From One Piece to the Cleaners, Taz Skylar is all about action.
In the latest action film, Cleaner, starring Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker), actor Taz Skylar nearly steals the show as the unhinged antagonist, Noah. Directed by Martin Campbell, the film adopts a Die Hard style approach. A woman is caught up in a fight for survival after a group of radical eco-terrorists storm an energy company’s annual gala to force accountability for the harm they’ve wrought on the world.
Skylar’s Noah plays right-hand man to Clive Owen’s Marcus, who is much more studious and peaceful in his approach. The film allows Skylar to showcase his intense physicality and looming presence, prone to bursts of violence. While the actor has made plenty of appearances both on stage and onscreen in films such as Boiling Point and Gassed Up, it’s undoubtedly the live-action adaptation of One Piece on Netflix, where he plays the crew chef, Sanji, that saw his star rise.
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In Cleaner, Skylar once more showcases his skill in stunt choreography and fight sequences in one of his more high-profile roles. We spoke to the actor about the necessity of confidence when entering every scenario, playing a complex antagonist, and more.
But Why Tho: How did you first get approached for Cleaner, and what was the audition process like?
TAZ SKYLAR: I was working on another film in London, and one of the film’s producers, Callum, whom I’ve known for a very long time, called me and said that I needed to meet Martin [Campbell] today. And I said I can’t because I’m on a set. He said it’s fine; we’ll send a car to pick you up on set, and you’ll meet Martin. I’m like cool, but what am I meeting Martin for? He says, “Don’t worry; I’ll put the script in the car.”
It’s an hour and a half drive to where Martin is because they’re filming in the north of London, which is where their production offices are. So I get in the car, still wearing my other character’s outfit, which is meant to be an affluent podcaster from Upper East Side Manhattan. So, he’s completely different from Noah. I was wearing statement pieces. I started reading the script in the car on the way to meet Martin.
As I started reading the first few pages, I thought I had a pretty good idea of who this character would be. If it were going to go the way I thought it would go, I didn’t know if that was something I wanted to spend the next couple of months doing. As I started to read it and the major flip happened, I had to double-check to see if I’d read it right. What I thought of the character kept expanding, unraveling, and getting deeper and more complicated. I’d only just finished the script by the time I got to the production offices.
I met Martin, and I don’t think it was love at first sight [laughs.] Callum was so nervous when he saw me walk in. He couldn’t believe the ridiculousness of what I was wearing and what I looked like because he knows me as someone who doesn’t dress like that.
So he was trying to get me some clothes to change into something more acceptable. But it was too late because Martin walked in, and I was kind of screwing around in the offices because I didn’t know how this was going to turn out, so I was going to have fun. So I was making noise, running around with the stunt coordinator. We were not being professional.
Then Martin walks in and sees what I’m wearing, acting like I’m acting, not really knowing why I was there. When we had our first conversation about it, I guess I had the most articulate version of who I thought the character was from my perspective. I delineated exactly how I’d like to play him if I were to play him because I’d rather he disagrees with me early rather than late so we all understand exactly what we’re doing, and if we’re not the right fit, we can say goodbye early.
He left and came back and I’d eaten all the Naked bars in his office because I was so hungry. I was still chewing when he came back in, and he had me read another scene, and he stops me and said, “What’s this? What’s this?” about my chewing, “Stop that thing you’re doing with your face.” And I’m like, “Sorry man, I stole all your Naked bars; I’ll buy you some more; let me just get it out of my teeth, and we can do it again.” And he just cracked up and came and put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Well done, my boy.”
I looked him in the eye, and I suddenly realized that he liked me. And I said it aloud, ‘You didn’t think you were going to like me, but lowkey, you just realized you like me, Martin,’ he laughed again, and I hugged him and picked him up. He’s been the most wonderful, inspiring thing to happen in my life in a very long time, and I’m so blessed to have met him the way I did and to have done something as cool as I think it is.
But Why Tho: You know, I think more of us could do well to channel that type of confidence in a new stressful setting.
TAZ SKYLAR: There’s a book I love called I Hope I [mess] This Up. The whole concept of the book is to go into everything, hoping you mess it up, because it removes you from any semblance of pressure to do absolutely anything other than what you want to do.
But Why Tho: To move on to your character, Noah, clearly he’s the antagonist, but we can look around and understand how he got to this place. Is playing that role with that complexity part of the big draw — is it just fun to play the bad guy even if you understand his motive?
TAZ SKYLAR: I definitely think it’s the complexity side, which might be a cliche thing to say as an actor. I have no interest in doing something that I’m absolutely sure I can do. If it was just to relish in the fun of being a bad guy, I could do that by myself in my house in front of the mirror. Do you know what I mean?
I can go to a little improv class or group and do that for an evening, and that way, I don’t have to spend three months doing it. But I guess the only point to spending a large part of a year doing something that essentially takes up your whole life while you’re doing it is to learn something.
I really wanted to learn something not just from Martin and the context and the process with him. But I wanted to learn something from this character’s ideologies. Because when I read it, it struck me that while his actions were wild, what he was saying wasn’t completely…it had plenty of logic to it. And it felt very metaphorical or allegorical to my generation and the frustrations that my generation may have about the world and how unheard they feel. I definitely felt like I wanted to spend three months in that space trying to learn something from it.
I wanted to do my best to make him someone who maybe you don’t like but, at the very least, can see a semblance of a human behind.
But Why Tho: Speaking of going and learning new things, what was the training process like for this, and was it vastly different from something like One Piece? Is there carry-over, or do you just, at this point, have this baseline ability that you can bring into every role?
TAZ SKYLAR: One Piece and this are inherently different because the fighting style in One Piece really allows us to do stuff that’s so fantastical that it defies gravity that it’s much more about the showmanship and moves that require a lot of athleticism and almost a gymnastic element to it. Whereas Cleaner was a lot more grounded in just general physicality. No one was meant to be a martial arts master or superhero. So it was much more about whether I could realistically, within my stature and my ability, convincingly portray a dangerous physical presence.
So I did a lot of boxing training for it because I hadn’t boxed before — I’ve kickboxed and done taekwondo and jiu-jitsu, but I’ve never really focused on boxing. I definitely wanted that element to be something that I was good at. So, I trained before work, and I trained after work.
But honestly, at this point, I think I’ve gone through so much training, so just that muscle of being able to train when you don’t feel like it and being able to train when you’re tired and on top of the 16-hour days is a muscle I’ve already developed so the doing of it wasn’t the hard part for me because I kind of just have a button that I switch in my head where I go “Okay cool, you’re just not human for the next few months and you’re going to do this.”
Because doing the stunts is an important thing to me. The reason why I consider it important — and this is my spiel — is you spend, again, three, five, six, nine months painting a picture of each one of your characters. When you spend that long putting time and effort into something that you’ve painted, it feels very difficult to then hand the brush over to somebody else to paint the corners for you. If I’m going to put that much time into something, I want to, within my power and meritocratic ability to do it as well as anyone else, paint the entire picture.
That’s kind of the way I look at it and the way I justify wanting to do all the stunts. Because it’s not really a thrill-seeking thing for me. It’s not like I just want to do it because it’s fun. There’s a fun element to it, but there are moments of flux and improvisation that happen within physical performances. That you can do something that you never thought you could do before, and someone can catch it on camera, and it can become an iconic thing for your character.
Or not. But you’ll never know unless you’re the person doing it. Because only if you’re the person doing it can you be involved in that moment of flux and potentially do something that you would never have been able to think of prior.
All of this to say, my biggest obstacle was just working my absolute hardest to prove to the stunt team that I was willing, able, and skilled enough to do my stunts. Then showing up every single day with a readiness to do it and to accept the consequences of doing it if anything went wrong. And reminding them of it every time a stunt came up that they thought was too dangerous for me to do and being so annoying that they didn’t have much of a choice other than to let me do it [laughs.]
Cleaner, starring Daisy Ridley, Taz Skylar, and Clive Owen, arrives in theaters on February 21.
