Havoc director Gareth Evans has revealed how he turned the Welsh countryside into a bustling US city for the new Netflix thriller – and how star Tom Hardy became Barry Island’s biggest fan in the process. The action thriller stars the Peaky Blinders actor as Walker, a police officer who must rescue a politician’s son after a dodgy drug deal gone wrong.
While set against the backdrop of a fictional American city akin to New York, Havoc was filmed entirely in Wales – from Cardiff and Swansea to Barry Island Pleasure Park. Welsh director Gareth shared in an exclusive chat with The Mirror that during the shoot, Tom became a big fan of Barry Island.
“I didn’t have much downtime when we were filming – but Tom enjoyed Barry Island,” he said. “He loved Barry Island – he went once or twice. He was a Barry Island fan. It was lovely and it was fun to see this cast of actors turning up, legends like Forest Whittaker – who would go off and discover the Welsh coastlines.
“There’s an amazing selfie of him standing with this beautiful coastline in the background. It was just nice for us to be able to share stories about work and experiences, but then for me to share a little bit of the Welsh culture and Welsh landscape with them as well.”
Gangs of London director Gareth, who hails from Hirwaun in South Wales, admitted that turning the Welsh backdrop into a busy American metropolis proved to be a “challenge” at times. “It was a fun one though – we decided we were going to shoot in Wales, partly for personal reasons.
“We were still in the grip of COVID, we wanted to be able to wrap and travel back home. We had so much great support from the Welsh government and from the local councils that we knew if we were going to make a film on this scale, we would be supported.
“It was a bit of a no-brainer – but then the challenge came when I was walking around Swansea, Port Talbot, Cardiff and Newport and started to imagine, ‘Right, which buildings look like they could be a slice of Americana.'”
He added that special effects did a lot of the heavy lifting. “The approach was to be like, ‘If we can get at least 30 percent of our frame in camera being real, then VFX augmentation could take care of the rest and they would have something to anchor to then.”
After Tom joined the project, Gareth took eight FaceTime calls with the star to flesh out the character of Walker. “It was a huge learning curve for me – I felt like what he brought to the film was so much heart and soul and emotion that would go along with this roller coaster ride of the action that I knew I could bring to it,” Gareth said.
The action thriller also stars Shadow and Bone’s Jessie Mei Li as Walker’s cop partner Ellie, while the likes of Timothy Olyphant, Forest Whitaker and Luis Guzman take on roles in the wider cast.
Havoc arrives on Netflix on Friday 25 April.
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