Stand Your Ground star Peter Stormare sat down with The Direct's Russ Milheim to discuss his villainous role as Bastion in the movie and how he came to wear the infamous red hat imagery. The new action film stars Daniel Stisen as Jack Johnson, a former Special Forces operative who takes advantage of the Stand Your Ground laws to take revenge against the men who killed his pregnant wife.
Stand Your Ground is playing in select theaters and will be available via video-on-demand on Tuesday, May 27 from Epic Pictures.
Peter Stormare on Donning the Infamous Red Hat for His Vile Villain
"I Really Want to Stress Social Issues In Everything I Do..."
While speaking to The Direct's Russ Milheim in an exclusive interview, Stand Your Ground star Peter Stormare revealed how his villainous character came to wear that infamous red hat, a purposeful riff off of real-life MAGA supporters:
Peter Stormare: I said to the director, 'I want to put on a red hat in the end, when he goes out and is really pissed off, and he just got to say, MAGA or nothing.' And he said, 'I'm not really sure what is, you know, maybe it's too much. It might be too much.' I said, 'But let's do one scene with, and let's do one scene without.' And the director looked at the dailies, and he said, 'I'm going to keep the red one. So, wear the red one in the following scenes.'
And it's just a little, maybe for some of the intelligent part of the audience will see, like, 'Oh shit. This is what's going on. This is what's going on.' So it's just a little wink, wink, nudge nudge in [a] regular action movie where I want to, even if it's action and revenge, I really want to stress some social issues in everything I do, and even if you can't see them perfectly, there might be one or two in the audience that can see them, and that's enough. That's enough. You know, you touch one or two.
- The Direct: Can you help paint a picture to audiences of Bastion, your character, the big bad, and just kind of what his beef is with the main character and what makes him a unique threat in this story?
Stormare: First of all, it represents maybe a side of our beautiful country that I really don't agree with 100%. It is a very racial–it's a very white supremacy society... One side I can understand that he want, his town is like where the some of the Bible people, they build a little town out somewhere in the wilderness where no one is allowed except for white people, and they build the main streets looking like Disneyland, and they have a church, and they all have six wives or seven husbands, and they live happily there, but it says no strangers allowed.
So, I just wanted to show that side of our country with this movie and how still African American or minorities are treated in our country, in a country that was sort of raped, by the way, by white man and taken away from Native Americans that we shuffled into reservations. So that's my whole take.
I think he would be happy maybe to have a little village or a small town where everybody was white, and everybody, you know, tend to the business, and everybody did their job, and no strangers allowed but, but, I mean, it's 2025 and we can't really move backward. I mean, we have a slogan say, Make America Great Again...
Stormare then told a story about how he got into a fight with MAGA supporters at LAX who couldn't explain what exactly "Make America Great Again" means:
Stormare: I got into a fight at the LAX, the airport just before the election, asking a couple, a lady on a man, sitting by a bar being very obnoxious and talking loud, and they had MAGA hats and he had a Trump t-shirt, and I just asked him, you know, I took a broken English and I said, 'Hello, I'm from Sweden, and I'm sorry, but I hear what you're talking about. But let me ask you about your hat, Make America Great Again. When was America great?'
And they got really pissed at me, and they got thrown up by the security, but he couldn't answer the question. And I said, when was it great then? When women couldn't vote, or when the black people couldn't vote—when was it great? And they got so pissed. It's a very strange saying, Make America Great Again, and no one understand what it really means...
"No one knows what it really means," the actor continued:
Stormare: My wife is Japanese. I have friends who are married over the race barrier, and I see that as the future. I mean, this is not a country [where] we can't go backwards. We can't listen to this crazy guy running our country and make America great again, because no one knows what it really means.
And I think with a movie, it's a little it's an action movie, it's a European American Co-production, and it follows the regular sort of recipe of an action movie of revenge, which is very nice to see that one single guy can take revenge. But at the same time, I wanted to show the society how it's functioning today...
Referencing the story of Stand Your Ground, Stormare compared one of the more violent opening scenes in the film to being a good representation of what's happening across America today:
Stormare: In the beginning of [the film] where the three guys take some noose and put it around the pregnant black woman is just a signal to what actually is happening in our country right now. It might, for some people, they don't know about it, but it is happening, and you can read about it in newspapers, if you really look for it, and if that is to make America great again, I don't know.
I'm here. I love this country. I'm a first generation and citizen, and I love this country, but I was always fight for a better future, and a better future is to make America great in the future, and that has nothing to do with the past, because we do not have a great past.
Stand Your Ground Star Peter Stormare on Why He Plays So Many Villains
For Stormare, Playing the Good Guy Isn't Very Fun.
- The Direct: "You tend to play a good amount of villains, which you clearly love to do so much. What about playing villains is so appealing to you as an actor?"
Peter Stormare: Well, you know, I always look at, I came to this country, in Hollywood, like in the end of the '80s. Just to give you a very brief good timing. I had a mentor, she's passed away now, but she said, 'Peter, remember, in Hollywood, there's no time, only timing.'
And I think about that expression and what she taught me, because when I came in the end of the 80s, in 1990, 91, all the minority groups have been outside the studios complaining about being portrayed as rapists and murderers and thugs. It was the African American, it was the Hispanic, it was the Asian that started to become, you know, when they couldn't use African Americans or Hispanics, that went to Asian and then, you know, to Middle Eastern, and everybody's complaining and complaining. So the studio said, let's go back to the fucking Germans and Russians.
And that was my, it was good timing on my behalf, because no one here, none of the producers know any language from Europe. And when they asked me, Can you speak Serbian, I said, Yes, of course. Can you speak Hungarian? Yes, because I know it was one line in the beginning, then they go over to broken English. And it was that was good timing, but also come from theater, and when you're on stage, you want to do very complicated characters. You want to do a Macbeth, or you want to do a Hamlet that kills six people...
"It is intriguing for you to build a character that is sort of on the other side of the law," he continued:
Stormare: .... It is intriguing for you to build a character that is sort of on the other side of the law, or is a little bit demented, or is a little bit weird, because in real life, you try to be a good human being. So in your profession, it's like being a librarian and being crazy, being a librarian, and you get to keep your job.
As an actor, you can be the most craziest character, and you get to keep the job and in real life, you're never allow to keep your job if you're act out crazy and instead out of 100 male actors, 99 will take Prince dark, one will maybe go for Prince white, the good looking guy, you know he will go for Prince white.
But you know, it's boring, like in the Snow White you want to do the witch with an apple. You don't want to do the prince coming on a White Stallion and kissing Snow White. That's kind of boring.
Stormare recalled a story told to him by Harrison Ford (who can be seen soon on Disney+ in Captain America: Brave New World), where the legendary actor admitted that he loves to be the villain—even though he's known as the hero:
Stormare: Harrison Ford said to me once, I met him 100 years ago, we never worked together, but he said to me, 'Oh, you're doing really great, bad guys. I love your acting,' and stuff like that. He said, 'I wish I could do, you know, I've tried a couple of movies, but nobody liked those movies, you know, I have to be the prince white, and it's kind of boring,' and I could understand him. It is more fun to do somebody crazy, because in your mind and in your soul and everything you just, you know, you venture crazy stuff that you never thought was possible, but it's nice to play around with...
