The Big Picture

Neill Blomkamp’s Gran Turismo tells the true story of Jann Mardenborough, a gamer-turned-racer, and his journey to becoming a professional racecar driver. The film features an impressive cast, including Archie Madekwe, David Harbour, and Geri Horner, and is based on a screenplay by Jason Hall, Zach Baylin, and Alex Tse. Mardenborough shares his experience as a stunt driver and the surprises he encountered while working on a Hollywood production, including the attention to detail and the use of new camera technology.

With a story that sounds too incredible to be true, Neill Blomkamp’s (District 9) Gran Turismo is racing its way to theaters to share the true story of gamer-turned-racer Jann Mardenborough, portrayed in the film by Archie Madekwe (Midsommar). Before SAG joined the writers’ strike this summer, Collider’s Steve Weintraub spoke with both Mardenborough and Madekwe about their preparation and what it was like to be on set. Apparently, elite racing is no stroll in the park, but training for it kind of is.

Gran Turismo is based on the screenplay by Jason Hall (American Sniper), Zach Baylin (King Richard), and Alex Tse (Watchmen), and adapted from the wild real-life story of Mardenborough, who admits “If you write it out, it’s a very, very far-fetched kind of story. But yeah, it’s been my life so far.” That far-fetched tale begins with a Nissan marketing executive, Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom), conceiving a program that would help bolster Nissan sales. His idea is a competition that will award the top Gran Turismo gamers a shot at becoming professional racecar drivers by entering a strenuous training program. To help realize this vision, Moore employs the help of David Harbour’s (Stranger Things) retired racecar driver, Jack Salter, to train Mardenborough (Madekwe) for the real race. The movie also features Takehiro Hira as Gran Turismo game designer Kazunori Yamauchi, Djimon Hounsou as Jann’s father and former professional soccer player, Steve Mardenborough, and the Spice Girls’ Geri Horner as Lesley Mardenborough.

During their interview, Mardenborough discusses why it was so “mind-bending” stepping onto the set as a stunt driver, what surprised him about a Hollywood production, and seeing the finished film. Madekwe shares the intensive preparation he underwent for the role—which just happens to be the very same at-home training Mardenborough mastered—what it’s really like inside one of those cars, and working with Harbour, Blomkamp, and their cinematographer, Jacques Jouffret (The Purge), while using brand-new Sony VENICE 2 cameras and drones. Check out the full interview for more in the video or transcript below.

COLLIDER: Jann, I’ve got to start with you. You started playing a video game at home, you became a professional race car driver, and now there’s a movie made about you. Have you played the lottery yet? Like a scratch card? Because you’ll probably win like $10 million.

JANN MARDENBOROUGH: I’ve played the lottery once earlier this year. Something happened to me, and I was like, “Okay,” so the person said, “Look, you should play the lottery tonight. You’ll win millions…” I lost. [Laughs] But no, I’ve been very fortunate in my life. I’ve been in the right place at the right time. I’ve been very fortunate to have people around me tell me, “You need to know what you want to do in life.” That’d be my father. And when the opportunity came to be, I was all in, and off the back of that, this has happened – Archie playing me. It’s wild. If you write it out, it’s a very, very far-fetched kind of story. But yeah, it’s been my life so far.

Image via Sony

The crazy thing is, if someone actually wrote this screenplay, no one would make it because it’s too unbelievable.

ARCHIE MADEKWE: That’s so true.

MARDENBOROUGH: [Laughs] That’s funny.

Archie, I know that you practiced heavily playing the game to get ready for the role. What was it like telling your friends and family, “Listen, I’m gonna be busy the next week, I need to play video games?”

MARDENBOROUGH: Everyone was, number one, very jealous, and number two, everyone wanted to join in and come and help me prepare for work. But I was just saying, you know, I wasn’t a gamer growing up because I’ve got quite an obsessive personality, so I just knew I had that thing where you play for hours and hours and hours, and then you think, “What have I done with my entire day?” And it was this unbelievable opportunity to look past the shame of wasting the day and being like, “I’m at work, I’m doing something productive. This is so great!” I could tap into what Jann was feeling, of being like, “This is actually leading to something. This is great. It’s not just me playing The Sims for six hours, like, I’m doing something. I’m doing something constructive!” [Laughs] So, I mean, it was a dream come true. I love it.

I’m curious, what surprised you about the way a Hollywood movie is made? Obviously, this is your first time. I know you were the stunt driver in the movie, and you must have learned so much about making a movie.

MARDENBOROUGH: What surprised me was the attention to detail and the scale of that, as well, the amount of personnel on set. So, I turned up at the Hungaroring, which is a track I raced at seven years ago for a single-seater race, and of course, the racetrack was full of teams, full of trucks and personnel, and cars and people. But when I turned up on set on the first day, it was as busy as it was seven years ago, but we happened to be there. I was there for the movie…I had a conversation with myself, I was like, “This is really weird. You’ve gotta be prepared for this because it’s gonna be very mind-bending.”

And everybody has a job for everything. For example, the cars [and] the attention to detail when they were shooting the Le Mans scenes. When hours go by, of course, in real life, the car gets debris on the car, and same in the movie. There was a person kind of making sure that the car has more debris and more rubber and marks on the car as the movie is progressing through the Le Mans scene. So I was like, “Wow!” It’s just very minor things. It’s just staggering to me. And how it’s all put together as well. I don’t have the capacity in my small brain, when they shoot something, to think, “Okay, that’s how they’re shooting it for that to happen on screen.” I find that part of the artistry really interesting, so I was always watching the actors and how they prepare for each of their roles as well. [To Madekwe] So I was watching you. Some people are very different in the way that they prepare themselves before jumping into a scene. So, I loved it. It was fascinating to me.

Image via Sony

You’re not short, and I’m curious what it was like with racing scenes because you’re a big dude, you know what I mean? Generally, race car drivers are not as tall as you.

MADEKWE: You are right. It was painful. It was truly painful. We had to take the padding out of all of the seats so that I was just sitting in the bare bones of the shell. The thing is, I would always have the widest, the most depth seat, and it was still a tight squeeze in there – my head is touching the roof, I’m constrained, it’s unbelievably claustrophobic. It adds to that feeling of claustrophobia and anxiety…but actually, when I looked past how miserable I was when I was doing the actual scenes [laughs], it helped. It helped get into character because there is nothing else you can think about but you. You are so focused on you and your thoughts, and when the camera is so close to your face, albeit with the helmet, you could only see my eyes, that’s all that you’ve got to play with. You’ve got so many of these thoughts kind of whizzing around your head, and it kind of allows for all of that expression to be conveyed.

But, I mean, it was truly one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, being in that car. I have so much respect for all race car drivers. It is painful, it is taxing physically. I would be wringing out my clothes with sweat by the end of it, I’d be throwing up getting out of the cars, being in the cars. It was one of the most physically taxing things I’ve ever done, and thank god I love the film, and it was not in vain [laughs], because if I had walked away and I hated the film, I would have been– I don’t know what I would have done. But Neill [Blomkamp] flew in to watch the film with me, and I turned to him and just said, “Thank god, dude. Thank god it’s good. It’s so good!” [Laughs]

Neill used new cameras, I believe it’s the Sony VENICE 2, so what was that like working with new technology like that and then actually seeing the finished film and seeing the cool shots that he was getting?

MADEKWE: Incredible. It was a first for many of us, pretty much all of us on set. We would shoot sometimes up to 10, 11 cameras at a time. It was so unbelievable the amount of footage we were able to take. David [Harbour] just told a story earlier of us shooting super wide, and David asking Neill, “Are you gonna come in anytime soon?” He’s like, “Oh, I am in, dude. I’m in.” He was shooting on this unbelievably long lens and unbelievably close but wanted to keep the feeling of distance, and these cameras just were so perfect for capturing that. So sometimes, I mean, they were like football fields away and able to capture unbelievably close and microscopic detail. It was stunning.

It just meant, we just knew Jacques [Jouffret], our DP, we just knew we were in the best hands possible. It really gave us the opportunity to play so much because the cameras could keep their distance, and you feel totally immersed in the scene. We also knew that we were capturing so much footage at once, and that is kind of unbelievable. You’re being covered from all angles. It doesn’t matter where you turn, there’s a lens on you somewhere. That means that you’re not just going over and over again, the same tiny scenes, you’ve caught 360 of it in just one take, and that was amazing. That was really cool.

Image via Sony

MARDENBOROUGH: The scenes in the movie use a lot of drones. It looks like a Gran Turismo game intro, so it looks very dynamic, but it’s not, it’s real life. These scenes haven’t been used before in a recent movie, nothing is static. And yeah, I’m very happy. It’s shot beautifully, and Neill, all the guys, they did an amazing, amazing job. Personally, I love the scenes in the pits with the rain. It looks intense, it looks real, it looks how it is. There’s a lot going on [with] the detail. Yeah, I’m very, very happy.

Gran Turismo races into theaters August 25.