Posted in: Exclusive, Interview, Movies | Tagged: Operation Taco Gary's

Operation Taco Gary's: Milligan on Co-Stars, Memorable Scenes & More

Dustin Milligan (Rutherford Falls) spoke to us about Chroma's buddy sci-fi comedy, Operation Taco Gary's, ensemble cast & favorite scenes.

Dustin Milligan isn't slowing down anytime soon, keeping busy for the better part of 20+ years since his on-screen debut in 2004 with projects like the Lifetime rom-com Perfect Romance and Netflix's Dead Like Me. While he's mostly known for his comedic roles, he's had an eclectic career expanding into horror, thriller, and drama. Some of his recent hits include Miramax's Extract (2009), Lionsgate's A Simple Favor (2018), Prime Video's The People We Hate at the Wedding (2022), and the CBC's Schitt's Creek. Milligan's latest is Chroma's Operation Taco Gary's, an off-the-wall buddy sci-fi film about two brothers, Danny and Luke, played by Simon Rex and Milligan, who embark on a cross-country road trip that quickly devolves when they become involved in a global conspiracy. Milligan spoke with Bleeding Cool about the ensemble comedy, keeping up with its energy, working with writer-director Mikey K and producer Matthew Vaughn, and his favorite scenes.

Operation Taco Gary's Star Dustin Milligan on Ensemble, Improv, and Favorite Scenes

BC: Can you talk about your co-stars like Brenda [Song], Tony [Cavalero], Jason [Biggs], Doug [Jones], and the energy you had with them?
Yeah, I'm a huge Star Trek fan, so getting to work with Doug was incredible. Obviously, Brenda is so amazing with her natural energy. She's so friendly, inquisitive, and curious, with a wonderful energy. Tony is amazing. He and I knew each other from mutual friends and Arturo [Castro] as well. We had this six degrees of separation thing, but again, I felt personally so blessed that I got to interact with everybody. I got to have all these little moments with everybody, and it's so lovely with the foundation of this script being so funny, original, and creative.

When you have all these people coming in, and everybody's nice, talented, and on board to play and explore. My job was how many ways can I react or not react to the craziness that Tony was bringing, which was very hard by the way. Arguably, I failed a lot of the time, specifically with Tony and Arturo, because they were improvising a lot and being so funny. The challenge for me, too, was that I had a pretty small lane for improvising: reacting or not reacting to what they were doing, since my job was to be a representative of the audience in a way, and observe this craziness. I can't say enough about how truly wonderful it is.

There are so many standout scenes in the film, along with so much physical comedy. I can only imagine how many times you might have broken between takes. Some of my favorite standout things for me were like the forest chase scene, the gun testing scene, and it was pretty fucked up. I thought. [Milligan laughs]. Of course, there were the alternating injection and sniffing scenes with Simon. I was wondering if any of those scenes stood out more than the others that were hellish just to get through a passible take?

No, nothing was difficult to do. The injection and sniffing one was great, because that was when I had a moment where I was able to release a lot of the energy that I had to keep pent up. That was very cathartic in a lot of ways and was so much fun. There was some choreography that had to go into that timing and stuff, but also it was just pandemonium, which was so great.

I will talk about the forest chase and the ankle-breaking stuff, which was actually for me. When I was first talking to Mikey and Matthew [Vaughn] on Zoom after I'd read the script, they're like, "Do you have a favorite line or anything?" I was like, "Honestly, it's not a line. It's the forest, the ankle-breaking forest chasing scene, because to me, that sums up what I love about this movie and the other movies from the 90s and 2000s, and that are silly, dumb, obvious, but unquestionably funny comedy. Again, this movie has so much of it, but that, to me, is the perfect example of it. These close-up shots of people rolling their ankles, and it just keeps going. It never stops. Yeah, it's rare. You're reading a script, and you're always analyzing it. You're saying out loud like, "Oh, that's funny," but I laughed reading that ankle-rolling stuff, and I love it so much.

Operation Taco Gary's is in theaters.

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