Interview: Michael Biehn Hypes Adam Wingard’s ONSLAUGHT, Discusses Re-Uniting with Arnold Schwarzenegger on THE KELLYS, and Reflects on 40 Years of ALIENS

I've said this before, and it's worth repeating: If you want to make a great movie, you cast Michael Biehn. From The Terminator to Aliens to Tombstone and beyond, Michael Biehn consistently delivers captivating, nuanced performances that elevate any project he's a part of. Now, nearly 40 years to the day since Aliens premiered in theaters, Biehn has built a decades-spanning career that few in Hollywood have, but he continues to take on new and exciting roles, including on Adam Wingard's upcoming Onslaught. While filming The Kellys in Budapest, I caught up with Michael, who has me even more excited for Onslaught after hearing all of his praise for Wingard's latest. He also discussed reuniting with Arnold Schwarzenegger on The Kellys and reflected on his fondest memory of working on Aliens:

I've seen the trailer for Onslaught, and it looks like Adam Wingard's riff on The Terminator. Can you talk about working with Wingard and why you were excited to be a part of the film?

Michael Biehn: I got sent the script, got offered the role, and I was not real familiar with Adam's work, but he sent me a letter: it was beautiful, fun, and a little bit tongue-in-cheek. He talked about how much Aliens had an effect on his young filmmaking life. I have a podcast and I've had him on and we joked about it. I've actually gotten very close with Adam.

So I read the script and read about as close to The Terminator as anything I'd ever read before. It was written very well. It has a female protagonist, and the antagonist in it is a very strong, unstoppable force. It's an action horror movie with space for actors to work.

And the cast that he got for it is absolutely phenomenal. I've seen the movie, and, I'm telling you without a doubt, this is the best movie I've been in since Aliens. I am very, very excited about it. Not necessarily for me because I've been around—I've got Terminator, I've got Aliens, I've got Tombstone that I can kind of carry around—but I'm excited to be involved, and I'm really more excited about the friendship that I now have with Adam.

You're right. The film has an phenomenal cast, including Adria Arjona and Dan Stevens. 

Michael Biehn: I worked mostly with Dan Stevens, who I got to tell you... He's the best actor I've ever worked with, except I worked with George C. Scott, but [Stevens is] unrecognizably brilliant in the movie. I haven't met Adria Arjona—they're all going to be down at the San Diego Comic-Con a week from Saturday—but she's just dynamite. Everybody in the movie is really good.

I'm telling you, this is going to blow the doors off of any expectations of what anybody has seen on the big screen in a long time. This is like pedal-to-the-metal, action, horror, violence. It's got an "If you don't like it, we don't care" vibe to it, and it's got great sound and music in it. It is very, very exciting, and it's 90 minutes or so... it's fast and furious.

I've been such a fan of his Wingard since The Guest, which had Dan Stevens and a killer soundtrack, and I really loved You're Next. So, yeah, everything you're saying to me just got me even more excited. I cannot wait.

Michael Biehn: I feel blessed, lucky, or I've earned it to be surrounded by so many talented people. I've been really having a good two years, [especially in] my relationship with Adam. He reminds me a lot of Jim [Cameron]. I think he's just about ready to take off into the stratosphere. He has a tendency like Jim to work with the same people. Dan has done three movies for him. Onslaught, I'm telling you, I've seen it and I was very happy for [Adam]. You're always happy to be involved in a successful movie, and it's just fun when you see it all come together because when I read that script, I thought like, "Man, this thing really, really looks good." A24 was running [the trailer] with Backrooms, and so there's a lot of positive [buzz] going on. I could not be more thrilled to be involved.

It was also just recently announced that you're in The Kellys, which has you in an action-comedy with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Geena Davis.

Michael Biehn: It's been probably 15 years since I've been in a movie that has been released in theaters. I had a certain period of time, six or eight years, where my health—I had a stroke and I was really not doing anything for a long period of time, but I've been able to recover from that. I thought I was going to retire about five years ago, and then I got an offer from Jon Favreau to do The Mandalorian. There's just some people you don't say no to.

And then Greg Nicotero, who I'd worked with on Grindhouse, was on The Walking Dead, and he said, "Hey, why don't you come down?" And I went down and I did that. Next thing I know, this thing came up with Adam. It's a big deal, and I have a feeling I might not have gotten offered [The Kellys] if I hadn't done Onslaught. [The Kellys] is an action comedy, and I've never really been involved in a 48 Hours / Beverly Hills Cop kind of thing.

Arnold's [character] is the patriarch, and he's married to Geena Davis, and then his son is Liam Hemsworth. So [it's about this group of] Kellys who are Dirty Harry-like misfits. We've seen these kind of movies before where you get these cops that are out of control, and I play a character who's supposed to be the reasonable one.

I talked to the director [Brad Peyton] a little bit [about my character], and I said, "Well, do you think we can work it so I can be funny too?"
I like [Brad] a lot. He is one of the nicest guys I've ever worked with.

What was it like reconnecting with Arnold?

Michael Biehn: I hadn't really seen him much since we did The Terminator. And even when we did The Terminator, we were only on the call sheet three days, and, as actors, we didn't have any dialogue to run. He had already been Mr. Universe five times, he had also done Conan, so he was a 33-year-old movie star on the rise, and I just didn't have that much of a relationship with him.

So when I got together with him, we gave each other a big hug and he said The Kellys will be a hit because it's got me and him. The last time we did a movie, it was a big hit. So, we sat and talked about working with Jim, working on The Terminator, our expectations, and what happened with it. We talked a little bit about Bill Paxton, because he did True Lies with him. We talked a little bit about growing older.  I told him, "Listen, you're six or seven years older than me. I need to talk to you about how we work out what we need to eat. How hard do we exercise?"

Arnold is like nobody I've ever met before. I don't think there's been anybody in my lifetime, certainly from a sporting aspect, except for Muhammad Ali, that's been as magnetic. I can only use the word "magnetic" for Arnold. He's very hardworking, very enthusiastic. It's, "Let's enjoy this. We're having a good time, we're going to work hard, and, if we work hard, [great things] will happen."

So he really, truly is the Zeus of actors as far as I'm concerned. We were sitting down in a location about two weeks ago, four o'clock in the morning. It was an old train station that is no longer being used. [We were shooting nights] and I was having trouble doing my dialogue at four o'clock in the morning. Arnold, he's just solid. He does his thing. He does it with humor. He's got a great, great sense of humor. He's very, very positive and fun to be around.

The film really has a packed cast. Noomi Rapace, Laz Alonso, Dan Fogler...

Michael Biehn: I did a lot of work with Abby [Elliott] and she's very, very good. Noomi Rapace is absolutely fantastic too, and then there's Kelsey Asbille, who's absolutely stunning. And Danny Fogler I've worked with before on Take Me Home Tonight. He's a great actor and a lot of fun to work with, so we had some fun running around on this. When you get offered a movie with this cast—and it's got Arnold Schwarzenegger and Liam Hemsworth—I don't even read [the script]. I just toss it over my shoulder and go, "Okay, well, let's see how much money we can get for it because I'm doing it."

This week is the 40th anniversary of Aliens. When you look back to your time making that movie, what's a memory that instantly stands out 40 years later? What's something you always think back on?

Michael Biehn: The thing that really stands out more than anything else is the fact that they were making the movie in England. Jim, Gale, and I had already done The Terminator, and I was friends with Bill Paxton because we did Lords of Discipline together and he had a little part in Terminator. I knew they were making Aliens, but I wasn't a part of it. I was working and I didn't expect to be doing four movies in a row for Jim. It was a Thursday afternoon when I got a call from Gale Heard. I was in Studio City, and she said, "We're having to replace James Remar. You want to come over and replace him?" I was in my car headed to the airport about 10 minutes later and I was on the set that Monday morning.

So the beginning of Aliens was very, very exciting. And because Jim had already made The Terminator, there was a buzz and it was the best script. Aliens and Tombstone are the two best scripts that I've ever read. Sigourney was fantastic, and the sets were fantastic over at Pinewood.

So, I would say getting the role the way that I got it was one thing, and the other thing that I can remember as a highlight of making Aliens, although I had a great time every day that I worked on it, was when I was in New York City with Sigourney, with Bill Paxton, and Paul Reiser. We were all going to see the movie the next day, but, that day, Jim was showing it to the press. So there's a theater full of press across the street at one of the big theaters and he didn't want us to go to that. And we were like, "Oh, okay. Well, I guess we'll see you tomorrow."

Well, Bill Paxton and I really didn't listen to Jim. We went into the theater, but we didn't sit down. Everybody had their assigned seats and it was [packed]. So Bill and I went up to the projector's booth and watched the movie with the guy who was running the projector at the time. We watched [the movie] through that hole that [the projectionist] watches the movie through, and Bill and I just absolutely went bonkers after we saw the movie, jumping up and down and high-fiving each other. Bill Paxton was saying, "It's a rollercoaster, Michael. Oh my God."

We really knew we had something there, and, then looking back on it, I feel now, even though I did The Terminator, Tombstone, and some other good movies, it's the best movie that I've ever done.

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You can catch Michael Biehn in Onslaught, which will be hitting theaters on September 4th, and keep an eye out for more details on The Kellys in the coming months. His podcast that he mentioned is called Just Foolin' About with Michael Biehn, which I highly recommend to any fan of his work. With nearly 100 episodes, there are in-depth interviews with James Cameron, Carrie Henn, Ricco Ross, William Hope, and many more. I've included a few episodes below, but you can find his podcast on YouTube, iTunes, and anywhere you listen to your podcasts. Next up on his podcast, he's planning to bring in Arnold for a chat: "Arnold said he'd do it, so as soon as I get back into town, I'm going to go over to his five acres that he's got in Brentwood."