When your entire world shatters, who can you trust more than a mother to build it up again?
The Knockturnal: Congratulations on the film, it’s super… well fun is not really the right word, but?
Jennifer Garner: There is an element of fun, there is an element of cathartic fun at the end for sure.
The Knockturnal: And it flies by, it’s so entertaining…
Jennifer Garner: Good!
The Knockturnal: How did you guys balance the seriousness of the death and the macabre and it has some comedic turns to it the entire time, how did you handle that balance on set?
Jennifer Garner: It’s always tricky but you can never just live in the dark. You got to find a way to have some fun and as long as the movie is grounded, which I feel like when I first met with Pierre Morel who was our director and who also directed Liam Neeson in Taken. Having seen Taken, I knew that he would ground the movie, and if it’s grounded then you can go anywhere, you can find the funny and you can find the crazy in the action, as long as the drama, in the beginning, feels very real.
Juan Pablo Raba: For me it was really fun, because I just thought, we have to play kind of a bad persona against this force of nature who is searching for revenge… So I just try to be meanest, baddest guy I could ever be, so so different from anything I have ever thought of myself so it was just fun! I thought the meaner I am, the better it is for the film, the better it is for Riley North to go at it.
Jennifer Garner: Perfect villain!
Juan Pablo Raba: Thank you very much, it’s the mustache…
The Knockturnal: Is that your acting tip, if you want to be bad get the mustache?
Juan Pablo Raba: Use a mustache guys… That’s it! Acting class #322, use a mustache….
Jennifer Garner: I’m gonna try it next time…
The Knockturnal: Speaking to that bad guy, that villain, it’s amazing to see obviously so much diversity in a film, you get so many people of color, but a lot of the Latino men in this film are portrayed as gangsters, as members of the cartel. Is it good to just have diversity on the screen or do we have to be careful between treading that line of who we are showing and what are we showing them as?
Juan Pablo Raba: Well for me as a Latino man, I just think we play roles, and as I said Riley North needed a force to fight against, to go against, that’s all it is… We are telling a story and I love to see people of all sorts of colors, and countries, and races, and languages in a film, so I also think it’s not like, this movie is just entertaining. It doesn’t pinpoint like, “You people from so and so are doing this?”
Jennifer Garner: She’s not after the people, she’s after the system, the system is broken, and certainly the hero of the movie is John Ortiz.
The Knockturnal: Congratulations on the film, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Peppermint hits theatres nationwide September 7th!
