If you’re wondering whether you need to have seen any of the Has Fallen series of movies before you dive into spin-off series Paris Has Fallen, don’t worry: series star Tewfik Jallab hasn’t seen them either.
“Unfortunately, I've never watched them,” he says via Zoom from France. “I knew about them, but they were one of the favorite movies of my brother, and you know how brothers act – ‘if you like something, then I don’t want to watch it’.”
This brotherly conflict put him in a tricky position when he was presented with the role of French protection officer Vincent Taleb, charged with protecting Paris from a vindictive terrorist (Sean Harris) out to wreak havoc across the city.
“When they offered me the role, I had two options: do I watch it or not? In the end I decided to not watch it, because I didn't want to be influenced by the work of Gerard Butler,” he says. “I wanted to create my own character, my own world, my own background. I didn't want to be scared off by the heavy weight of the success and the power of the earlier movies. I wanted to create something new.”
Best known for his work in two seasons of crime series Spiral, the French actor (who made his first appearance on screen at age 10 playing a child soldier) was a late addition to the cast of Paris Has Fallen, coming onboard a few weeks before filming began after the previous lead dropped out.
Despite arriving when the series was well into pre-production, the process turned out to be both drama-free and creatively open.
“I felt quite accepted when I came on board, and just so long as I stayed within the lines of the franchise, I was free to add whatever I wanted to add to the character.”
It turned out he and the producers were mostly on the same page for Vincent, a former soldier who stays true to his duty to protect those under his watch even as he comes to realise that what he was fighting for wasn’t as clear cut as it seemed. “A lot of the details were close to what I was already thinking about,” he says. “Especially his background, who he was, why he was fighting. This is the kind of character that you want to see grow.”
Vincent Taleb (Tewfik Jallab).
One major difference between the movies and Paris Has Fallen is that here Vincent is working with a partner: MI6 operative Zara Taylor (Ritu Arya, whose CV includes hit series Umbrella Academy). She’s working more on the espionage side of things, but she’s definitely his equal when it comes to action.
“I was lucky to work alongside her, Ritu is an amazing actress and she's really funny,” he says. “It was the first time I was acting in English in a series, so that was pretty new to me, and through the whole experience we were really like a team. We really worked hard together, always trying to focus together on how we could build something bigger, and especially with the relationship between them, just always trying to find new stuff to build on. That was an amazing experience.”
During filming, Jallab quickly developed a reputation for diving in headfirst when there was stunt work to be done. His skill with the fight sequences was no surprise – there’s a fight in the first episode that’s just one long minute-and-a-half take with no cuts and no stunt doubles – but his willingness to handle all his own stunts made quite an impression on the crew. Which is something he’s well aware of, as he bursts out laughing when he’s asked about it.
MI6 agent Zara Taylor (Ritu Arya) and protection officer Vincent Taleb (Tewfik Jallab), along with BRI, participating in a raid against a terrorist hideout. Credit: Urban Myth Films / Millenium IP / Canal+ / Carole Bethuel
“This question made me laugh,” he says, “because I remember from time to time I saw the producers behind the screen, not too far away from where we were filming and they were really scared. Really, their faces were like, white! Just the coldness in their eyes, like, ‘is he going to die today or not?’ So from time to time, they would come to me and ask me to calm down a little bit, you know, because they were scared.”
He’s full of praise for the stunt team he worked with – “we have really a great stunt team, I was so impressed with their work” – but it’s clear that a big part of the appeal of the series for him was getting to do the fights himself.
“I'm a big fan of action stuff, I’ve been doing martial arts since I was four years old,” he says. “So this is something that I know and something that I like. I'm just enjoying doing it and enjoying the challenge. I look at it like it’s all just play, like a child would play.”
There’s already plans in place for a second season of Paris Has Fallen, and Jallab is more than ready to jump back into Vincent’s high stakes world.
“I’m just enjoying the challenge of it,” he says. “This role is really exciting to me”
Paris Has Fallen premieres Thursday 26 September at 9:30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Paris Has Fallen
