The Big Picture

Ed Skrein excels at playing villains due to his “resting villain face” and his ability to fully embody ruthless and unsympathetic characters. Skrein’s role as Admiral Atticus Noble in Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon showcases his talent as a malicious right-hand man who pushes the boundaries of savagery and coldness. Skrein discusses his future plans as a director, highlighting his admiration for renowned directors and his desire to continue acting while also exploring writing and directing.

There’s something about Ed Skrein — and he’s well aware of it —that screams villain. Though he credits his “resting villain face,” Skrein’s performances are what ultimately result in memorable antagonists. His turn as the callous Admiral Atticus Noble in Zack Snyder’s new sci-fi, Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire, however, may take the cake this year. In an interview with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, the actor made it quite clear he held nothing back with this one.

Rebel Moon is Snyder’s Star Wars-inspired two-parter that gives “Snyderverse” a whole new meaning. Viewers are introduced to an original sci-fi property that opens up on Veldt, a peaceful farming planet on the outskirts of the galaxy where Kora, played by Sofia Boutella, has crash-landed. This mysterious stranger acclimates herself to this new way of life, but her tragic past resurfaces when the oppressive Regent Balisarius’ (Fra Fee) armies are denied resources from Veldt. In the face of war, Kora is tasked with bringing together warriors willing to lead the revolution against the tyranny of the Motherworld. The films also feature Academy Award-winner Anthony Hopkins, Charlie Hunnam, Michiel Huisman, Jena Malone, Djimon Hounsou, and many more.

In the film, Skrein plays the malicious right-hand to Balisarius, and he took great joy in pushing the envelope “with savageness and coldness and harshness and just a complete lack of empathy and conscience.” Skrein tells Weintraub he enjoys exploring the dark side, though it does take its toll. During the interview, which you can check out in the video above or the transcript below, he discusses struggling to fit his character into the PG-13 version, how Snyder allowed him to cross all the lines and encouraged him to get crazier, his future plans to direct, and more.

Rebel Moon When a peaceful settlement on the edge of a distant moon finds itself threatened by the armies of a tyrannical ruling force, a mysterious stranger living among its villagers becomes their best hope for survival. Release Date December 22, 2023 Director Zack Snyder Studio Netflix

COLLIDER: So you’ve directed three short films. Is there a plan of directing a feature in your future?

SKREIN: 100%. Being able to work with this canon of directors – Robert Rodriguez, Tim Miller, Barry Jenkins, all the way to Roland Emmerich and now Zack Snyder, as well as all the incredible independent directors – Ana Lily Amirpour, Mads Matthiesen from Denmark, it’s like, really, I’m sitting there studying. I’m watching everything they do, every decision they make, and the way they interact with the crew. Then I’m analyzing on set, and then when I see the finished product, I’m analyzing that to kind of cross reference the two and just take what I can. That was the reason that I had the urge to begin writing and directing, so I think it’s inevitable. Like Thanos. I think it’s inevitable, but it’s gonna be the right piece.

I sense it will be something London-orientated, my community-orientated. I’ve got a crew list of people that I’ve worked with that I really respect, and so I’m really excited to transition into that. However, I really feel like, especially now and after Noble, and I think you’ll see it in the extended cut, I feel like this is the deepest I’ve gone as an actor and I feel like it’s kind of day zero. So, I do feel like I’ve still got two decades worth of, minimum two decades worth, of acting to grow. I’m really interested to see where I am in a decade, and 20 years as an actor, so it’s not like in two/three years, I wanna transition into directing. I wanna do the two of them, as well as producing and being a part of cool shit and stuff I find interesting and kind of vouching for the underdogs and pulling cool stories and using the position that I’ve built up through my acting career to get stuff greenlit and do weird, geeky, underground shit.

‘Rebel Moon’s Ed Skrein Loves Exploring the Dark Side
Image via Netflix

You have played a number of villains in your career, and I’m curious, what do you think it is about your face that directors say, “Villain?”

SKREIN: Yeah, I’ve got a resting villain face, innit?

I’m joking around by the way…

SKREIN: I’m not.

But you’re good at a villain.

SKREIN: I know. I think definitely my bone structure lends itself to a villain, or to even when I play heroes, it’s kind of antiheroes or heroes that are tainted or whatever. So yeah, I feel like there’s that side of it, the aesthetic side, but the other side is like, I really enjoy it. Like, I really enjoy it, and I think people can see that on camera that I’m having a great old time. And I also understand I’m not an actor that goes in there thinking about me and everything revolves around me. I understand that a character is like nature, like it can’t exist in a vacuum, it exists compared to everything else. So I understand my position in the story and what the screenwriter and what the director wants from me and how I serve the story, and so I think that’s one of the reasons that I’ve been successful at being an antagonist. But I also just kind of like exploring the dark side, like, you know in real life I’m just a big teddy bear.

That’s not true. Your family has told me that it is absolutely not true.

SKREIN: [Laughs] No, I’m a big softie, like proper, and even though I trained in martial arts and stuff I don’t want no violence, I don’t want no problems, but I love going into the dark side. It’s like some Jungian shadow work stuff where it’s like explore the dark side. In a way, that was what was great about this and what was the worst thing about this is we shot for 153 days, you know? Deadpool was 55 days, bro. This is like an insane length of time to be deep underwater with this darkness. With Atticus Noble, I was like, “I’m gonna remove all humanity, I’m gonna remove all sense that you could relate to him. I want this guy to be terrifying. I wanna see how far I can push the envelope with savageness and coldness and harshness and just a complete lack of empathy and conscience,” and that came across on screen, I think, but it was pretty horrible to be deep in that world for so long.

Ed Skrein Says “I Was a Psychopath” While Filming ‘Rebel Moon’
Image via Netflix

I have to ask you, what is it like when you’re part of a project that is shooting for 153 days where you could go a week where you’re not filming? I don’t know how the schedule worked, but I would imagine there’s breaks, so how do you stay focused in the role you’re doing? How do you enjoy life but also the marathon of making two movies like this?

SKREIN: Yeah, I don’t like days off. I’m a proper weirdo like that, but I don’t even want the weekends. I just wanna work. Especially if I’m away from home, away from my family, I just wanna knuckle down. I wanna work all the time, so time off traditionally hasn’t been good, and that’s why I don’t really do TV. I don’t want like a month off, five weeks, and then come back in. On this, I didn’t have so much time off and when I got time off, I was grateful for it because I was exhausted. You know, we say time off but it’s like, I’d still wake up at 8 a.m. instead of 3 a.m. or whatever, but at 8 a.m. I’m in the gym by nine o’clock, 9:30, I’m there doing an hour-and-a-half of resistance work. I’ll come out of there and go do a three-hour stunt training. Or if I haven’t got stunt training, I’ll go see my friend Greg Wilton and go train Muay Thai in his garage dōjō, and I’ll be out there back hitting pads. Then I’m doing Zoom sessions with my acting coach, my mentor Martin Ledwith back in London.

So, I fill up every second of the day because, again, it’s like when I’m away, “I’m here to work.” Sometimes my friends, like Greg, would be like, “Man, maybe you should come and enjoy LA and do stuff,” and I’m just like, “No, I’m here to work.” And it’s only once I finish that I can kinda let that pressure valve off and all of that. But really, I was here for seven months. I didn’t do anything, bro, like I didn’t have one drink, I didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t go party, I didn’t go to restaurants, I didn’t do anything. It was just knuckle down and work. There’s an asset that we just put on to Instagram from Rebel Moon of myself, and when I see the interview, Steve, I’m like, “I was a psychopath.” I was so serious and focused. Watch it and you’ll be like, “Damn, Ed was tightly bound.” It’s like, where does Atticus Noble end and Ed begin? And of course, I’m not going around hitting people with staffs, but like that kind of intensity, it was in me for that whole period. And again, it was good for the screen but not very nice to live with.

Ed Skrein on Zack Snyder’s Director’s Cut of ‘Rebel Moon’ – “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”

I’m a big fan of Zack’s work, but I always prefer the director’s cuts of everything that he’s ever made. For me, they’re the versions that I’m gonna rewatch again and again. So obviously, I’m super happy that the PG-13 exists, but for your character, what would you say are the differences between the PG-13 version and the R-rated version? Is it a radically different version? Can you sort of talk about what audiences might look forward to or see?

SKREIN: I mean, I remember while we were filming it thinking, “How can any of this go into the PG-13? How can my character exist in that world?” And I was thinking, “They’re gonna have trouble in the edit.” We would shoot for the R-rated scenes and then sometimes he would say, “Okay, let’s do something for the PG-13.” Most of the time I’d give them like one or two takes like that. I was swearing like a sailor and pushing the envelope as far as I could. And in so many of the scenes, I can’t mention them on the record, but I’m doing some dark shit. I was like, “I can’t believe we’re getting away with this. I can’t believe that Zack is asking me to do this,” and I would suggest dark shit and he’d turn it up to 11. I was like, “This is crazy.”

So, you get to know Atticus Noble, I can see that from the PG-13. You do really get a sense of the character and how cold and ruthless he is. But trust me, the R-rated version, the extended cut, you’re gonna really see who this man is and you’re gonna be like, “He is a sick bastard.”

I’m being so serious, I really cannot wait to see the full Zack Snyder cut. So obviously Part One is about to drop, what can you tease about Part Two without spoiling anything?

SKREIN: Steve, it’s all-out fucking war. It is crazy. So much of it was like the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan. From my point of view, like the stunts, I do three or four times as much as I do in Part One. Sofia, everyone, we’ve got so much action. I look at the background behind you, at Veldt, and it’s like, it kicks off, dude. It really, it goes off. From a character point of view, not so much Atticus Noble, but more from the farmers and the rebels, you do get more backstory so you will get to know them better. It’s almost like the first film is kind of just setting up for how it kicks off in the second part, and I think it’s gonna be spectacular.

I really can’t wait to see when it is all is done, Part One and Part Two, for me the full R-rated versions of both.

SKREIN: Me too, man. I can’t wait for people to see them. And I honestly feel like if anybody likes Atticus Noble or feels like we’ve done good work with it in the PG-13, then you ain’t seen nothing yet. There’s a lot more to come.

Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire is available to stream on Netflix.

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