From acclaimed director Antoine Fuqua and screenwriters Kurt Sutter and Richard Wenk , SOUTHPAW tells the riveting story of Billy “The Great” Hope, reigning Light Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World (Academy Award® nominee Jake Gyllenhaal). Recently, WAMG sat down with star Jake Gyllenhaal in a small roundtable discussion. Check out some of the highlights below!
Billy Hope seemingly has it all with an impressive career, a beautiful and loving wife (Rachel McAdams), an adorable daughter (Oona Laurence) and a lavish lifestyle. When tragedy strikes and his lifelong manager and friend (Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) leaves him behind, Hope hits rock bottom and turns to an unlikely savior at a run-down local gym: Tick Willis (Academy Award® winner Forest Whitaker), a retired fighter and trainer to the city’s toughest amateur boxers. With his future riding on Tick’s guidance and tenacity, Billy enters the hardest battle of his life as he struggles with redemption and to win back the trust of those he loves.
I don’t know what the timeline was, but you went from pretty skeletal in NIGHTCRAWLER to rather fit in this. Can you talk about the timeline and your transformation?
JAKE GYLLENHAAL : Yeah. I did NIGHTCRAWLER, then I did EVEREST, and then I did SOUTHPAW. So, we shot the majority of EVEREST in the Dolomites, on the Austria/Italian border so there was a lot of really good pasta. I finished NIGHTCRAWLER, and then I went into that, and then the training started for SOUTHPAW. I spent five months training for this movie, two times a day. I didn’t know how to box when I started. I figured if I trained twice a day for five months, it would make ten months. I was motivated totally by fear that I would look like a fool. Knowing how Antoine [Fuqua] was going to shoot the movie… no double. He wanted to shoot it like a Showtime or HBO fight where he was going to have the real cameraman there. There were going to be medium shots and full body shots where you have to see footwork, and we’re going to be moving around. They’re not gonna shoot from just one side and cut. They’d move from the back of your head, all the way to the front of your head. He wanted it all, all of the time. So, I just went like “Ok. Well if I’m gonna do it… If he’s going to do that, then… ” and also knowing that there’s no other way to shoot a boxing movie. We’ve seen it so many times. You can’t fake it anymore like that. You have to do it that way. Short of hiring a boxer who can act, I had to become an actor who can box. That was basically the discussion we had, so everyday I went in… It wasn’t like everyday I went in always going crazy. I would spend, sometimes, the mornings where we would just work technique. I remember days upon days where we were just working on my jab… just shuffling around the ring, working on footwork… back, forward, sideways, pivoting, moving forward, back, back, back, back… He’d say “No punch! No punch! No punch!” and he’d hit me and go “Back up! Back up!”… It was just days, and hours of that. Then, we would do them at work, and then we would do every single aspect of a training. Every aspect of boxing takes a separate technique. You can’t just hit a heavy bag. It’s like, two weeks of learning how to hit a heavy bag, and then two weeks of just getting speed bag work down, and then adding heavy bag and speed work. It was five months of that.
You tend to gravitate toward darker roles. Would you say that’s true, and if so, why is that?
JAKE GYLLENHAAL : I don’t know if I do. I mean, I have recently, I think. The past few movies I’ve done, I guess, those were just stories for me. Maybe I’ve been in a place where those are just the things that have touched me. I also feel like I want to – when I give my time to a character, I want it to feel substantial… to have weight. If I were to do a comedy, I want it, not to have a dark substance… I wanna do something… I’m looking for a type of intelligence and entertainment. I just seem to have found it in this space. If there was a comedy that… I mean, I just did Little Shop Of Horrors for a couple of nights at City Center. That’s essentially a comedy… a dark comedy, but it’s a comedy. I don’t know what people call that, but I’m on stage with Ellen Greene, and I’m bound to cry because what she’s saying is so moving, but the audience is cracking up. To me, it’s not really about whether something is funny. It’s about whether I’m moved by it, whether it’s lighter or darker, or whatever…
While doing press for NIGHTCRAWLER, you talked about going to set hungry, not just physically, but mentally. What was your mental process for this film?
JAKE GYLLENHAAL : Well, I started off, because he’s an angry character, just full of rage, and I’m quick to jump at things, and I have my own responses, and I was interested in kind of exploring my own rage. At first, when I was training, it was all an exploration, right… I was looking for motivating things. Like, when I was boxing when I’d start off I’d go hard. I thought if could get angry, then I’d go hard and that’s gonna give me the fuel I need. If I put on that hardcore music, it’d give me the fuel I’d need. Then I’d get exhausted so quick. I’d be like “Wait. That doesn’t work.” All of a sudden I started to realize technique, sort of, meditation or relaxation. My motivation was the idea of family, and what you would do for family, and your love of your family. My love of my family… the children in my life, like the nieces that I know, just in general I would do anything for a child – that was a motivating factor in this.
Would you say that when you take on roles like this that there’s a cathartic aspect for you?
JAKE GYLLENHAAL : There can be, yes. I mean, I’m grateful for this role because one of the hardest things for me to do has been able to say “Woah. I’m starting to get pissed” and stop, be curious about that feeling, and then give myself a little bit of time before I react. Within the five months I prepared for this movie, what was interesting was being curious about my own anger. That’s cathartic. Having a curiosity in your feelings is much more interesting than having your feelings control you. I mean, I think feelings are so important, but I think how we act on them is a delicate, dangerous thing.
SOUTHPAW is in theaters now
