Thankfully, director Antoine Fuqua and actor Jake Gyllenhaal have a history of collaboration. The two worked together on the 2015 boxing drama, “Southpaw,” and it’s that friendship and bond that they formed during that shoot that made the incredibly difficult production of their latest collab, “The Guilty,” even work. Because, after you hear about what Gyllenhaal and Fuqua had to go through to get the film in front of cameras, you’d understand why trust and friendship are really important.
Speaking to EW, Jake Gyllenhaal and Antoine Fuqua talked about their upcoming Netflix film, “The Guilty.” The film is a remake of a 2018 Danish thriller about a cop-turned-911-operator that only spans the events of one day in the call center. Filming of the remake took 11 days, a terribly tight schedule for any film, let alone a major production like this. However, things almost got completely derailed when a COVID scare almost forced Fuqua to not move ahead with the production.
As told to EW, Fuqua came in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID a mere 48 hours before the 11-day shoot was to begin. And though the filmmaker consistently tested negative himself, the strict COVID production protocols meant the filmmaker would have to be off-set for the entire, short shoot. So, in light of this, Fuqua and Gyllenhaal worked out a unique plan for the filmmaker to continue with his duties and not miss a day.
“What seemed advantageous at the time ended up being a bit of a curse,” Gyllenhaal explained. “They were talking about shutting Los Angeles down almost every day. So, because Antoine subsequently tested negative for days afterwards, we decided to get a van that was outfitted with screens and park him a block away, hardwired to the stage where we were shooting. We’d FaceTime each other after these 25-minute long takes. He’d give me direction, I’d take it down, we’d do another take. We never saw each other in-person the entire shoot.”
Fuqua added, “I had to have eyes on set [and] our main cameras, and a way to communicate with my actors via Zoom and phone, when it needed to be private, and I would only physically see each other from behind the studio wall. Jake would climb on a ladder and I would open the door to my van, and we would communicate. I definitely missed the close contact with my crew, but everyone stepped up and we found a way.”
Apparently, it all worked out in the end, as “The Guilty” finished production earlier this year and is now set to debut on Netflix on October 1 after hitting theaters the week before on September 24. You can see new images from the film below:
