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[Warning: The above and below contains spoilers for Trigger Warning.]
Trigger Warning follows Special Forces officer Parker (Jessica Alba, also a producer) as she moves back home to New Mexico after her grandfather’s death and uncovers a nefarious criminal underground. Anthony Michael Hall co-stars as Senator Ezekiel Swann, the patriarch of a dangerous family.
“It was sort of a supergroup of great women in charge on this,” says Hall of working on the Netflix film, from producer Alba and director Mouly Surya (in her English-language debut film) to cinematographer Zoë White. “It was really great to work with a bunch of really strong, on-top-of-it, professional ladies that really know their stuff.”
Hall compares Trigger Warning to an old western. His character, a corrupt, racist, sexist politician, is a twist on the classic western villain. In one scene, Ezekiel and Parker have a conversation that seems friendly on the service, but Ezekiel clearly holds unsavory beliefs. Says Hall about watching the film with a crowd, “My first line in that scene—I come off like such as ass…the first line is something like. ‘Everybody in my town knows I’m not a racist.’” The audience laughed. “When someone says something so stupid…at the same time, telling you more than you need to know about them.”
At first, it seems like Ezekiel is not a good person but also uninvolved in the illegal weapons dealing at the center of the film. Watch above to see Hall’s reaction to the twist.
Hall also discusses filming a scene with his character’s sons, played by Mark Webber and Jake Weary, as they nearly fight in his office. “This is the kind of guy that would pit his sons against each other. It was a great instance where I really saw Mouly’s [Surya] come to life,” Hall says of watching the director work on the scene.
Watch the video above to hear more from Hall on the Netflix film.
Trigger Warning, Streaming Now, Netflix