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IAN SPELLING
NYT Syndicate
To many filmgoers and television viewers, Frank Grillo is a hidden treasure who should be much, much more famous than he is. Further, the argument goes, he should be in far higher-profile movies and shows.
Grillo himself insists that he never thinks about things that way.
"I don't," he said, speaking by telephone from the set of Fight World, a Netflix project he's shooting in Brazil."I think about being a fortunate dad and husband who gets to go make movies and TV shows and earn a living and take care of my family. Every time I work, I try to get better, try to understand what I'm doing better, try to be a better actor. And now I'm into producing, trying to make the kinds of things I want to be in.
"But it's true," he admitted, laughing,"people come up to me and go, 'Oh, yeah, you're great. What's your name?' And I'm like, 'Wow, man, I wonder if that will ever change.' But I don't think about it too much, and I dig surprising people.
"But, look," Grillo continued,"I travel around the world and people come up to me all the time and, even if they don't know my name, they go, 'Oh, The Purge!' Or they'll know Kingdom. Whatever it is, I always get tickled by it. I'm like, 'If this is my life, this is my life.'"
The actor paused for a moment.
"The good thing is, people in Hollywood, in the business, I have broken through with them," he said."So I have a lot of opportunities. I say no a lot more now than I say yes. That's happened for me, and that's great, only because I get to do better stuff. I get to do more-interesting stuff."
For those who can't quite place Grillo, he's a rugged, 52-year-old New York native. He counts among his television work 'The Shield' (2002-2003), 'Prison Break' (2005-2006), 'The Gates' (2010) and, most recently, 'The Kingdom' (2014-2017), on which he starred as retired MMA fighter Alvey Kulina. Among his film credits are Warrior (2011), The Grey (2011), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), Captain America: Civil War (2016) and The Purge: Election Year (2016).
Grillo's latest project is Wheelman, an action movie that will debut on October 20 on Netflix. He plays an unnamed getaway driver, a no-nonsense ex-con who, very early in a big robbery, realises that he's been double-crossed. The wheelman then spends most of the movie racing around at high speed, dropping F-bombs and desperately trying to outrun his pursuers while figuring out who set him up and why.
Complicating matters, adding to the tension, humanising the wheelman and generating a few laughs along the way are occasional calls from his estranged wife (Wendy Moniz) and their teenage daughter, Katie (Caitlin Carmichael), the latter of whom is hanging out with her much-older boyfriend, much to the consternation of mom and dad. The wife, and especially the daughter, eventually factor into the story in more profound ways.
"I think, without my daughter, it's not a story," Grillo said."It'd become something else, something of a clich` even. With the daughter, it really becomes a father/daughter story, wrapped around this crazy thriller/action piece. The heart of it is when you see these two people together, this father who doesn't really know how to be a father and this kid who has not really had a father.
"That's what connects everyone to my character and also to what's going on in the different circumstances, and it was critical to have that element," he said."I think it was really intelligent of (writer/director) Jeremy Rush to do that. That's my favourite part of the movie, in the car with that kid."
So how hard is it to drive and act at the same time? And how much of the wheelman's driving is actually Grillo's?
"Oh, I drove, and about 75 percent of the time it was practical," Grillo said,"and then we have different variations of vehicles, like the professional drivers on top of the car. But it never really works, so I wound up doing most of the driving.
"I have to tell you, I was so afraid of the whole process that I prepared more than I've ever prepared for anything in my life," he said."So the acting of it, I think, was a lot easier than the driving."
Not hard at all were the scenes in which the wheelman bickers with his estranged wife. That's because actress Wendy Moniz, who voiced the character, is the real-life ” and not really estranged ” Mrs Grillo.
"She was sitting next to me while we were talking about my producing and being in the movie," Grillo recalled."The role was in the script and I said, 'You're not really in the movie much. It's more voiceover, but it's critical.'
"My wife is used to yelling at me, so it worked well," he said."To know me is to know that, every time I hear that voice on the phone, I'm like 'Ah, (crap)!'"
As noted, Wheelman will stream on Netflix, which Grillo deemed a"double-edged sword." The company finances films and picks up projects, particularly lower-budgeted, offbeat fare that the major studios might likely never touch, which is good. On the other hand, there's something special about seeing a movie on a big screen and in a theatre. At least for the moment, too, there's still more prestige in theatrically released features and in acting in them than there is in streaming productions.
"When you see the reaction to people watching Wheelman, it's like, 'Oh, man, it's too bad, it would have been something cool,'" Grillo said."I think, down the line, companies like Netflix, these streamers, they're going to have to figure out a plan (for the hybridised streaming and theatrical releases of their projects). Otherwise you're going to miss an opportunity.
"The good side of it is that they have a marketing plan for this thing worldwide that is so extraordinary, with algorithms and all kinds of cool things," he said."It's 183 countries. It'll be in all those countries, in all those languages, and that's cool for Jeremy Rush, to make a movie he knows will have so many eyes on it."
Grillo next will be seen in Beyond Skyline, a sci-fi/horror film due out in December. He stars as a man who teams with a ragtag group of people to fight invading aliens and save his son. He's currently in production on Fight World, a six-episode documentary series for Netflix.
"I travel around the world and I'm very much into martial arts and fighting," the actor explained,"and everywhere I've gone I'd go to a gym and usually make friends very quickly through the fighting brotherhood, and I'd get to explore the culture through the fighters. So I went to Netflix and I said, 'I have an idea. It's like Anthony Bourdain, but I'm going to embed myself in the fight culture.' And they said yes.
"I'm in Brazil now, and I was just in Senegal, in Thailand, in Myanmar," Grillo said."I was in Mexico City with Julio Cesar Chavez and all these great boxing legends. I'm going to go to Israel to finish it off. So it's been cool to create something from the embryonic stages to executing it like we are."
