INTERVIEW – Logan Marshall-Green On Finding Out What ‘Prometheus’ Actually Was, Making A Movie In The Amazon, Ridley Scott Pranks

Ridley Scott built the Alien universe, so apparently he figures he’s earned the right to haunt it. On the set of Prometheus, the director pulled Logan Marshall-Green aside to watch a “demonstration” involving a helmeted corpse. It was the same kind of surprise he’d sprung on John Hurt decades earlier.

According to Marshall-Green, nobody was warned what was coming. Then something burst out of the helmet’s broken faceplate, and the expected reactions followed. Every one of them was real, and the cameras were rolling.

Marshals star Logan Marshall-Green joined BroBible’s Post Credit Podcast to discuss Ridley Scott, Prometheus, and his new film Beware Boiúna

Marshall-Green, who played the doomed Holloway, has since gone from one hostile environment to another. His new film, Beware Boiúna, sent him up the Amazon to shoot a creature movie in a jungle that didn’t want the crew there.

We sat down with him to talk about that shoot, how he found out Prometheus was an Alien prequel, the day Scott made his cast jump, and more.

Shooting Beware Boiúna deep in the Amazon

ERIC ITALIANO, BROBIBLE: You usually find yourself talking to actors about either the performance or the production, and this feels like a very production-forward film. Walk me through a day on the river and in the jungle: the sweat, the bugs, all of it.

LOGAN MARSHALL-GREEN: “The morning starts beautiful, and then it all comes crumbling down. You start in Colombia, get in a car, and drive into Brazil, because we were shooting in Leticia on the Amazon. Leticia is where Peru, Brazil, and Colombia all meet in this triangle. So you drive out of Colombia into Brazil, get onto a dock, and wait for a boat. There could be crew there, cast there, but they’re unloading the jungle off the boats right next to you. You’re seeing the economy of the river and how important it is to the culture.

“You go through different communities, because the people of Leticia, Colombia, are different from the people of Brazil. One is non-pagan, one is pagan. Even Halloween is different. In Brazil it just stops, but in Leticia it’s a wild, beautiful tradition. After they’ve unloaded the bananas or whatever, you head upriver into the Peruvian Amazon. It’s about a half-hour boat ride where you’re just cleansed by the river, and you drop very easily into character. At least I do, as a white man playing a white man in a jungle he has no business being in. I certainly had the same feeling.

“Then you’re flying up this river, navigating all these other boats, and you actually come back into Colombia, to a dock that’s about 50 yards up a bank. That 50 yards, as we shot, became 40, 30, 20, because the river would rise in the rainy season. When you get there, you’re immediately dirty and sweaty, and there’s very little makeup needed.

“Then you get up into the jungle. Getting up the plank from the dock is an adventure on its own. People fell off that plank and hurt themselves. It takes a good hour to get from your beautiful little hotel to the set. And once you’re in the jungle, it all changes.

“You really have to lock in, because there’s a reverence. There’s a beautiful respect for that jungle and for the tribes that allowed us to shoot in locations that haven’t been shot in before. I love that. I love locking in, throwing the phones away. No phones work there anyway. You get to business.

“You have your little row of white tents, and there are massive bugs in those tents. You want out of them immediately. And you’re sweating through everything. Sweat was the most prominent thing on my mind. Sorry for the long-winded answer, but that’s the day.”

Making a Movie About a Mythic Creature Where People Believe in It

I’m from Jersey, where we have the Jersey Devil. If a film crew came down to the Pine Barrens to make a movie about it, I’d say you’re pushing your luck. What was it like making a film about a mythic creature in a community that believes in it? Did you get any side-eyed looks?

“The production went to the jungle to ask permission to shoot there. We weren’t allowed in just because we spent a bunch of money. Mike and Nick and the producers sat down with the tribal elders and told them about the film. They had to get permission, because we’re calling down this myth. But it’s not really a myth. There was a real thing called a Titanoboa in prehistoric times, and one of the producers really wanted to tell this story because they’d found the fossils of this massive snake. It’s extinct now, so I suppose it’s a myth now, but historically it isn’t necessarily one.

“It’s not fake. Maybe the size is blown up a bit, but it was a very real thing to walk through a jungle where the jungle is staring at you. It isn’t just the crew or the locals staring. The jungle is staring at you. You have an audience, and a lot of scrutiny right away. You’re not supposed to be there. We’re not supposed to be shooting a film in there, which is what the film is about. So it’s very easy for everyone, energetically, to get into the idea of leave no trace and respect this jungle.

“There was one day I was running through the jungle. It’s the end of the day, and I run and run and run, and at the end I have to fall down in the scene. I’m just lying there looking up into this canopy, in awe, seeing monkeys and birds and beautiful trees. Then suddenly two guys grab me and say, ‘You have to get off the jungle floor.’ I said, ‘Can I catch my breath?’ I knew it was dangerous, but they were like, ‘You do not lie on the jungle floor.’

“One of them could tell I was pushing back a little, like, ‘Well, it’s my job to lie on this floor right now.’ But they had a very good point. When they lifted up a big piece of the debris, the leaves, everything patted down, it was a superhighway of dangerous bugs just under our feet.”

“And there’s a reason it’s all there. In a month or two the water would be over our heads where we were standing. It becomes an aquatic ecosystem within months. They show you the watermark on the trees, and you understand that this entire set will be underwater. That’s why I say that every time we got there, that dock was shorter, because the rains kept coming and we had flash floods. It was a very humbling experience, and I yearn for that kind of experience in filmmaking. But then week six comes around, and you’re like, ‘Get me out of here.'”

What did you take from it, in your work or in your life?

“I’d never been to South America before this film, and I’d certainly never been to Leticia. I was completely humbled by the Leticians and their culture. Their beautiful families. You can’t get cars there. Mostly everybody’s on bikes. Nobody’s on a phone. I didn’t even want to touch my phone while I was there, because nobody’s on a phone. Everybody’s living the way I remember, because it’s hard now to even go back to the ’80s. I’m a Gen X kid. We were just outside without phones. To see that still existing with so much happiness everywhere, but also so reliant on this river that we were taking advantage of to shoot this film, was an incredibly humbling experience. That’s what I took from it most.”

How He Found Out Prometheus Was an Alien Prequel

Prometheus is one of my favorite films of all time. It’s weirdly a comfort film for me now — I’ll throw it on to chill. Do you remember your reaction the first time the script was put in front of you? Did you know it was an Alien prequel, or was it shrouded in secrecy?

“First off, let me preface everything by saying I’m a massive sci-fi guy, especially Alien. I was doing an off-off-off-off Broadway play, and the casting director, Ada Kaufman, asked me to come read for Ridley Scott, straight to Ridley Scott. I didn’t have the script. I had sides that I knew were science fiction, so I knew Ridley Scott was making a science fiction film for the first time since Alien. That was important to me. But I didn’t read the script until I met him.

“I did the audition, and then they said, ‘Ridley wants you to do this.’ I was like, ‘Me?’ And I said, ‘What is it? I have to read the script. I’m not going to sign it willy-nilly.’ So Ada said, ‘You have to come read it in my office. It’s incredibly hush-hush.’ I sat in her Tribeca office reading a script called Prometheus. And then at page 40, I see the word ‘xenomorph.’

“I will always remember looking out over the Hudson and saying, ‘This is a prequel to Alien.’ It was my character seeing this mural of the xenomorph. Well, I went right out and told the AD, ‘I’m doing this film.’ Maybe just finish reading the script, though. ‘I’m doing the film.’ That’s how I found out it was Alien.”

The Moment on Set That Blew His Mind

Do you recall a particular moment on set that blew your mind? Advice from Ridley, the scale of the production, anything?

“Walking onto that set at Pinewood, to that scene where he walks up to the xenomorph mural. That was pretty profound for me, because it’s one of the biggest sets in Pinewood, and it was extended to make it even larger, with the massive head and all the eggs. Well, they weren’t eggs. They were like coffers.”

I like how you’re holding tight to the lore 15 years later.

“Come on, man. I even throw an Easter egg in that scene. I repeat, ‘We are leaving,’ from Aliens.”

You put that in there yourself?

“Yeah, that wasn’t written. I just did it. I didn’t know how Ridley would feel about it, but that’s totally Hicks’s line.”

It never clicked for me. I always heard that line stick out, but I never processed why. Now I get it.

“And then the other moment was when Ridley called me and Idris over. Idris and Rafe were walking up to the body, to the helmet. He said, ‘Come here, come, come.’ He pulled us over, and he’s like, ‘I did this on Alien.’ I’m like, ‘I already know what he’s about to say,’ because I already know about the whole John Hurt thing, how he didn’t tell anyone about what was about to happen in his chest.

“So he’s like, ‘Watch this. Watch this.’ And he didn’t tell Idris or Rafe or me. I can’t remember if Kate was in there too. Those are all real reactions when the thing jumps out of the mask, out of that broken faceplate. We were all just watching him. Idris and I were pulled over to experience this moment that was being reenacted, essentially, by him from Alien. It was surreal. F—— surreal.”

The pro in me should be moving on to The Odyssey, but the fan in me is staying right here.

“Yeah, stay here, bro.”

Holloway, David, and the Ego of Looking for God

Without giving away anything that wasn’t meant to be given away, I’m curious about your perspective. Did Ridley ever tell you why David chose your character? Did that inform the way you performed?

“No, he never spoke to me about Fassbender’s or David’s intentions toward my character. We spoke a lot about my character’s feelings toward him, which is that he’s a robot racist. And by the way, he’s looking real smart right now. But to be chosen as the grandfather of the xenomorph, I had no problem with that whatsoever. That was never really talked about.

“I didn’t want to know. At the pool table, when I take the drink and tap the finger, I just wanted to play my intention, which is: fuck this robot, fuck this AI. The lack of specificity is what makes it so unnerving. You wouldn’t think about which ant you’re going to experiment on, right? You’d just pick one out of the box and do it. That’s what I found so chilling.”

“I also think you see a guy whose background is extreme sports. He’s a scientist, a doctor, but he loves extreme sports. So he’s the guy who takes his helmet off in a world where he has no idea what will happen.”

He’s a true believer.

“Absolutely.”

Holloway makes this enormous discovery he’s been chasing his whole life, and he still seems let down. What answer did you decide he needed on that journey that he didn’t get?

“I think it’s the height of ego and human folly. He didn’t just want to find out who our makers were. He wanted to step on a stage with them, and that’s ego-driven. I think a lot of white men in power, especially today, are driven by this. They do it because they can. But it’s also almost like they’re afraid of being forgotten. They need to live on a stage where they’ll never be forgotten.

“I was listening to somebody speak yesterday about how ridiculous it is that we think we’re going to go out into the cosmos. I love the idea of sending satellites out there. But we have everything we need right here on Earth. It’s so mind-blowingly egotistical and egocentric to think we could get onto another planet instead of focusing on what’s here on this one. It’s so wild to me. I think that’s a large part of Holloway’s flaw.”

Did He Know Where Ridley Was Taking the Franchise?

Ridley has been saying for a while that he’s kicking around a third one. Did you guys have any idea where the story was going at the time? Were you privy to the events of Covenant and beyond?

“No, I wasn’t. I think he spoke of some kind of picture deal, but I didn’t understand where it was going, because it didn’t involve me. I wasn’t going to be a part of it, and they were still just making this one. It was a huge endeavor for him, and he had a lot of pressure on him, because he built the damn universe. And in many ways, he’d spent so long away from that story. He’s not just building off his own story. He’s building off James Cameron’s and Fincher’s, that whole explosion of universe that came out of his beautiful mind.

“But I had no idea where it would go. I was just happy to be there, playing with a great group. We were a family. We all hung out outside of work on weekends and made dinners. Ridley was there, the department heads were there, all the actors were there. We had a blast shooting that thing. I’ve said it before: I had to really deal with my own imposter syndrome on it, just because of my love of that world, and also because of the actors I got to work with.”

Marshall-Green’s new film Beware Boiúna, an Amazon rainforest-set horror film, is now playing in theaters. Directed by Silent Night, Deadly Night filmmaker Mike P. Nelson, Beware Boiúna also stars Kiana Madeira, Jessica Rothe, Jackson Bews, Juan Pablo Shuk, and Will Close. You can check out the official trailer for the film below.