The Big Picture

Twisters showcases a stacked cast facing intense storms – real tornado encounters during filming.
Outdoors and off the studio lot, the film captures the thrill of chasing twisters on location.
Lightning delays and real tornado shutdowns added a touch of reality to the epic summer movie.

You’ve seen the trailers. Twisters puts a ton of talent out on the field — literally. Not unlike the 1996 film, the cast for this summer blockbuster is stacked, and according to two of its stars, they were unleashed on the plains of Oklahoma. In this interview with cast members Sasha Lane (American Honey) and Brandon Perea (Nope), the duo shares what it was like tossing “tornado jargon” back and forth with co-stars Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones on location while dodging lightning and their own real-life encounters with tornadoes. Method acting to the extreme.

In Twisters, the storms are taken to the next level. Tornado season has only intensified over the years, and Kate Carter (Edgar-Jones) was once a storm chaser determined to “tame” these deadly forces of nature. After a tragic incident in her college years, Kate leaves the field to study storm patterns in NYC. Years later, an old friend (Anthony Ramos) tracks her down with the promise of groundbreaking new technology and a charming social media chaser, Tyler Owens (Powell), and his team of Tornado Wranglers, and the opportunity to save lives brings her back.

With Twisters hitting theaters this week, Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke with Lane and Perea, who play chasers Lily and Boone, about taking this massive movie off studio lots and experiencing the adventure on film. They talk about the scenes they were most excited to tackle, working alongside director Lee Isaac Chung, and more.

Twisters An update to the 1996 film ‘Twister’, which centered on a pair of storm chasers who risk their lives in an attempt to test an experimental weather alert system.Release Date July 19, 2024 Writers Mark L. Smith , Joseph Kosinski , Michael Crichton , Anne-Marie Martin

Read Our ‘Twisters’ Review

A Studio Can’t Contain the Epic Scale of ‘Twisters’

COLLIDER: What do you think would surprise people to learn about making one of these big summer movies?

SASHA LANE: Probably that we didn’t have a lot of studio days. We were pretty much out there the majority of the time, which, usually, on big studio films you’re in the studio. We were out there.

BRANDON PEREA: That’s kind of how it was like for me with this and Nope, where we’re on location most of the time. We never touched stage days except for only a few days. I always felt, especially with the director that I was able to work with, it felt like a smaller set but with a big-scale type of movie. There are times when I have to remind myself. Because you’re just so locked in on the day, I just would project out loud to everybody, “Yo, we are filming Twisters right now. This is crazy. We’ve got to embrace this. This is pretty wild.”

And also on film. Jordan [Peele] used it, but it’s rare.

PEREA: It’s a gift these days to get anything on film, and I think nothing beats it. Anytime you get to be projected on film and be caught and captured on film, it’s a privilege, so I’m very grateful for that.

Related Jordan Peele and Hoyte Van Hoytema Talk ‘Nope,’ IMAX, and Creating New Technology to Film Day for Night [Exclusive] They also talk about shooting with IMAX cameras and framing for the theatrical experience.

The movie turned out great. This is definitely gonna be a hit. At what point during the filming did you realize, “Oh, this actually is gonna turn out pretty great?”

LANE: Maybe the movie theater scene. Filming that and the outdoor, running-through-the-streets situation. Pretty much the entirety of it, honestly. I think throughout the entire thing, I had no doubt, essentially.

PEREA: I had the trust when Lee Isaac Chung jumped on board. I was like, “Oh, I’ll trust him with anything.” I loved his films. Also, anything in the truck. I was like, “This stuff is gold. I feel like we’re making gold.” It felt genuine, and everyone came and crushed it. All the cast crushed their performances, too, so I’m like, “Man, the mixture of this cast, the chemistry, we’re all grabbing,” and just having Lee Isaac Chung at the helm of the film, I was just like, “Man.” It just felt good the whole time.

Image via Universal Pictures

You see the shooting schedule in front of you? What day did you have circled in terms of, “I can’t wait to film this,” or, “How the F are we gonna film this?”

LANE: I liked my little movie theater moment being on the harness and stuff. That’s just fun.

PEREA: I was just getting nervous about tornado jargon, like the dialogue with tornado jargon. I dodged a lot of it because I would just toss lines to Glen, and I’d be like, “Oh, well, Boone wouldn’t say this, Tyler would.” And then Glen is just like, “Okay, so the missile cyclone…” and I’m just like, “Yeah, you’re crushing it, brother. You’re doing your thing.” I just want to be like, “Oh, man, the wind is going crazy.” That’s all I wanna do. [Laughs]

LANE: Yeah, improv-ing on freaking Twisters is a little like, “What else do we say? Y’all see the wall cloud?”

PEREA: We had a lot of room to play, which is cool.

‘Twisters’ Actually Got Shut Down by Twisters a Lot

One of the things that I think a lot of people aren’t going to realize is when you were filming, real tornadoes were an issue. Talk a little bit about what it’s like when you’re on set, and then all of a sudden, they’re like, “And we’re shutting down, there is a tornado coming.”

LANE: I feel like we’d all send each other videos in our trailers and be like, “Hey, you see this?” [Laughs] And then also being out on the field sometimes and then seeing the lightning, and everyone’s just like, “You think we can wrap this up?” Trying to count how far it is.

PEREA: We got shut down from lightning delay a lot because you have to shut down. Everyone has to take cover and go inside if lightning strikes two miles away. Then you have to take like a 15, 30-minute break after the lightning delay just to make sure. Then we’d step back outside, and then lightning would hit again and we’re like, “Alright, back inside.” But there was one day when our trailers were shaking. I was like, “Yo, are we in the tornado right now? What is going on?” Yeah, we got shut down a couple of times. [Laughs]

LANE: It was really peaceful, though. It was kind of like a nice nap. It was like a little rock-the-boat kind of situation.

PEREA: Me, I’m playing a video game like, “Yo, is everyone else good?”

Twisters is in theaters tonight. Check the link below for showtimes:

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