Dashing actor Josh Duhamel makes his return to the Transformers franchise in its latest instalment, The Last Knight.
Being part of Team Transformers has its advantages.
Just ask Josh Duhamel, who’s seen his character, the Decepticon-battling soldier William Lennox, rise through the ranks.
From a captain in the first film, Transformers, Lennox has moved to being a major (Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen) to lieutenant-colonel (Transformers: Dark Of The Moon), and now colonel, in the fifth and latest instalment of the franchise, Transformers: The Last Knight.
“The character has become more hardened and wise in a lot of ways, just because he’s been through so much and has been working with and against these things for so long now,” says the actor, who has become a bit of an Autobot-expert himself, along the way.
“He knows how helpful and how harmful they can be to the human race.”
Transformers: The Last Knight is set in the aftermath of the fourth film, Transformers: Age Of Extinction, the only one in the franchise that Duhamel wasn’t in.
The new action sci-fi adventure finds mankind and the Transformers — minus a missing Optimus Prime — now at war, with the key to saving humanity’s future buried deep within the Transformers’ secret history on Earth.
Optimus Prime returns to his home planet, Cybertron, which is now a dead planet, and learns that he was the one responsible for killing it.
Now, Cade Yeager and Bumblebee form an unlikely alliance with a British Lord and an Oxford professor to find the answers that can help save Earth.
Directed by Michael Bay (who reportedly will exit the director’s chair after this instalment), Transformers: The Last Knight sees Duhamel joining fellow series regulars Mark Wahlberg (Cade Yeager), Stanley Tucci (Joshua Joyce). John Turturro (Seymour Simmons) and Tyrese Gibson (Robert Epps).
Newcomers to the franchise are Anthony Hopkins and Laura Haddock (as bot-expert Sir Edmund Burton and Oxford academic Viviane Wembly), rising star Isabela Moner (as the street-smart Izzy), and funnyman Jerrod Carmichael (as a reluctant civilian swept up into the fray).
Duhamel, 44, talks more about his excitement in making Transformers: The Last Knight.
WHAT’S IN STORE WITH THIS LATEST INSTALMENT OF THE SERIES?
Well, Michael Bay has again outdone himself. You’d think that after the fourth one, he’d be out of ideas.
But he was as excited and motivated on this movie as he’s been on any of them. And there’s something really inspirational about that.
I love watching Michael work. He’s got this ability to energise a whole army of people, every single day, for the six or seven months that we shot this thing.
We filmed at English castles, Stonehenge, in Detroit on these amazing sets. Then there are the helicopters, the crane shots, the zip-line shots and all the technology.
And every time it blows my mind. Every scene. Every day. When I think it’s going to be one thing, it’s usually much bigger than what I imagined. So I’m excited for people to see what we’ve accomplished.
DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR AUDITION FOR THE FIRST FILM?
I’ll never forget it. It all started a few months earlier when I was meeting with Michael’s producing partners on another project.
Michael pokes his head in to say hi and introduce himself, and then invites me to check out what he was working on. It was Transformers.
And I just remember thinking: “That doesn’t seem like a very good idea (laughs).”
That is, until I went over to look at what he was working on.
Two months later, I get a call saying Michael wanted to see me for a part in it. So I went to his office. It was just the two of us.
We quickly ran through some different lines and then he started testing me. “Say it like this. Try this. Try that.”
Much later I realised he was testing to see whether or not I could adjust on the fly. That’s really the biggest challenge in these movies as an actor. In most things, you have lines from the script, you rehearse those lines, and then you play them.
In a Michael Bay movie, it’s much different, especially with this character and the situations he’s in.
He’s always in the middle of some battle or some big action sequence where things get quite fluid. Sometimes, it changes completely and you have to be ready to react to whatever he throws at you.
HOW HAS YOUR CHARACTER PROGRESSED OVER THE YEARS?
Well, I’m a little bit greyer than I was in the first film, for sure (laughs).
When I went in to see Michael for the first time for The Last Knight, since I wasn’t in Age Of Extinction, they were initially going to colour my hair.
And then when Michael saw me, he was like, “You know what, pal? You’re a colonel now. I like it!”
So they let me be a little more grizzled and weathered. So physically, the look has changed. I’d say he’s a little bit darker than he was in the beginning, which I like. It also gives the character a little more weight.
WHAT’S IT BEEN LIKE WORKING WITH MARK WAHLBERG?
Mark’s the best. He really is. And he’s still a regular guy. He’s still a kid from Boston. He’s still scrappy and comes to work ready to go, every single day, and I love that about him.
I think he’s brought a lot to it. Shia (Labeouf, who was the lead in the first three instalments) was amazing too, in his own right. But Mark is a completely different animal.
In these last two movies, we’ve really seen Mark come to the fore. I guess there’s just more of a maturity about what he brings to it. With Shia, it was more of a youthful thing.
WHAT’S LIFE LIKE ON A TRANSFORMERS SET?
It’s a lot of chaos. There’s always so much going on. You see all these equipment around. You see jets and helicopters flying overhead. You see giant cranes and gimbals.There’s nothing like stepping on the set of a Transformers movie and feeling the energy.
It’s taught me a lot about how we are all able to take on more than we ever thought we could. Mark and Michael are great examples of that. The producers for these movies, the camera guys. Every single department has to bring their A-game. There’s a tremendous amount of pressure to deliver. You can feel that on the set.
But at the same time, you feel good about it. And that’s why everybody keeps coming back. That energy is something that you don’t find in a lot of other places.
WHICH SEQUENCE ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING?
We spent a lot of time in Detroit filming on this gimbal. Think of it as two giant hydraulic lifts, like those things they put your car on when they lift it up. It’s sort of like that, but on a much larger scale, and it tilts this giant stage up to a 45-degree angle.
We spent a lot of time on that, sliding around and flying down on it, with giant waves crashing all around.
You’d be flopping all over the place, tethered to this line, over 15 metres in the air.It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done.
While it’s always safety first with these movies, you still feel like you could die at any moment (laughs).
I can’t wait to see how they’re able to integrate all that stuff that we did and make it look like this giant alien ship coming out of the ocean. Remembering all the hours we spent shooting on that thing and then watching it come to life on the screen is something I look forward to.
IT SOUNDS INCREDIBLE...
It was insane. You’re up over 15 metres in the air. It’s at an angle. And it’s slippery because there’s water on it.
You then have to slide down and hope that that tether you’re tied to stays. It’s a scary thing. But, again, it raises your level of awareness to something primal. Where else can you find that sort of edge?
WHY HAS THE TRANSFORMERS SERIES PROVED SO POPULAR WITH AUDIENCES FOR SO MANY YEARS?
It’s the unique idea of robots and cars. It’s the insane action that is unique to Michael Bay. There’s also humour there -- Michael finds a way to find humour in these stories, which is great.
In the end, he makes it all look so real. It feels as if it could really happen and
I think there’s something really tangible about that. You know, you look at a car driving down the street the next day and you wonder, what would happen if that thing just turned into a robot?
WHO’S YOUR FAVOURITE TRANSFORMER?
I really liked Ironhide (who died in Dark Of The Moon). He was an Autobot. He was one of the good ones.
But he was also in that grey area.
He was good but he was pretty prickly. Plus he was a big black truck and I drive a black truck, so I think that I had an affinity for him...
But Bumblebee is also cool. Optimus is the ultimate hero. And then there’s always new ones that, while you’re shooting the movie, you don’t know exactly what they’re going to look like. To see them come to life is always cool too.
WHICH OF THE NEW ONES ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING MOST?
I want to see Hot Rod, which is this Lamborghini that was always cruising around the set. It’s a Lamborghini that cost RM6 million. I want to see what that looks like.
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE OF THE TRANSFORMERS SERIES LOOK LIKE? THERE’S TALK OF A BUMBLEBEE SPIN-OFF AND TRANSFORMERS 6. IS THERE ANYTHING YOU CAN SHARE WITH US?
You know, I can’t even speculate. I just don’t know. I’ve heard about the Bumblebee spin-off too, but that’s about all I know. I don’t think Michael is doing it. I think this film is probably his last one. That’s pretty much all I know.
WHAT ABOUT YOU? WOULD YOU BE UP FOR MORE FILMS?
I think so. Like I said, I had fun making these movies. I feel an ownership, in a weird way, of this character too, and a lot of pride in the fact that I’ve been able to be a part of this franchise.
So that alone would bring me back. I definitely am devoted to this franchise.
Courtesy of United International Pictures
Transformers: The Last Knight Opens in cinemas
nationwide June 22