Go Behind The Scenes With The Cast Of ‘Run Hide Fight: Infidels’
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Freedom Is Back In Style
The ensemble cast of The Daily Wire exclusive “Run Hide Fight: Infidels” dishes on everything that happened during filming in Gaffney, South Carolina. Hear all about working with Marvel star Jonathan Majors, the takeout order that paired best with the Academy Awards, the trick to crafting believable on-screen romance and “tipsy” scenes (hey, it’s college after all), and which real-life friendships just might last forever. Light spoilers ahead.
Freedom Is Back
In Style
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JC Kilcoyne as Devlin
At 19, JC’s the youngest of the gang and just starting out in his career. “I felt like a better actor when I filmed scenes with him,” JC says of Jonathan Majors, with whom he shares some of his character’s most pivotal moments. “He brings a presence to it. You’re gonna bring your best.”
His character’s on a track scholarship and doesn’t miss leg day, but lifelong boxer JC reveals in his on-camera workout, “They’re fake weights.” Castmate Chris Lee jokingly recalls, “The first day we met, I told [JC], ‘Hey, you wanna go for a run because your character goes on a run?’ He’s like, ‘Nah, I’m good.’”
JC describes crafting his character’s relationship with his late father. “I’m very fortunate. I have a great father and mother.” But for the story, he imagined the worst. “What if I didn’t have my father? What if my dad wasn’t nice, what if he wasn’t good, or he was gone?” Still, it’s his character Devlin’s crush on Lizzy that gets him across the finish line.
With an on-set armorer’s guidance, JC rehearsed prop gun choreography before writer and director Kyle Rankin called action. “That was fun,” JC says, noting the explosions and muzzle flashes that set the scene. The real smoke even gave him headaches. “Everything sounds the same, feels the same, so you really get that true feeling of getting shot at.”
Proving how strong the ensemble bond really was, when JC and his girlfriend asked if anyone wanted to tag along on a backpacking trip through Europe, several cast members jumped at the chance to meet up in Portugal.
Currently reading:
“I’m reading ‘The Creative Act’ by Rick Rubin.”
What I think about most:
“I think about what I’m going to eat.”
James Bingham as PJ
The last thing you’d expect after seeing the movie is James’ native Australian accent — because his Southern drawl is flawless. “You grow up listening to American TV in Australia,” he says. The cast is still shocked at how James stayed in character, only revealing his natural dialect on day three of filming.
He gives nothing away when he describes his character like this: “I guess I have a cigar in the movie.” Playing a video-gaming military vet with a brusque personality, he says, “I’m the furthest to be from PJ, like the complete opposite.”
James also transformed his appearance, putting on “five kilos” (roughly 11 pounds) to add a comedic “pudge” to his character. His direction from Rankin was: “Eat whatever you want.” While castmate Savanna Leigh James was grabbing fruit and veg from craft services, James went in a different direction.
“That’s why you were feeding us all Moon Pies!” she says.
James laughs, “It was pretty fun.”
As for working with a prop assault rifle that seemed indistinguishable from the real thing, James admits, “It was a little overwhelming.” The cast wore earplugs on set to manage the noise. He also jokes about his character’s on-screen kiss with Avery, “It was a very interesting experience, kissing someone in front of, like, a hundred old men. We’re lucky that we get along so well. I don’t know if I’d recommend it to people.” Savanna adds with a laugh, “‘Kiss your brother’ is kind of what it feels like. Make it look good.”
Tyler Aser as Lizzy
Playing the daughter of a billionaire tech mogul and reporting that she gets “my hair pulled and tossed around a lot,” Tyler has experience with entertainment. She dipped a toe into the biz at the ripe old age of four. “My mom is a real estate agent, so she stole my brother and I basically and threw us into a commercial for RE/MAX Plus,” Tyler laughs. She’s been working ever since. “I always just loved being in front of the camera. A phone came out, a camera came out, hand was on hip — I was posing.”
Of the cast, Tyler may be most like her character Lizzy. “Lizzy’s an extremely independent girl and extremely focused on herself and her education, and not giving the time of day to Devlin over here.” In real life, Tyler’s a school counseling major, but she deferred from her master’s degree for filming. It checks out that she’s balancing two wildly different careers at once.
About the terrorist hostage plot line, Tyler says she thought about what she would do in real life. “You get really into it,” she says. “You put yourself into the realest possible position, so you’re really feeling it in a lot of moments.” Speaking of real moments, her character’s kiss with Devlin, which happened on the last day of filming, wasn’t scripted. “We were so comfortable with each other, and we had already become such close friends that there was nothing weird about it.” Are on-screen kisses romantic? “No,” she and JC confirm, as everyone laughs.
Savanna Leigh James as Avery
Savanna’s got a lot of modeling under her belt, but this is her feature film debut. “I never thought I would want to do action, and I would do action for every film now,” she says.
She describes how the cast got together to improv their first scene before they ever stepped onto set. The connection was immediate. “We all wanted to bond so it read well, but then we ended up really liking each other.” Having never attended college, Savanna reveled in the camaraderie. “I was having so much fun being with them. It felt like something I hadn’t experienced in a long time — since high school. It was nice to get to relive that and have memories with them.”
Cast as a journalist, Savanna researched her role by taking pointers from the pros. “I wanted to feel what it’s like being somewhere else or seeing both sides of the story,” she says. “A girl from my town actually went to be a journalist and then got captured by ISIS. She never got to come home.”
One particularly brutal scene revolving around women’s modesty in the Muslim religion required six days to film. “Girls don’t want to be told to cover up, and they want to express themselves,” Savanna notes. “To see in other countries that they have to be completely covered their whole life, it’s really sad. It’s such a polarizing thought to think that that’s some people’s reality.”
Paulina Alvarez as Maya
Having formed a movie family of their own (they’re all on a text thread named “Knuckleheads”), the cast is thrilled that Paulina has recently gotten married in real life. But on camera, she “develops a little friendship — possibly love story — with Kwan.” That is, when her character isn’t fighting for her life.
“I just knew it was going to be a really intense movie,” she says. “We were all just in fight-or-flight for two months because every scene was so intense.” Everyone’s reflex to flinch at the sound of gunfire led to an immediate bond among castmates that “doesn’t just break the second you leave set.” That’s not even counting the tornado warning that shut down several hours of filming, requiring everyone to huddle inside the college auditorium. She says with fondness, “We have been crying for two months straight. I don’t have tears left to cry.”
The first scene the cast shot together was a dorm room hang where Maya was three sheets to the wind. Paulina was completely sober for the moment, but happy to sell the bit with improv. She remembers Jonathan Majors complimenting her work, telling her, “You look drunk. Good job. I bought it.”
Most basic thing I love to do:
“Couch rot and watch ‘The Real Housewives.’ Some guilty-pleasure reality TV never hurt anybody.”
My spirit animal:
“My spirit animal was my sweet dog Peluchita who passed away last year. She was a ratty little Mexican street dog I rescued and gave her a glow up. She was a sassy little b*tch who took no prisoners. She was the best.”
Charlotte Delaney Riggs as Farrah
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“Fun fact: I’m a bio major with a business minor,” Charlotte says. She’s been acting since she was five years old. And she describes her character’s bright blue hair — which she actually dyed because she always wanted to try it — as being “really hard to miss.”
Charlotte leveraged smaller protests at her college to do some recon for her role as the current protest’s fearless leader, Farrah. “There’s not a soft scene with her,” she remembers. “She’s super intense all the time. Part of the intensity though is she really believes what she’s fighting for. You have to, if you’re gonna be the leader of something.”
Next, Charlotte plans to swap out the drama for an upcoming comedy, confirming, “I’m ready to be funny after all that seriousness.”
Chris Lee as Kwan
Chris essentially made his acting debut and farewell tour all in one shot, playing Kwan, who’s got a thing for brewing bootleg booze in his dorm room. And he’d also like to remind you, “I have, like, a little patchy mustache in the movie.”
In one of the more slow-simmering relationships of the story, his character develops a crush on Maya, played by Paulina, who had just gotten engaged in real life. “I remember holding myself back a little bit out of respect, even as the actor,” Chris laughs. All of the cast members recall not wanting to upset their boyfriends, girlfriends, or husbands. It’s make-believe, but the humans are real.
Chris’ character also engages in a gruesome fight with terrorist leader Ibrahim Asad Melod (played by Stephen Hailo). A little movie magic involved a prosthetic wound that “took forever to get on and forever to get off. But it’s just part of the business.” Initially hesitating to tangle with another actor, even with a stunt coordinator, Chris said of Stephen, “He was really gracious. He was like, ‘Just move me around like you would actually do.’” For the record, the whole cast agrees that Stephen Hailo is the funniest, sweetest person around and also “so good at playing evil.”
Most recent photo on my phone:
“A photo of a tiny keychain-sized Tabasco sauce bottle I got from room service.”
I’m really looking forward to:
“Becoming a real adult now that I’m 26 and off of my mom’s insurance.”
* * *
Along with hiking, catching a Hornets game, and hitting the gym, the cast watched the Oscars together. “That was one of my favorite nights,” Paulina remembers. After finding out that the nearest restaurant was a Cracker Barrel, her husband gave her a gift card. “I was like, ‘No! I don’t want any more Cracker Barrel,’” she laughs. “I was like, ‘Guys, dinner’s on me,’ and we went to Cracker Barrel and just got a bunch of food and watched the Oscars. We’re like, ‘Guys, one day, one of us will be here.’” They took a group photo to mark the moment. When that day comes, they’ll have to order Cracker Barrel to bring back the nostalgia of their time together on set.
As far as the biggest takeaways from the film, Savanna suggests, “Stand up for the people you love.” Paulina invites audiences to dig deep to find their own courage in life, explaining, “There are a bunch of characters that are put in situations that their personalities are not conducive to, and they had to find the courage to survive. I think that can translate to a bunch of different scenarios in life.” And Chris — through Kwan — encourages everyone to “be yourself, find your voice, and just have fun.”
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I am just an average American. My teen years were in the late 70s and I participated in all that that decade offered. Started working young, too young. Then I joined the Army before I graduated High School. I spent 25 years in, mostly in Infantry units. Since then I've worked in information technology positions all at small family owned companies. At this rate I'll never be a tech millionaire. When I was young I rode horses as much as I could. I do believe I should have been a cowboy. I'm getting in the saddle again by taking riding lessons and see where it goes.
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