Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo are currently in production for their next film, The Gray Man, which will see them reunite with Chris Evans. The movie’s cast is stacked and also includes Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, and more. One person folks will be especially excited to see on the line-up is Regé-Jean Page, who recently rose to fame playing Simon Basset on Netflix’s Bridgerton. This week, Page spoke with Variety and opened up about working with the Russos.
“The freakiest thing about working on a Russo set is that the standards are so insanely high for everyone in every department that they don’t police you through stuff,” Page shared. “They’re like, ‘Here’s this insanely difficult thing; do it.’ And then they just expect you to be able to do it, because they don’t hire folks who can’t.”
Page shared an example, saying the actor’s two scenes were rewritten the day before. “They were like, ‘You’re from the theater, right? You can handle it,’” Page shared with a laugh.
According to Variety, Anthony Russo was turned on to Page in the best way. Apparently, the director overheard some moms discussing the Bridgerton star on a playground over the holidays. “They were talking about him in the most glowing and excited terms, like ‘You have to meet this guy; he’s amazing on ‘Bridgerton,'” Russo recalled.
“We are fans of characters that are complex — ‘good guy’ characters who are compromised in some ways, and so-called bad guy characters who have virtues — and we gravitate toward actors who can play that sort of complexity and that duality,” Russo added. “He knows how to embody a paradox really well, mean- ing he can be very attractive and alluring and seductive while at the same time being very threatening and dangerous.”
Filming for The Gray Man began in March. According to Deadline, the script by Joe Russo was recently “polished” by Avengers: Endgame writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. A previous report also revealed that the movie will be Netflix’s biggest film budget to date.
“The intention is for it to be competitive with any theatrical and the ability to do with Gosling and Evans is a dream for us,” Joe Russo previously said about the project. “The idea is to create a franchise and build out a whole universe, with Ryan at the center of it. We have all committed to the first movie and that’s got to be great to get us to the second movie. These are master assassins and Gosling’s character gets burned by the CIA and Evans’ character has to hunt him down. We have a great working relationship with Netflix, and we go back almost 20 years with Scott Stuber. We formed AGBO to be an agnostic storytelling company, where we figure out the best platform. We think Netflix is the perfect place for this film.”
Are you excited to see Page in The Gray Man? Tell us in the comments!