*Disney/Marvel provided us an all expense paid trip to visit the set of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 in Atlanta. All my opinions are my own and not swayed by outside sources.*
TODAY is the day that you MUST stop what you are doing and buy advanced tickets for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2. I am getting my ticket for opening night, Friday May 5th so I hope you will too!
Last May it was a pleasure to go on set of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and see it actually being filmed. I can’t believe that same movie is going to be released in a few short months. I really can’t wait to see it! Oh, and before it comes out, I will be going back to LA for the press junket for this movie so stay tuned for a lot more information but if you want to read some information about GOTGVol2, check out these interviews: on set visit, Interview with James Gunn, Interview with Karen Gillan (Nebula), Interview with Michael Rooker (Yondu), Interview with Dave Bautista (Drax), Interview with Zoe Saldana( Gamora), and my Interview with Chris Pratt (Peter Quill).
While on set, I had the absolute privilege to interview Kurt Russell who plays JSon, father of Peter Quill. I have always been the biggest fan of Kurt Russell so it was so exciting to hear him talk about his new role in GOTGVol2. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did that day! 
Question 1: Tell us about your role in GOTG Vol 2?
In this role, he plays Peter Quill’s father and he is a man of adventure. He has to play a lot of different scenes that are emotional and all very different. With him playing this character,the viewers will get to explore a lot of Peter Quill’s character and see where he comes from.
Question 2: What made you want to take this role?
“I was doing a publicity trip for Hateful Eight and suddenly one day all the reporters and whoever else I ran into was saying so are you going to do Guardians of the Galaxy? I’d never heard of Guardians of the Galaxy. Are you going to be Peter Quill’s father?”
“I started learning about the movie from the people that started it. I never had been involved being asked about a character before. I suddenly realized that this movie must have been very popular and for some reason the audience cared about who his father was going to be. So I said well, gee I don’t know I’ll see what it’s like. I read the script. I didn’t know anything about it. So I said well I’ll read it so I read the script and I said well I need to see the movie and I watched it for about eight or nine minutes.”
“I was watching it with Goldie. I watched the movie and I got the jest of the feeling of what the Guardians of the Galaxy world is like. I get very much why I’d be a good person to play the dad with the script that I had. I realized that this is going to be fun to do and it’s turned out to be a blast, really fun. Chris is great and the whole cast is great and James is awesome. It’s fun to always work with someone who really knows what they want to do and what they want to show and pull off and try to create.”
Question 3: Did you audition and how long ago was that?
He joked around with us that he had 55 years of audition experience and they know who he is. He told us he does not go in anymore because they know who is he.
Question 4: How long have you known that you were going to play this role?
He told us it was since January 2016 when they asked him to do it and then started filming in March 2016.
Question 5: Have you gone back and watched all the Marvel movies?
He said no but he knew exactly what he needed to do, to perfect this role.
Question 6: Peter’s mom has the story line of music and it evolves around the movie. Does your character have any connection with music and are we going to learn about that?
He told us it will be quite important.
Question 7: Is there anything else you can give us on that?
He told us we need to see the movie obviously but there is a strong connection to the music and particular songs. Music is a big part of this world and it continues the theme throughout, including his part.
Question 8: Standing in a room that’s obviously blue screen what is it like to have a set like this?
“You know, it’s funny. I was doing Disney gags. We call them wire gags and this is where we were. You can see some of the wires that are left. Wire gags have always been the same ever since probably the 30s and 40s but the technology around the wire gag itself has improved so much and the wires have improved.”
“Well they’re on computers now sometimes so you work out what you’re gonna do and they dial it in. You get much better precision but the technology of what they can do, has greatly improved because it used to be that you get a line around you and if you moved too much you’d get some rippling effect. It wasn’t very good. But I started doing those in the 60s, early 60s with Disney and they haven’t changed really that much but having said that we’re getting further and further into this world where and this will look obviously completely different.”
“I’ve always been an actor like many actors who respond to their surroundings and if you and I are playing the scene together and I see you have this and I’m talking to you and I kind of want to play with that. On a movie like this it is really important about understanding. So you have to invent that. That’s kind of fun to do. Chris and I did some stuff, when we first got together and he really knows that he’s my son and that I’m his father and I know that he’s my son and we’re doing this really cool thing and there’s nothing there. And he and I looked at each other and we were imagining things but we were imagining the same things so that was fun to play with so it’ll be fun for us to see that physicalized and then see if they’ll include that.”
“That was fun because only he and I were knowing what was happening and it’ll be fun to see that brought to life. But you can’t think of it. It’s something you’re just doing a scene and something just happens. You might not even be right or wrong, but it happens and you go with it. A tree falls down. Play the tree fell down and you continue on or it stops and gives the scene a whole different feeling and meaning. I worry about that being lost. So in a movie like this you have to have it because it’s just so chalk full of things that don’t exist, but it’s fun to imagine.”
Question 9: Will you get to see any of those bits come to life before the movie’s together or not until all of that’s together?
He says they will see the previs, which is a cheap version of what you are going to get.
Question 10: So you actually understand what the things around you look like.
“Yeah, much more so than just have it described to you or imagining kind of what it is. Some of the stuff’s fun to just be surprised like some of the stuff we’re doing right here. It’s goofball silly. We don’t even know how many of these will be there and we’re doing things that are going to allow them to, for example let’s put them in a field of grass.”
He said it really neat to film and then see the actual scenery come alive in the movie. It is all precise guesswork but it all works out.
Question 11: What do you hope the audience gets out of the character?
“Well, good question actually because, number one when you’re planning a character, you try to find things that’ll be entertaining and do the them in a way that’s entertaining, that’s fun to watch and yet, in movies like this it’s easy to sort of be frivolous and just look at it as comic book venue and I think comic books, especially science fiction. There’s two worlds that allow you to ask the big question and there are westerns. Oh, don’t worry. That’s just CGI.”
“So see CGI when you’re doing this that moment, that will never happen. There’s two worlds where you can ask these big questions and one of them is westerns and one of them is science fiction. You can get away with asking the big questions especially in westerns. You can get away with asking big, American, political questions because it’s deeply engrained in American persona, even in children. Cowboys are a certain thing to us. The women who are connected to cowboys are a certain thing to us and in science fiction you can ask these questions such as is there a god question?”
“They let you ask these huge connections. And within this, the confides of this one, this story, what if you were Peter Quill and this happened to you, this marvel comic book world that Guardians of the Galaxy is and you never knew who your father was but like real life you have created in your mind someone who was put on a pedestal which I think is a very important thing to talk about when you talk about children who don’t know who their parents are. Their father has left or their father never existed or their father was never in their life or maybe he was there for a short while and he left. Are you responsible for that? All those very real human things.”
“So when you say what do you get out of that, I hope to bring for the audience, I do hope to have all the entertainment value that you should get in movie like this but underneath is the reality of when you’re playing, it is the reality aspect of the relationship that is important to that person, that’s real, that has consequence, that’s not comic book, that’s not cartoon. So that’s why I think one of the reasons James Gunn wants to get Kurt Russell to play the part because I’m going to go in there and do that.”