Gunslingers Star Jeremy Kent Jackson on Downtime, Care Bears and More

Posted in: Exclusive, Interview, Lionsgate, Movies | Tagged: Gunslingers, Jeremy Kent Jackson, lionsgate

Jeremy Kent Jackson (Gunslingers) spoke to Bleeding Cool about cast bonding between scenes, a custom Care Bear for co-star and more.

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Jeremy Kent Jackson is a man of simple tastes and great challenges, whatever the roles call, celebrating over 25 years on the screen since his debut in The Straight Story (1999). He’s appeared on film, television, and games across several franchises like NBC’s ER, CBS’s CSI, and the WB’s Charmed. He’s also dabbled in video games, voicing characters in the Splinter Cell, Lost Planet, Killzone, Call of Duty, Red Dead Redemption, and Dynasty Warriors franchises. His latest is the Lionsgate Western, Gunslingers, which follows a wanted man who surfaces in a small Kentucky town and a bounty on his head as forces start closing in. As brothers face off against one another and bullets tear the town to shreds, this lightning-fast gunslinger (Stephen Dorff) makes his enemies pay the ultimate price for their greed. Jackson, who plays Robert Keller, spoke to Bleeding Cool about the writer-director Brian Skiba’s film, what he did in his downtime between scenes, his co-star Ava Monroe Tadross’ love for Care Bears, and his future.

Gunslingers Star Jeremy Kent Jackson on Family Dynamics on Set

Bleeding Cool: Did you get a chance to hang out with any of your cast members like Heather [Graham], Nicolas [Cage], or Cooper [Barnes]?

Absolutely! We hung out a lot. I was there for about a month, so I saw them all come and go throughout. We’d have breakfast together over at the Cracker Barrel, which was about the only restaurant in town. There was that and a Mexican restaurant, which was about it. We saw each other over there and played some late-night games at Hangman in the hotel’s conference room. Scarlet Stallone often led those games with the stunt guys, and Cooper was in there too, a lot of times. They threw a mid-shoot cast party about two to three weeks in, and everybody was there. We got to go out; it was very social.

Those social interactions help with the work you’re doing on screen, too, especially the time I spent with Heather. We spent a lot of time in the makeup room talking with little Ava Monroe, who was also an important part of the piece. We built a little family dynamic that was more functional than the one you see on screen—lots of time with these guys.

What was the most difficult scene for you to get through?

Well, speaking of Ava, there were a lot of challenging scenes in this script, but the ones that challenged me the most as a human being were the ones that involved her. It’s not because she’s a kid actor; you don’t know what she will do. It was nothing like that. She was a pro, but she was legit freaked out by my character, which worked for us, but I am not interested in being a part of her therapy later in life. It became an early mission of mine to build some trust with that young person because she needed to know we were play-acting just like she does with her Care Bears in the backyard, and I was a character just goofing around.

I purchased a bunch of Care Bears for her. I went to the props guy and was like, “Hey, can you help me fashion an eye patch for one of these Care Bears? I want to have a Care Bear version of myself and help this kid understand. She was very young, help her understand that.” I’d hope she understood that none of the things I’m saying when that camera rolls are real, and we’re goofing around and having the best backyard game we could ever have. Those were tough early because she was legit freaked out. She had good instincts, but she was freaked out.

Is there a genre you haven’t had the opportunity to do, or maybe something that you haven’t had enough opportunity to do, that you want to do more of?

Wow! That’s a great question, man. A lot of people ask questions like, “What do you want to do next?” I’d be honest with you. It has less to do with the genre, I mean, I guess I’d love to try sci-fi or something like that, which would be super cool. The worlds you expand into, scenery, costumes, like ‘Star Wars’ or something. That would be awesome or ‘Star Trek.’ I’m an actor who loves my craft, and it’s all about the character, relationships, and love in the scene. It’s about fighting for something. So give me a beast on the other side of the camera. Give me a great script or character I can feel for and fight for, and that’s the next project I want to do for sure.

Gunslingers, which also stars Randall Batinkoff, Tzi Ma, Costas Mandylor, William McNamara, Mohamed Karim, Bre Blair, Forrest Wilder, Forrie J. Smith, Laurie Love, Eric Mabius, and Mitchell Hoog, is in theaters, on-demand, and digital.

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