Angelia Jolie talks about her role in ‘Those Who Wish Me Dead’

From New Line Cinema comes the tense thriller “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” starring Oscar winner Angelina Jolie and written and directed by Oscar nominee Taylor Sheridan.  Jolie stars as Hannah, a smokejumper still reeling from the loss of three lives she failed to save from a fire. 

The Production

The story takes place in Montana, outside Cooke City, just north of Yellowstone National Park.  Though it takes place in Montana, principal photography was accomplished in New Mexico.  Jolie says, “It’s a part of America that Taylor loves and knows and represents with respect—the idiosyncrasies, the grandeur of its parks, and the poetry of this part of the world.” 

“In our story, the setting itself is a character, and once we started scouting our locations—from the Santa Clara Pueblo to the Jemez Mountains and the wooded foothills of the Manzanos—we knew that New Mexico would provide the rugged scope that this story demands,” says Sheridan.

To that end, Spisak and special effects supervisor Dan Holt worked together to build a contained forest of trees to double for that were plumbed with propane. “We had 186 real trees that the greens department planted,” explains Holt. “Each one was rigged for fire up the trunk, so we had propane sources on these trees, but we fireproofed all the canopies so they would not catch fire and burn the whole set down. We also had additional 40 metal trunks to give us high, wide fire in the background. They didn’t resemble a tree, didn’t read on camera, but gave us the higher fire sources. We did many tech scouts and had a lot of safety meetings on how to achieve this. We ended up burning it in sections, probably 20, 25 trees on fire each time.” 

Because fire, smoke, and ash behave somewhat randomly in the natural world and take on a life of their own, forming unexpected little tornadoes of fire that naturally occur in the wild, their job was to capture that and then relay that into the final product. 

Holt describes, “We essentially caught just the trunk on fire; VFX took care of the fire in the canopies, because we were shooting the scene over four days. If we ignited the canopies with real fire, we would have lost our set within just half a day of shooting. The trunks were treated with a flame retardant so that they would burn for four days of shooting.” 

“The funny thing was once we built our simulated forest in the desert in New Mexico, it wasn’t long before birds started nesting in our staged forest trees, squirrels began running around in our fake forest, and we also found snakes, mice, and these things,” Sheridan recalls. “At first we thought it was great, and then we realized we were going to be setting this all on fire, so for about five days we had to shoo animals so that there was nothing left in our fake forest to die. But it was astonishing that in the middle of the desert we had all these animals that arrived, inexplicably, across the desert to go live in our forest.” 

Aside from an aesthetic achievement, the filmmakers’ top priority was safety, followed by environmental impact. They approached every scene with extreme caution and consulted experts on protocol. The area where the forest fires would be created for the film was essentially a huge pit in the desert located near Albuquerque’s Mesa Del Sol, completely encapsulated to ensure their fires wouldn’t jump with the wind to any other canopies. 

Other locations selected for scenes were challenging in a different way, one being a post-burn forest at a base elevation of about 9,000 feet, which isn’t something that people usually jump into. Stunt jumpers—expert skydivers—deployed onto it out of a helicopter at close to 14,000 feet and came into an area that was groomed by the greens department but surrounded by a post-burn forest. The least experienced member of the skydiving team had completed about 8,000 skydives; the most experienced had between 18,000 and 22,000 skydives a piece. 

During principal photography, the production employed approximately 675 New Mexico local residents among its crew and cast, shooting on location in and around the counties of Bernalillo, Torrance, Sandoval, and Rio Arriba, including Santa Clara Pueblo. 

For “Those Who Wish Me Dead,” Sheridan shares, “Neil had to build a giant forest with a creek that runs into a pool off of a waterfall in a desert located 10 miles from Albuquerque International Airport, which is its own challenge. Then he had to build a fire tower—three of them, actually. One that we could place in the desert overlooking our fake forest, another in the forest and then a third one that we could put on a stage so that we could film the interior. 

Angelina Jolie talks about the film

“Hannah is somebody who has experienced a real tragedy, and she feels responsible. When we meet her in the story, she is having nightmares, she suffers from PTSD. She’s somebody who puts on a brave front and acts cool, but inside she’s a broken person who carries a great deal of guilt,” says Jolie.

Often thought of as the “special forces” of firefighting, smokejumpers are elite, specially trained wildland firefighters who provide an initial attack response on remote wildland fires. They are inserted at the site of the fire by parachute and, in addition to performing the initial attack on wildfires, they often provide leadership for extended attacks on wildland fires.

In sharing her character’s backstory, Jolie says, “Hannah is an adrenaline junkie. I think anybody that does this job has to be, or you wouldn’t jump out of a plane and into a fire. I am drawn to characters who have been through something and are broken and then find their way forward and overcome it. As an artist, it’s very healing to play people like that because you see that if you can do that in character, you can do that in life, it feels good, and you hope the audience gets that same feeling and that same reminder that we can all stand back up.” 

Sheridan’s cast and crew accomplished all the action sequences, including the jumps, as practically as possible, opting for actors and stunt persons over visual effects, in line with the director’s preference for realism. Safely wired and under the purview of the stunt team, led by stunt coordinator Wade Allen, Jolie put her trust in the team and even leapt from the 60-foot tall fire tower the production had constructed.

Jolie says, “Finn plays Conner, the kid at the center of our film, who is traumatized and alone and ends up with Hannah. Connor and Hannah are a very strange pair. You put these two damaged people together, with the sense of urgency as things happen, and that adds a lot of intensity and color to this film. It’s a tough role, so if you get a kid that’s too young and too emotional, who can’t handle me, as Hannah, messing with him and swearing at him and pushing him, then it’s brutal. Everything that we do to him in the course of the film would be too much.  “On the other hand,” she continues, “if you get a kid who’s too confident or cool or cocky or polished, it’s not as emotional for the audience. Finn was right in the middle, and he just walked in and that was it.” 

“My instinct with children is to listen,” says Jolie, “but Hannah doesn’t have any children and really doesn’t have any maternal instincts. She swears too much, she says inappropriate things; she’s perhaps the worst person to end up with a child. To put a person like that with a kid who needs her to save him… She has no faith in herself that she can do that, so throughout the film, she is forced to stay alive because of him. She’s forced to connect with him and confront all those things that she fears. Connor and Hannah have to go through the fire, both emotionally and practically, if they have any chance of coming out the other side together. But Taylor gave me significant direction to stop mothering and be tough,” she laughs, “and Finn and I found the humor in that our characters are a complete mismatch, and we became good friends. 

“We joked that our characters are like action hero partners, one of us is crazy but we’re going to get through the fire,” she continues. “Finn is a very robust child and he can access his emotions. It’s clear that he’s going to have a career, he is so professional, just a light and a great energy. He loved and respected everybody on the set, and as an actor, he would try anything, and he was great with action. I think people will really respond to him in this film, and feel for him and care about his character, Connor.” 

New Line Cinema presents a BRON Studios/FILMRIGHTS Production, in Association with Creative Wealth Media, a Film by Taylor Sheridan, “Those Who Wish Me Dead.” It will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film is set for release in the U.S. in theaters and on HBO Max on May 14, 2021 and will be available on HBO Max in 4K UHD, HDR10 and Dolby Atmos on supported devices for 31 days from release. 

“Those Who Wish Me Dead” is rated R for strong violence, and language throughout