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Off the Grid Star Josh Duhamel on Survival and Authenticity to Action

Josh Duhamel (Ransom Canyon) spoke to Bleeding Cool about his latest action thriller in Lionsgate's Off the Grid, co-stars, stunts, and more.

Josh Duhamel is accustomed to playing everyman characters like his works in the Transformers franchise, Safe Haven (2013), and Turistas (2006), but for Lionsgate's Off the Grid, he wanted to challenge himself not just physically as an actor but also make sure his character stands out beyond action conventions. The Ransom Canyon star plays Guy, a brilliant scientist who develops revolutionary technology his former employer, a morally bankrupt company, tries to weaponize. He goes off-grid to safeguard humanity. When the company sends a strike force to find him, they make their biggest mistake of all – they weaponize the man they are trying to catch. Armed with unrivaled brains and brawn, the wild genius turns guerrilla warfare into a deadly science. Duhamel spoke to Bleeding Cool about wanting Guy to be as authentic in his science and ingenuity as possible, working opposite Greg Kinnear as one of the film's major villains, building that family cohesion with Maria Elisa Camargo and Michael Zapesotsky's characters, motorcycles, and gadgets.

Off the Grid Star Josh Duhamel on Creating the MacGyver-Type Protagonist in Guy

Bleeding Cool: What intrigued you about Off the Grid?

It was this world that Guy was living in. He had to leave the real world and, out of necessity, go into hiding in the middle of the woods and learn how to live a basic life, completely unplugged from everything. The innovation he uses in some of the gadgets that he creates to neutralize the enemy was fascinating to me. The idea of this cold fusion technology and making a couple of tweaks here and there can turn something very good into something very bad. And how important it is for him to keep this invention out of the wrong hands.

What was it like working with Johnny Martin and Jim Agnew as creatives, and what did you like about Jim's script?

I love Jim's script; that's why I did it. I love this idea of a guy going back to the basics and living off the land. I have a personal affinity for that lifestyle. I spent a lot of time out in the woods myself with my family. In the beginning, it was pretty rough, very similar to what he is living like, but then we built it into something much more comfortable now. That was something I'm constantly thinking about new ways to completely unplug, and if I could do it. Do I have the skill set? Johnny and I spent a lot of time figuring out what exactly he needed to do to not only hide but survive and thrive in a world that was completely unplugged from the luxuries and the amenities of the real world.

How did you prep for your role as Guy as a survivalist? How does it set itself apart from your other roles?

This one is much grittier than a lot of the stuff I've done in that we wanted it to feel very real. We wanted to show, like, what the reality of life looks like out there, unplugged from everything, so there's that. I got to get back on a motorcycle, which was fun, and the goal here was to make people think about some of the things that we're showing and then take them for a ride along the way.

Can you talk about your co-stars like Greg, Maria, Michael, and Ricky [Russert], and what they brought to the film?

I thought this cast was good and totally committed. Ricky plays an insane thug bad guy who will stop at nothing. Greg Kinnear plays a great fish out of water, a highly intelligent character who is a bad guy, while also being very sympathetic. Maria is beautiful and a wonderful leader. We worked on making sure that it felt like a relationship where we were skirting around the idea of this, but because I was trying to stay in hiding, I could never fully commit or even tease the idea of having a relationship, knowing that I might get caught. Michael is a super-talented kid. I was impressed by how good this kid was. I hadn't seen his work before this movie, and I thought he and I had…it was about having a human connection with both Michael and Maria's characters. They both did a beautiful job of making that feel that way.

Were there any particular action sequences or aspects of production that stood out to you during filming? I imagine it might not have been that fun hanging out in the swamp with the humidity and bugs.

It was fun; I had a lot of fun on that motorcycle, ripping around the woods. Thankfully, I had some good stunt riders who could do things that I couldn't, but I did do quite a bit of it. There was that. The chase scene between Michael, Ricky, and Greg was really fun, kinetic, and scary. Also, the gadgets were the hook of this movie, and we spent a lot of time getting them right. We tested all these things out to make sure they work. The innovation behind them was one of the things I hadn't seen for a long time in a movie, and I wanted to make that be the differentiator between this and other movies like it.

Off the Grid, which also stars Peter Stormare, Ana Golja, Talia Asseraf, and Monya Tebji, is available in theaters, digital, and on-demand.

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