HENRY Golding may have become famous for his starring role in the smash hit romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians, but he is keen to prove he has many strings to his handsome bow.
The actor rocketed to fame as Nick Young in the 2018 box office juggernaut, followed by turns in A Simple Favour, opposite Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick, Last Christmas with Emilia Clarke and The Gentlemen with Hugh Grant and Matthew McConaughey – but his new film takes him in a fresh direction.
He stars as Snake Eyes, the breakout character from previous GI Joe instalments, whose damaged vocal chords and skills with the katana have rendered him silent but deadly.
In the new standalone prequel film about the character, set before the events of GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra and its 2013 sequel GI Joe: Retaliation, Golding plays a more talkative version of the ninjutsu-trained US commando, but one who is no less of a threat with a sword in his hand.
"I think for any actor to have the chance to play a physical role, definitely against typecast, of perhaps what you started with – in a rom com or anything like that, it just shows that given the right material, the spectrum is definitely infinite," Golding says as he chats animatedly over Zoom.
"But for me, specifically, choosing the films that we have done very early on in my career was to provide the spectrum, and this definitely hit the action-explosive role that I was really looking forward to playing."
But transforming into the lethal warrior was no mean feat for the 34-year-old British-Malaysian actor, who started out as a presenter on the BBC's Travel Show before his big break in Hollywood.
"You don't realise how taxing it can be doing the sequences. As a viewer, you're like, 'Oh, yeah, that's amazing. How did they do that in one take?' It's never one take, trust me. There's probably about 30 or 40 sometimes, in the entire day of doing this, making sure everything works and the camera gets it.
"So it's like a little marathon – you have to very much pace yourself. But at the same time, you have to be explosive, you have to get everything right, you have to give your all-out effort to make it look sellable. So it was knackering."
The Snake Eyes film meets the character as a tenacious loner who is welcomed into the ancient Japanese Arashikage clan after he saves the life of their heir apparent and where they teach him the ways of the ninja warrior.
Golding's experience in boxing and muay thai meant he could move "reasonably well", but nothing prepared him for getting to grips with the silverware.
"To learn the katana work, to learn the swordplay, and that type of choreography, is very, very different. Especially close combat, hand to hand," he says.
"We had some amazing stunt crew and trainers who were with us for a good two months, and then all the way up until we finished the production.
"It's a never-ending process. You're always learning on the go. But it gets easier. The first week is like boot camp; you're taken through your paces until your body kind of catches up, 'Alright, so we're going to be doing this for quite a long time. I better get that'. So your body adapts.
"By the end of it, it's yearning for more. It's like, 'So why aren't we moving today? What is this? Why are you talking too much? Let's beat people up'."
Ah yes, the talking. A key change in the prequel is the audience actually hears Snake Eyes's voice, a different element to the usually mute and helmet-clad fighter.
"For us to be able to give Snake a voice, because obviously it's his origin and we're yet to explore the whole losing-his-voice thing, it was important to give him a sense of expression because of how we decided to tell his backstory," Golding says.
"But at the same time, he's definitely less-words-said-the-better. So he's not exactly the chattiest guy; he's very reserved and very calculative. He's definitely a listener."
When Golding first met director Robert Schwentke, who previously worked on Red and RIPD, he told him he was determined Snake Eyes would stand out from the scores of superhero films that were dominating the big screen.
"My question to him was, 'Right, why is this different to any other superhero movie or thing?' Because if we're making a generic thing like that, it's not at the top of my interest list, there has to be something about it that's unique," recalls Golding.
"And he was like, '100 per cent, I don't want to tell the traditional story. We need substance over anything else; we want to give the real struggle that someone from the Joes goes through, because we need to understand that GI Joes are a bunch of extraordinary men and women who aren't born with superpowers'."
The original GI Joe comics portrayed Snake Eyes as a commando with blond hair and blue eyes. Golding, who was born in Malaysia to an English father and Malaysian mother and raised in Surrey, takes over the film role from actor Ray Park, who played the character in GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra and GI Joe: Retaliation and is white.
His casting marks a departure from previous portrayals of the character, but Golding is clear that is does not change the key element of the story.
"At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter," he says. "You have two cultures: Snake Eyes is from the States, Ursula Corbero (who plays villain the Baroness) from Japan. It's like saying, 'Oh, I'm going to take an American and drop him off in Lithuania because they're white, they'll get along'. Not the case.
"We live in a very globalised world, so for me, it was like, 'Yeah, it's a no brainer', somebody jumping into any type of other culture makes sense.
"Back in the day, you had to spell it out. It had to be the 'Oh, this white guy goes over to this Asian country'. Fantastic. We don't need to spell it out anymore, the audience isn't as dumb as people presumed back in the day.
"I think in the sense of globalisation, for me it wasn't even a question of, 'Oh, yeah, it's a diverse choice'. It really wasn't. If we can have an islander play Aquaman, who was notoriously white and blonde haired, we're in a good place.
"And if we can have a half Asian and half white guy play Snake Eyes, it's like, 'Who cares?'. As long as the story being told is brilliant, and the action is there just blowing people away, let's have fun with them."
::Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins is in cinemas now.
