It’s been a while since we chatted with action star Scott Adkins; so today I spoke to him about his latest movie Diablo, also starring Marko Zaror.
Hey Scott, how are you doing?
I’m good mate, you?
All good yeah; long time no speak. Today we’re going to be talking about your new movie Diablo which I agree with you, I think it’s one of your best films. Where did the whole idea for Diablo come from initially?
We were hanging out together on John Wick 4 and we came up with the story and then got Ernesto, the director involved, who’s always worked with Marko in Chile. Originally, we were thinking we were going to film it in Chile and I knew Matt Sansom, the writer, so we had a few Zoom conversations, the four of us, and then Matt took it away and crafted the screenplay and took it further than we could. He did a great job and then we were able to take that screenplay to my manager Craig Baumgarten who’s also a producer and we’ve found that we could do it most cost-effectively in Colombia and so that’s where we went.
What’s it like to shoot there?
Yeah well, it’s all the same stuff; we had a great stunt team, these guys here *points to hat*, Legionnaire Stunts, they were phenomenal, they wanted to work with me and Marco and do more fight-based stuff and we had some great producers over there, Alvaro and Jason, Clay Epstein and Craig Baumgarten from the US side and we had a lot of support. We didn’t have a lot of time or money, we never do, but we did have a good support team behind us which really helped.
You mentioned working with Ernesto, how was he to work with?
He was brilliant, one of the best director-actor collaborations I’ve ever had; he’s a real fan of the genre, he knows cinema. He had very good notes as a director for the actors which a lot of the times you don’t get on these action movies; they’re more visual people, that certainly wasn’t the case with him and it was a really rewarding experience and I can’t wait to work with him again. I’m definitely going to work with him again; he’s a brilliant director and he should be working non-stop because he’s very talented.
Yeah, absolutely, I agree. There’s more to this than just the action particularly your relationship with Alanna who plays Elisa and I won’t spoil what happens in the story, but how did you work with her particularly to create the dynamic between the two characters?
Well, we were a bit worried because we knew that if we didn’t get a good girl for that role that the whole thing hinges on her being a good performer and we didn’t know where we were going to be. So, when it’s Columbia it’s like okay, now we’ve got to find the girl, that’s the most important part and she was presented to us by the Colombian producers like “this is the girl you want”, we’re like “okay”, and then we see the audition and we’re like “okay, I get you”. She’s a phenomenal actress, she’s extremely talented and played the part brilliantly and brought a lot more depth and characterization to it than we even imagined. It was an absolute pleasure to work with her every day and she’s great, lovely girl and brilliant actress and she is the heart of the movie.
Now you’ve obviously worked with Marko a whole bunch of times; you must have a shorthand by now; can you talk about working with him and creating some of the visceral fight scenes we have in this film?
Marko’s got this energy drink called Guarana and he would just feed me full of it and I’d be like “Whoooa, come on, let’s go!!”, so I recommend getting hold of some of that Guarana (laughs), but we’re such good mates and we’ve worked together so many times. He’s one of the best in the business, I’m no slouch; we’re able to go 100% at each other, bringing everything we had like full force and we know we’re going to be there and not forget the choreography, not make any mistakes and so you’ll see that will translate off the screen. You see that it’s two highly trained professionals going hard, that sounded wrong but you know what I’m saying (laughs).
I know what you mean (laughs).
It might make you go hard seeing these highly trained professionals going hard (laughs).
That final showdown in the factory, how was putting that together in terms of logistics and making sure the whole area was safe?
I don’t know if we bothered (laughs), just got in there and started filming. Yeah, the stunt guys were concerned about when we were high up, we had some wires attached for us and things like that but I was like, “forget it, we’ll be fine, if the floor starts giving way, I’ll just jump onto the other side of the building, let’s just get the shots, time’s coming down”, so I’m a bit like that but I’m a menace, so luckily they didn’t listen to me but yeah, it was a little bit precarious but it looks great.
It did, yeah, it’s a great location for a finale, it just worked really well. Would you ever be interested in directing yourself?
Yeah, I’ve got something that I’m looking to do and we’ll see if it happens, probably sooner rather than later, so just watch this space.
Okay, yeah, that’ll be cool, finally, what would you like audiences to take from Diablo?
I just want the audience to be entertained, like it’s an old-school action/martial arts flick with a compelling story and strong characters and hopefully you’re going to enjoy, get thrilled by the action sequences and maybe we’ll pull on a few heartstrings. I think without the action the story works; it’s got it all but I just want people to switch their brains off and just be entertained and enjoy a good old-school action movie that seems like it’s come from the 90s.
Well, all the best, I hope it’s a big hit for you and chat to you again soon.
All right, thank you, Eoin. Good to see you again.
DIABLO will be released In Theaters, On Digital and On Demand on June 13th, 2025.