Dylan Sprouse and Mason Gooding Talk Friendship, Action, and Heroes vs Villains in Aftermath
Dylan Sprouse and Mason Gooding star in Aftermath, an action film that finds a war veteran working to save his sister from a terrorist attack on Boston’s Tobin Memorial Bridge. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado spoke with the duo about their friendship, action movies, and heroes versus villains.
Both Sprouse and Gooding are big action fans so they loved the opportunity to step into the space in Aftermath. “I've always wanted an opportunity to be physical on set and put to use a level of physicality that a lot of times requires trust and understanding amongst actors and amongst stunt teams. I think Aftermath was such a great foray into that. Dylan is such a considerate and honestly talented physical performer, from his martial arts background to also just his care and consideration as a person,” Gooding told me. “It made for an experience that probably spoiled me outright for any subsequent work in the genre, but then I went ahead and did another action movie with Dylan called Under Fire and it was more of the same so clearly it's all working out in my favor.”
“I never really thought I would be considered a guy who could be leading an action movie because I always consider myself more of a sillyman, but it has been immensely fun. I love the marriage of the physical training and the training for the choreography of the action scene mixed with the emotional work of building the character out,” continued Sprouse. “I think that for me is a very fresh new thing and I have a great time doing it. Honestly, I could make action movies for the rest of my life.”
The duo had such a great time that it was a no-brainer to sign on for another action film together with Under Fire, which will come out in the near future. “In Aftermath, we play antagonists towards one another. Romeo theoretically dislikes Eric, [who] dislikes Romeo. [In Under Fire], the conceit of a buddy comedy with high octane action, I think made our dynamic on set more naturally positive. I was able to be loving both on and off set to my friend that I have nothing but the highest opinion of,” said Gooding. “Loving Dylan and thinking he's rad and then kicking the out of him on screen is cathartic and fun in a way that once that movie was done I was like, ‘All right, I'm excited to do a project where we get to be buddies and kind of bust each other […] for the dynamic present in that movie.’”
While the film is set on Boston’s Tobin Memorial Bridge, there was very limited availability to film at the highly populated location. Instead, tricks were done on a soundstage. “I still am enamored by all the tricks to replicate making things look realistic. It's all of the movie bells and whistles by them making a fake skyline out of a back lit cloth that they're cutting holes out of. Or whether or not they're rebuilding an entire bridge with each car in the right order then flipping and reversing it. Those are the kind of things that I still think make the movie industry so intriguing to me,” shared Sprouse. “It scratches the same itch I know I have and a lot of my friends have, which is miniature model building. It's just so cool to see them do it on that scale.”
Gooding revealed he still remembers a lot of the fight choreography from the film, while Sprouse admitted that’s something he struggles with. “I think this is from years of working on a sitcom. The second a scene is done, it completely erases out of my memory,” Sprouse laughed. “To the point where — this has happened before — where if we had to go back like an hour later let's say and they're like, ‘Hey, we actually missed this one beat.’ I have to relearn the entire scene over again.”
When it came to playing heroes and villains, the duo’s friendship helped them immensely. “The most gratifying portion of this film was having the comfortability and understanding in Dylan as an actor that whatever I tried to do would be met with a level of understanding and healthy competition from Dylan's portrayal of Eric,” shared Gooding. “I always felt like I could push the envelope as far as what villainy looks like to me.”
“A lot of my mannerisms in Aftermath, I took from John Bernall in The Walking Dead. There's a thing he does when he sits down where he hikes up his pants and then he like squats on his knees really cooly. I do a lot of that in this movie,” continued Gooding. “I like how a lot of what a villain is the reappropriation of social inhibitions and how your belief finally gets to take front seat to your actions rather than your justification for what's right. […] A lot of what a villain, especially in an action movie, does is whatever he wants.”
Meanwhile Sprouse was able to explore his character’s feelings on heroism, especially through the lens of PTSD. “The consequences of being a hero is something that he's really afraid of, while also being maybe the only guy on the bridge who can do something about it,” he explained. “I was just happy that the script looks at [PTSD] as a transition point rather than like the end goal. I've seen a lot of movies and television make PTSD the completeness of the character. They don't really talk much into how it's a journey in itself to get to the process of healing so I liked that this was the process of healing.”
Aftermath is streaming on VOD.
