Exclusive Interview with The Raid 2’s Iko Uwais

This week, Gareth Evans’ The Raid 2 comes storming into theaters everywhere and to get you guys ready, Daily Dead recently sat down to chat exclusively with the film’s star (and resident badass) Iko Uwais about his experiences working on the sequel, his thoughts on reprising the role of Rama, what his favorite fight from The Raid 2 is and much more.

Thanks so much for chatting with me today, Iko. I wanted to start off by discussing the changes we’ve seen Rama go through now in both The Raid and in The Raid 2. It seems like the character has a new sense of confidence to him which I really enjoyed.

Iko Uwais: Thank you! There was definitely more involved in making the character of Rama in the sequel. In the first movie, Rama was a rookie so that role didn’t involve a lot of emotional attachment in it. So because Rama is given a harder assignment in the sequel, plus he had to protect his family, there are a lot of emotions involved for him. Rama also had to hide those emotions really well while he was playing these different ‘characters’ so it was a lot more challenging playing Rama in the sequel.

Gareth mentioned during his interview that you also became a father while making these films so I’m sure that had to have an effect on your emotional responses to certain scenes as well.

Iko Uwais: Yes, I have a daughter now so I have a little family that’s just starting. For that scene where I’m calling home in The Raid 2 I could definitely connect to those feeling more than just an actor playing a part. Having a child has changed me as an actor too; I feel things more now than back when I was a single guy.

Can you talk about your approach to the stunts and choreography for The Raid 2? You guys raised the bar pretty high with The Raid but for this one, it feels like there just isn’t a bar left anymore to raise (laughs). Were you feeling any of that pressure along the way? The fights themselves also became sort of storytelling devices too.

Iko Uwais: We had actually started working on some of this choreography even before working on the first Raid. It was really hard though because when we made the first film, we knew what we wanted to do with the sequel so we couldn’t do stunts at this level for the original The Raid.  In fact, we had first worked on another movie together called Merantau, so what we had to do was make sure that whatever we were going to do with The Raid, it was just a notch above Merantau. For The Raid 2, that had to be a notch above the film before it. Each time we raise the stakes.

I know they’re probably all your favorites- because they’re all my favorites- but was there a fight scene in particular that was your favorite to choreograph?

Iko Uwais: The kitchen fight. Definitely the kitchen fight. I was really proud of that choreography because I had to prepare for it for six weeks. So it was a really long process for me because the choreography changes throughout. We start off with hand-to-hand combat and then we had to seamlessly go into fighting with small knives and make that work. Then, we went into using the large knives and all of that had to be very fluid. We put a lot of thought and work into that whole scene- it just keeps building and it felt like there was a lot of adrenaline by the end.

You mentioned Merantau, earlier which I went back and watched after The Raid: Redemption because of how impressed I was by your work and by Gareth’s work as well. It’s really interesting to see how you both have grown through these three movies. What’s that experience been like for you, experiencing all this alongside Gareth?

Iko Uwais: Gareth is really like my big brother. He trusts me fully and I trust him fully too. Trust is very precious and it cannot be traded for anything else. And we’ve been through so much together so we really understand each other.

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