THIS ‘MAGNIFICENT’ WESTERN REJECTS STEREOTYPES
ather them all together, and even a starched hotel room becomes a saloon. The rowdy cast of The Magnifificent Seven (in cinemas on Oct 13), led by Denzel Washington, files in with their director, Antoine Fuqua. They’re more than an hour late, but a lasso is needed to corral this many stars. The outlaws, gunslingers and bounty hunters — Washington, Chris Pratt, Ethan Hawke, Vincent D’Onofrio, Byung-hun Lee, Manuel GarciaRulfo and Martin Sensmeier — represent one of the most diverse films of the year.
“I don’t think about it that way,” says Fuqua, as a few Bloody Marys and mojitos are passed around. “The world we live in is diverse today. For me, I go, ‘Who are the coolest actors I can get in this movie?’”
In the updated Western, tyranny is still central in a dusty American mining town being terrorised by a sinister industrialist (Peter Sarsgaard). When Fuqua initially spoke with MGM about remaking the 1960 John Sturges classic (itself based on 1954’s Seven Samurai), “I said, ‘This movie needs to be an event,’” Fuqua recalls.
For that, he needed Washington as Sam Chisolm, the group’s fearless leader. Fuqua, who previously directed Washington in Training Day and The Equalizer, met the actor for dinner. “I kind of painted a picture of him coming over the hill on a horse, and played some music for him and he started laughing,” says the director.
Then came the rest: Pratt, who sang Oh Shenandoah to Fuqua over the phone to nab his gambler; Sensmeier, who abruptly decided to cut his long hair into a mohawk. (“I wanted to kill him,” says Fuqua, but was inspired to reframe the Native American character as more modern.)
Garcia-Rulfo worried that he’d be dressed in a stereotypical poncho. Instead, Fuqua encouraged him to tell the costume department what he wanted to wear. “I want you to pick your style,” the Mexican-American actor recalls the director saying.
“It was a big, huge deal for you to cast an Italian,” D’Onofrio cracks as the others hoot. “I’m proud of you, man.”
Then there’s Lee, who plays the knife-wielding assassin Billy Rocks — and whom tens of thousands of fans once crowded a stadium in Tokyo just to glimpse. What’s the South Korean mega-star’s life like halfway around the world?
Lee considers. “Like Elvis,” he says, as his castmates holler and clap. “When I went to Japan for GI Joe with the crew... there were 3,000 fans in the airport,” he says. “They were so surprised by it.” But in Hollywood, “it’s like I’m starting again.”
Hawke, who plays the haunted Civil War veteran Goodnight, strikes a more serious tone. “Like the characters, we’re all people from different backgrounds,” he says. “There was so much opportunity for us to learn from each other.”
Hundreds of stuntmen and extras surrounded them on set, and Pratt says the cast engaged in friendly shooting competitions. “He says that because he won!” Washington exclaims.
“I just grew up shooting,” Pratt explains. “I’ve been practising for a long time.”
For Washington, Magnificent’s most iconic moments — whipping out his Colt, bringing to life Fuqua’s shot of his take-no-prisoners cowboy riding over the hill — are no different from the rest of his body of work.
“It always feels good,” says Washington, adding that there is no perfect moment on set. “Even my mistakes are correct... Get on the horse, ride the horse, shoot the gun — drop the gun, pick it up. Mistakes are the best part for me.”