In an exclusive interview with Screen Rant, Cameron Monaghan sat down to discuss his new movie, Paradise Highway. Its plot concerns a truck driver named Sally (Juliette Binoche) who goes on the run with a teen girl named Lelia (Hala Finley) to save the latter from sexual slavery. Monaghan and Morgan Freeman play two FBI agents on the road together pursuing the former two characters.
What Monaghan thought was amazing about the script was that, despite its dark subject matter, there was a beautiful human element to the characters in the story. Binoche and Finley have this dynamic that’s heaviness mixed in with this humanity alongside his character, who’s recently gone from working a desk job at the FBI to finally getting some field experience.
“Morgan Freeman’s character is old hat at this. He’s been doing it for over 50 years and doesn’t necessarily play by the rules anymore. And he has enough seniority that he’s able to get away with it. And [my character] is the person who’s questioning whether or not that’s always the right decision to make. There’s a little friction between these two characters, and I think that’s an interesting dynamic, you know, for someone who is maybe a bit more new school and has some different thoughts about this than what his character does.”
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When describing his experience working with a screen legend like Freeman, Monaghan didn’t think he’d shock anyone by saying he’s an absolute professional. He lives up to your expectations of his preparation and presence within the scenes. He always had a question with motivation, ensuring that the scenes were airtight. Why are we doing this? Why are we saying this? Where are we going? What do we want?
“So when I was reading it, you know, even though this script is about human trafficking and sexual slavery, which are very difficult subjects, it didn’t feel like it was a chore. Instead, it felt like every page was flying by, and I just really needed to know what happened and how this story was going to resolve and where it was going to go.”
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Something Freeman and Monaghan have in common is that they’ve both been part of the Batman franchise. Freeman played Lucius Fox in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, while Monaghan played Jerome and Jeremiah Valeska on Gotham. Unfortunately, the shooting schedule for Paradise Highway was so tight that Monaghan could not pick Freeman’s brain about anything Batman-related.
“He would pull our director, Anna Gutto, to the side and as well as anyone in the scene, and we would discuss it while we were doing the prior scene. So a lot of the time, you know, Morgan and I would be running lines for the next scene while we were doing the previous scene and just trying to figure out what it is, which is also a realistic element of, you know, you’re working with a tight schedule and a tight budget making sure that you stay on track and he was very good about keeping everyone on track.
And, you know, we usually had these scenes figured out in such a way that when we actually shot each angle, we would be doing one take, maybe two, and we would get it, and then we would move on, and there’s something kind of magical about that. Just like whatever it is, it will be. And, being able to let go of that, I think, is something that I learned along the way, and yeah, it was a very interesting and wonderful experience.”
Often, Monaghan would only catch the first half of a story before having to get them going later. According to him, Freeman was always open and willing to talk about the work that he’s done. Monaghan considers it admirable to see someone who has been acting for as long as Freeman while still having a passion and respect for it.
“And, you know, so much of the time I would be in the car with him, and he would start telling a story, be like ‘well, on Diving Miss Daisy, it was like this,’ and I would lean in and be like ‘yes,’ and then over the radio, we would have ‘all right, we’re ready, and I would be like, ‘wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let’s just, let’s just finish this story out before we go, come on.’”
“He likes telling stories about his work, and I mean, I guess I would too if I had done as many amazing things as what he has.”
