Omari Hardwick on Starring in The Mother With Jennifer Lopez

The Jennifer Lopez-led action movie The Mother is now streaming on Netflix. Ahead of its release, ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to star Omari Hardwick (Army of the Dead) about the movie and the intense action scenes.

“A deadly female assassin comes out of hiding to protect the daughter that she gave up years before, while on the run from dangerous men,” reads the logline.

Check out the video of our Omari Hardwick interview below:

Tyler Treese: I love the action scenes in The Mother. What did you most like about the approach to the action that the director employed for this movie?

Omari Hardwick: I think what was really interesting was, and I saw it on the page. I saw it on the script. The script is so well written. What I saw on page, obviously, Niki, she really kind of built upon that. And what I saw on page was that every action sequence, every moment of ferocity, every moment of mayhem, every jump from one deck in the parking garage for Jen’s character, not myself, to the bottom floor, and me flying up in a car… You’ve seen the movie… And making sure I didn’t run over this woman who I’m hired to protect. I think it was all tied in very well to the emotional component template throughline, thematic overlay umbrella, if you will, of the story.

I think a lot of times, action is asking itself, and directors have a part in this and the negative sense of me answering, and in the positive, they have a play in whether the action sequences become a part of the call sheet. A character on the call sheet. Come to set every day, characters one through seven, your main cast members, and then there’s the action. That can become a little hokey, as you would imagine. That can become where the action shouldn’t be so standout-ish, the action should be beautiful. It should be incredible.

This movie, for example, is three movies in one. I said to Niki from the gate, and when I say the gate, perhaps it was the genesis of our meeting, conversation number one, I said, “Niki, you got three movies in one.” She goes, “It is that.” As you know, the backdrop is very descriptive of one movie, Tyler, the backdrop that you’re in front of right now, it’s like you’re talking Alaska — one movie. That whole world is one movie. Joseph Fiennes finds his way there. Paul Raci is there, Jen is there, Lucy is there. I’m not there. I’m in another movie. I’m in Cuba. I’m not in Desert Storm, but I’m in Cuba. So I’m not in the middle east, but I’m in Cuba. I’m in Cincinnati. Cincinnati’s another movie that’s the middle of America.

All of the action, to me, was befitting of the three different movies within the one movie. That’s not easy to pull off. That’s to me where I’m like, oh man, hats off to Niki. Each one had its own thing. We had an incredible stunt coordinator and a stunt team, and fight coordinators and vehicles were driven by stunt supervisors that taught us how to pull up in a way of not just not harming but Jen, again, from the example of me having to pull up in the car and get her in the car and keep it moving, but also with a purpose and urgency.

The movie from the gate, as you know, starts off and five minutes in you’re in. There’s not a lull period. I think that’s what makes the movie win, particularly for the younger generation that wants not only instantaneous ha ha ha but they also want it to persist throughout, whether it’s an Instagram post, they don’t want to get bored. Whether it’s a movie, there’s a reason that action in the movies that are successful in the action genre, there’s a reason that people continue to turn up for those movies. And this is not an easy term because again, those are movies perhaps where it’s one movie. This really is taking on three movies in one movie, and each sequence of action is befitting of the three different parts. Niki nailed that.

Tyler Treese: Jennifer Lopez really impressed me. Just the intensity in her performance. How was it kind of playing off her? Because she’s a natural action star here.

Hardwick: She is. She definitely is. She was born as a force, right? Whether Jenny from the block got away from the block and always will pay homage in the innate qualities that come from a girl raised in a Puerto Rican family who happens to again be from the Bronx. When she embraces that, which is natural to her, which is the job as an actor. To embrace what’s natural, to figure out what’s not natural, and to make the two coexist. All the natural crap you bring, all the stuff you don’t naturally have in gift or in craft. You figure out how to bring. You marry the two together and you let it rip. She is, to your point, naturally gifted at that part. So that was really an amazing thing to watch her bring her natural gift. It was impressive.

ComingSoon thanks Netflix for setting up our Omari Hardwick interview for The Mother.