After several long delays and an acquisition by Disney, New Mutants, featuring Charlie Heaton as Sam Guthrie, AKA Cannonball, is finally headed to theaters. As one of the core characters on the New Mutants, Cannonball hasn’t made it into live-action before, and Heaton gets to portray the character as he’s still learning to master his powers.
Unfortunately, since the X-Men are expected to be rebooted to become a part of the rest of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, this could be Heaton’s only turn as the character, and possibly the only time we’ll even see Cannonball and we won’t see his intended impact on the future of the X-Men franchise.
Back during the film’s production in August 2017, Screen Rant visited the New Mutants set and sat down with Heaton to talk about his role in the film.
I want to start actually by asking about the accident? Are you going full-blown country Sam Guthrie?
Yeah, pretty much. Kentucky.
What’s the process?
Well, I started with just a couple dialect sessions, but mainly I did a lot of - so like I’m doing now, I use the accent in the day when I’m filming, but I got a lot of these, uh, like voice samples of a lot of police officers from the state - I listen to the radio in Kentucky you can get online and tune in. A lot of police officers talked about a lot of different stuff and I just listen. Use my ears, and then just, you know, work at it, I guess.
So it helps you to keep the Accent going throughout the day?
Yeah, in the day, I feel like the more you use it the more you used to it with your mouth, you know, everything just kind of comes flowing and talking like that and the behavior pattern of how someone would talk and then on the weekend I go back to myself.
How much of your character is rooted in the comics and how much of it has come from your conversations with Josh?
I would say a lot of it, you know, there’s two difference uh, you know, when you’re looking at it you have the script and you have the comics, and it’s good to read them and I did read the Bill Sienkiewicz comics, and it’s good to read, but it’s a totally different platform and you go back to the movie and you’re trying to look at it and bring these characters to life and you look at a comic and it’s a 2d oh, you don’t get too much of that. I mean, obviously there’s a history and backstory there, but you kind of have to bring it to life as much as you can yourself, so that comes from the material from the script and then conversations with Josh, and Josh has been really cool, I mean he said to all five of us “you know, these are all your characters and we want you to bring your version of these characters to it,” like he’s been very free to allow us to do what we want to do with his characters and then guided us. But yeah, I mean it’s interesting because you obviously look through the comic and you get a lot of fans who want something specific about these characters, but you have to kind of take that away because you’re doing, you know, two different art forms in pieces, if that makes sense.
Did Josh [Boone] encourage or discourage you from going and looking at the original
Oh, no, he wanted us to look at it. There was a- I wouldn’t say either. When we started to give us a collection of comics to look at and it was good to look at kind of but you can’t get too much information from there. If you read the comics it’s like they’re always talking about their thoughts, like “oh, now I’ve got to do this to do this,” and it’s like, well that doesn’t translate when you’re trying to make it real and layered. I think what is interesting about this movie is you have the five characters and they’re in this facility for, like, they’re mutants who have all had a past and they’re all kind of damaged and they’re all here because either they can’t belong in the real world, they can’t control quite what they have, I mean they all have demons, so to speak, so I don’t know. They’re all very interesting characters, I feel like they all relate very well to each other, but they’re also very much - they’re all very different personalities who have to live in this place together. But it felt very- when I was reading it as a character - it felt very real layered and real and I think it’s smart that the X-Men they’re not the superheroes. They’re people with mutation and they’re Outsiders, you know, and that feels very real. If you take away the superhero and the power ability it’s like they’re all ashamed, or they’re all things that relate to very much to real-life If that makes sense.
How is your power set similar or different to Cannonball in the comic
Well, in this movie it’s fun because right now where Sam is, he definitely- if you see me I have a cast on my arm, I have a lot of bruises. He hasn’t quite worked out how to do this yet. He can take off very well. He just can’t land.
You’re not nigh-invulnerable while blasting?
Not yet. [laughs] But he’s trying. They all have different opinions on how they feel about being in this facility and Sam himself very much feels like he belongs here he wants to be here, but he also wants to get better through the course of the movie we see him kind of take on this kind of responsibility to own up to what he is, like I feel there’s a lot of resentment about this power and a lot of his past and he doesn’t you know he’s almost afraid of it, but he wants to be able to control it because he realizes, you know, that well he just wants to be able to get better and control it for his safety, and for other people, and I think he learns that over the course of the movie that he can use this to do, you know to do good things
What kind of training did you have to go through the prep?
Yeah, we did 3-week rehearsal period. Where - we have a fantastic team, stunt team, going to do some of the stuff tonight which you’ll get to see, I think if you’re watching - and so we did physical training, you know, fitness and condition. It was nice. You know, it’s not like, I’m not playing superhero, so I didn’t need to jack up or get huge, but they wanted was to get fit and have strength, I worked on my balance because I’m doing some wire stuff, and then we just worked with the stunt team they got us together and started wire training but little bit of, like, just falling, learning how to fall [laughs].
Has the wirework been here on location?
Yeah, here, they did some last night. Yeah, they did a big stunt last night, but they’re trying to keep it as - which also nice as you’re trying to do as much practical effects as possible - it very much feels much like a drama. what you are going to see of the effects is very limited. It’s there, it’s used, but hopefully it’ll be used in a very tasteful - because it feels They’re real, it’s like you’re going to have to match that with effects, you don’t want to all the sudden become something else.
Most superheroes focus on men. This movie doesn’t seem to do that. How do view yourself as an actor and a character in an ensemble that focuses more on the female characters?
Yeah, we have some great powerful female roles, which I think is happening a lot, right now, we just saw Wonder Woman recently and it’s great. You know, it’s just a different dynamic, but this is like, you know, it’s nice that in this movie I would say there is no leader, you know, it is an ensemble. Yeah, it’s cool.
Who would you say Sam is closer to?
In the beginning, he’s very much, I mean, he gets Roberto. I think that’s a friendship that comes together, I don’t feel like they’re likely in the real world I don’t think that they’d be like the most obvious pair, they’re both very different. Roberto’s very rich and somewhat vain and maybe a little bit self-conscious, I guess. Sam is a little bit quiet from a lower-class family with different morals, but then they come together it’s like an unlikely pairing of friends. They both basically, deep down they both have similar problems, but handle them differently, but I think through each other they learned that help each other and I think they’re that unlikely pairing of friends, which is the same in the comics, they’re good friends in the comics. But we don’t see that to begin with, and you know, yeah. They have that.
You said they gave you a set of comics once you came on, which set was that?
It was the demon bear, Bill Sienkiewicz Edition. Yeah, he’s here today. They gave us those comics. Yeah, he might be helping us do some stuff, which is nice. Maybe, who knows.
I feel like, not to bring up stranger things, but I feel like the sense that since that’s come out there’s been a lot of TV shows and movies that are trying to tap into that, like 80s horror nostalgia and I mean audiences will draw from your past roles oh, and how do you feel this movie is sort of standing on its own against what we’ve seen from the superhero genre or what we’ve seen of the horror genre
Yeah, that’s a good question. It’s funny because I think this was originally supposed to be set in the 80s when they were writing, it was set in the 80s, it wasn’t set in modern-day. Yeah, I mean that show really I was proud to work on, it’s a phenomenal show and I feel like people have really taken to what they did going back to something that overall they’re familiar with that is nostalgic and it’s changed, well I don’t know how much it’s changed, but I’ve noticed people of going back and try to do that grounded and more stripped-down, maybe? That kind of thing. What did you mean by the question?
Just sort of like, because Stranger Things kind of drew from that sort of like 80s horror like Stephen King kind of I feel like a lot of creators are trying to do that.
Yeah, I mean it’s, you know, classic work, you know Stephen King. how do I answer that? Yeah, I mean horror always seems to do well, people that are attracted to it, like you can go see a horror movie and it’s amazing what it can do to you. And I think oh, I don’t know. I get what you’re saying, I just don’t really know what to say back to you [laughs]. I’m not quite sure, I don’t know. I get the question, I just don’t know.
Are the kids all close to the same age in the comics or are they aged up a year or two?
I mean we’re older, but how old are they in the comics? It depends on when you’re reading it because they get older, right? They’re 17-18 in the comics at that point, right?
I think they’re 15 or 16.
Oh, they’re 15? Okay, okay. We’re a little older. I think we’re playing 17, 16 or 17. Danny is 16, Some of us are 17, maybe a year or so older than the comics if they’re 15 in the comics. Didn’t know how old they were.
How long has Sam been at the hospital?
How long has he been here? I think they’ve all been here different lengths. I would say probably the six or 7-month mark. That’s just an estimate, but I feel where he is in his recovery it feels like he’s not the newest of the group, but I don’t think he’s the first there either.
What’s his relationship with Dr. Reyes?
Good. I mean, she’s trying to help him, and, yeah. I think he takes it, you know, he has his own way of dealing with his past and he’s trying to get better through the system, but he also has to get over, it’s like, you know, you got to help yourself to really help, you know, kind of go through it on his own, you know, got to get your demons out kind of thing. I keep saying demons [laughs].
Next: New Mutants Director Thinks Fox Learned Wrong Lessons From X-Men: Apocalypse Failure
- New Mutants Release Date: 2020-08-28
