Entertainment

Ryan Reynolds on the ‘big challenge’ of filming Red Notice during pandemic

The film also stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Gal Gadot.
The film also stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Gal Gadot. The film also stars Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Gal Gadot.

Ryan Reynolds described filming Netflix blockbuster Red Notice during the pandemic as a “big challenge”.

The Hollywood actor is joined by fellow stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Gal Gadot in the big-budget action comedy.

It features Reynolds, 45, as an art thief while Johnson plays an FBI profiler out to capture Gadot’s master criminal.

Red Notice was reportedly Netflix’s biggest ever investment in a film. The first half of the movie was completed before the pandemic but the second half was made during the health crisis.

Speaking at the Red Notice world premiere in downtown Los Angeles, Reynolds reserved special praise for the film’s crew.

“It was a big challenge,” he told the PA news agency. “It was more of a challenge for our crew, who were in Atlanta and often times they were a mile away from their families and they couldn’t see them.

“Everyone was sequestered, so no-one could go anywhere. No-one could even stop for gas. When you look back at that now you’re like, ‘that’s crazy’. But that’s what was happening just a year ago.

“So I’m really grateful we’re through the worst of it, I think, but it was really tough for the crew, more so than any of us. I’m not going to complain about my predicament, it was the crew – it was tough for them.”

Wonder Woman actress Gadot, 36, stars in Red Notice as Sarah Black, also known as The Bishop, a world renowned art thief evading capture from Johnson’s leading criminal profiler John Hartley.

Gadot said one of the biggest challenges of filming – aside from pandemic restrictions – was avoiding Reynolds’s jokes.

She told PA: “The hardest thing for me in this movie was not to break takes. It was so funny and wow, Ryan was waiting like a shark around the corner to break me and it was just hilarious.”

Red Notice, from director Rawson Marshall Thurber, begins streaming on Netflix from November 12.