just watching how he conducted himself as a leader as well as an actor. Just being professional. I think that’s something a lot of young actors forget nowadays is like, when you’re leading, you’re not just leading a film, you’re leading a whole entire cast and crew. At the end of the day, if the performance sucks, no one’s really gonna blame us, the crew members etc – it’s on the one who’s carrying the film. So seeing how his dynamic was on set was very interesting.
Now onto Dungeons and Dragons – I think you were in the best scene of that film. That was an epic fight scene. Talking about physicality, that must have been draining. So can you talk to us a bit about that, and how the kind of mechanics of that fight scene came together?
Yeah, so when I first saw that fight scene, it was nearly four minutes long. And the scene that you see on camera was cut down, that’s probably a quarter of what we actually shot. We rehearsed for about two weeks, we rehearsed every day for about three hours. And then we put in our own work at the back end with our stunt doubles. So every day, I would see my stunt double, and then Regé-Jean Page and I would meet for an hour’s practice. Because of COVID. We had to just minimize every contact. So we worked a lot with our doubles as well. But we really trained hard for it. There’s a lot more wirework in the full shoot, it was a lot more dynamic – flips, jumps, slides and all that sort of stuff. So we did a lot actually, I didn’t do any of the acrobatics, but I can safely say that, I would say 90% of what you see on camera is me and Regé, and like 10% where we had our stunt doubles do certain things that was just out of safety. Sure. So that training with Regé was really hard – we were just drenched in sweat!
You’ve done quite contained, dramatic things and you’ve also been in huge studio movies – does the scale of the project affect your approach to your work and getting into the mindset of a character? Do you have to change your approach in any way?
No, to me, you always have to go into a scene prepared so it’s about maintaining and managing your energy levels. But for me, the approach is always the same, you have to be prepared, especially on those big budget films, because time is money. And sometimes, you know, obviously, some of the leads are always gonna get priority, they’re gonna get ten takes, I’ll get two. So you’ve got to be prepared. But I’ve also learnt that if I’m not happy, I’ll just stop and I just do it again. So it’s about making sure that I’m confident in myself going up. If it’s not right, I’ll stop and start again. And that took me a while as an actor to really hone in on. I really learnt a lot of that when I was doing ‘Silent Witness’ and then watching Emilia Fox go, ‘No, I’m gonna reset. I’m gonna do that again’, because it wasn’t right for the scene. And it takes a lot of confidence for an actor to build that up. That is in our control to be able to do that. And I don’t need to be sorry. It’s something that’s for the betterment of the scene. The best performance that we can get captured – the best performance for that scene – and that was nice to be able to see, so the preparation doesn’t change. It’s more pressure, if anything, on a big budget film as opposed to a TV job because you can do a few more takes on that.
You’ve been in TV, you’ve been in film. And a lot of people think that TV is surpassing film at the moment in terms of its creative endeavor. I wondered where you stood on that subject, and whether you’ve noticed any kind of change in the roles that you’re offered?
That’s a hard one. Because film and TV are always going to cross paths, I thought there’s going to be more of a shift post-pandemic, the shift is going to go back to film a lot more. Reality wise, it just really comes down to financing. How much time do you have on TV? How much time do you have on film? How much? How many hours do you want to tell the story? Nothing beats film. TV is always going to have a place in our hearts. Going into a cinema or watching it on your TV or laptop is never going to be the same experience. It just won’t. And just the level of effort that filmmakers put in is always going to be a higher degree because of time, right? I think the most I’ve ever shot on a film is probably three to six pages. On TV, we’re doing 10 pages a day. So that’s level of detail. And the level of investment in a film compared to a TV show can never match up, you can’t get that level of detail or that nuance in there. TV has definitely served its purpose, and it still serves a large audience. But film is always going to be there for everyone, I believe.
Finally, I’d like to ask about your upcoming projects because I’ve heard you’ve had a couple of writing gigs in the works. I’d love to hear about that. And what what does the future hold for you at the moment?
Yeah, so TV wise I’ve got ‘Alex Rider’ coming out on Amazon Prime soon. As for writing, I’m born and raised in West London, Ladbroke Grove. So for me, I would love to start writing stories about experiences closer to home. It’s about time that we started seeing East Asian leads on screen. We’re representatives of the characters in different parts of society in England. And I’m born and raised here, I’ve got friends who are Asian Chinese, who are in the police force, or in the military, or as doctors in the NHS or in law firms. So I’d love to tell, and represent, that community. But without being in your face. To me, representation is important. And if I can write dramas and detective shows and westerns or an action-based TV show on that, then I would really love to push that in the UK.
‘Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant’ is out now on Amazon Prime.
‘Dungeons and Dragons: Honour Among Thieves’ is out on Home Entertainment platforms on 31st July 2023.
