Parade.com’s Jeanne Wolf found out why Morgan was particularly impressed by Zoe Saldana, who plays the lone female member of the group, and why he’s still finding his Hollywood success a little hard to believe.

Zoe was just one of the boys.
“If we had tried to treat her in a different way because she was the woman, she would have actually kicked our butts. She’s a really pretty lipstick-wearing version of us macho guys. She can hold her own. We bonded as a cast and this movie truly works because of the chemistry. We got that from fight training. We kind of fell in love while beating the crap out of each other, which is pretty cool. And Zoe did everything we did.” [READ THE REST HERE]

Jeffrey Dean Morgan Fan: With your new movie, “The Losers,” will fans from your other efforts, like “Supernatural” and “The Watchmen,” recognize this character? Or is he completely different from anything you’ve played?

Jeffrey: That’s a pretty good question. You’ll probably see a little bit of John Winchester in there. You’ll probably see a little bit of The Comedian in there, and maybe even a little Denny Duquette.

Clay is again another character that I get to fiddle with in the gray area. There’s a lot more to him than just this straight up military guy. He’s sort of the father figure of this ragtag group of mercenaries that have been together for a long time, and that’s his concern. His concern is getting them home and getting them home safely.

And he’s got some flaws. His number one flaw is he’s probably got not the best taste in women, and he finds himself getting the team and himself in trouble with this incredible attraction he has to Zoe Saldana’s character, Aisha. So there’s a couple of different layers that I get to play in this and, hopefully, you’ll enjoy them all. And you may recognize a couple of them. We’ll see.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan Info: How do you balance being true to the expectations of the original source material and putting your own stamp on the character like Clay? And is it a relief to have more wiggle room for interpretation than you do with a sacred cow like The Comedian? Or does it make it harder having those out-of-bounds parameters less clearly defined?

Jeffrey: That’s a great question. Well, it has its own challenges, I think, in different ways. With “Watchmen,” you’re dealing with this iconic piece of material that we tried so hard to stay so faithful to. I mean, that graphic novel never left my hand while shooting that movie.

And if there was ever a deviation in the script that I didn’t see in the graphic novel, I would be, like, yes, yes, this isn’t going to work. We have to do exactly what’s in this graphic novel, whereas “Losers,” not only is the character in a gray area, but I got to play this a lot more loose, a lot more free than I even expected I would be able to.

We stayed very true to these characters. This film is based on the first two volumes of what Andy Diggle and Jock did. And yet its adaptation by Peter Berg and Jamie Vanderbilt allowed for a little bit more freedom.

And then what ended up happening was we got these actors together, and the chemistry with us was incredible. I mean, I don’t know that I’ve ever had this much [fun] shooting anything, because we actually genuinely liked each other so much and pushed each other so much as actors that in the course of scenes, sometimes we would go off script and yet being within these characters, and so what you see, what the final product is, some of that stuff isn’t necessarily scripted. It was ad-libbed within these characters, which is a really cool thing to do, and a lot of freedom.

Now, whether or not there’s more pressuring one way or the other, I don’t know. I mean, I feel the pressure. You just want to make the best movie possible. That’s the pressure. “Losers” is a different deal than “Watchmen.” “Losers” is much more a movie for everyone. I think “Watchmen” had a hard time translating to people that hadn’t or weren’t fans of the graphic novel, whereas “Losers” anybody can go see and will enjoy it.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan Fans: Did you have to do any research or learn any new specific skills for this role?

Jeffrey: Well, I did a lot of military and gun training with certainly “Watchmen” and probably a couple of other things. This, I think, the primary training that we did and what was most important was tactical training as a team, this kind of unspoken communication.

We did a lot of communicating especially for a group that is supposed to have been together and fighting as this unit doing these kind of special operations for so long as a unit, there needed to be kind of the secondhand sort of language that while dealing with the guns and the knives and the intense action and, I think we all loved that aspect of it and dove right in.

And that’s something I haven’t done. This sort of teamwork I haven’t done before, this sort of training, which makes this movie really special because it translates really well on film.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan Fans: And this particular fan also says please – she put a PS. Please do a premiere here in Melbourne.

Jeffrey: Well, I wish to God I was going to Australia right now to do a premiere. Unfortunately, I’m sitting in a hotel room in L.A.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan Fan: [I have] a question from my daughter, and I told her that I would sneak it in for you. She wants you to give us three sentences to describe the movie and why we should see it.

Jeffrey: OK. Three sentences to describe the movie. I don’t know. Can I just do three words? It’s a very fun movie. That would be number one sentence. Number two, I get to wear a cool black suit the whole movie. That’s awesome. Three, there’s a little bit of a romance going in it, too. So, between the fun, the action, the debonair suit and a little bit of loving, there’s a little something for everybody, including your daughter, because I think we got that PG-13 rating.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan Info: Up to this point you’ve been running sort of second chair in most of your roles – the most popular characters in several instances, but not the guy carrying the weight and the responsibility of the lead. So as an actor, how was this experience different from those? And did you feel a little more pressure to set the tone, or was it more relaxing to be the lead dog and not have to worry about the view?

Jeffrey: Oh, no, I definitely felt the pressure. I took it very seriously. I have always kind of prided myself on my work ethic, and in this I felt it was necessary. You know, this is a Warner Brothers film. This isn’t some little rinky-dink operation by any sense of the imagination. I took it very seriously. I tried to set an example not only for my cast, but for my crew.

This is a big moment for me in my career. And I won’t say everything is riding on this, but a lot is riding on this for me and future projects. So I took it very seriously, and there wasn’t a day that I woke up without feeling the pressure. I certainly did.

But, you know, living in that pressure, I enjoy. There’s something about that added responsibility of being the leader that I like. It fits my personality, and not that I don’t screw around. I mess around as much as anybody on a set, but I’ll be damned – I’ll be the first one there every day. I’ll be the last one to leave, and, no one ever has to wonder if Jeff’s going to know his lines or be prepared to do anything. I over prepare.

So, we’ll see. I certainly hope this movie does well. I really do. And I hope studios and other people will keep their gazes on me. So, yes.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan Fans: Is the tattoo on your left hand real, or is it for the film? And what is it?

Jeffrey: It is for the film. It is a teddy bear. When you see the movie, you’ll understand. The opening sequence of the film, an event happens. Something happens, and it’s a reminder to Clay of this event and sort of spurs the revenge for him and his obsession with getting Max.

“Lobo happens to be a character that flies by the seat of his pants,” said Morgan of the character’s appeal. “I don’t know if I’m the guy or not, but I think it’s going to be one hell of a movie. I’ll certainly be going to see it.”

However, the actor was quick to clarify that he would definitely be interested in playing the character. “Hey, if Guy Ritchie came to me and said, ‘You want to do Lobo?’ I’d say, ‘Yeah,’”

source: comicbookmovie.com

“I remember seeing it and loving it,” he told MTV News. “It was one of those great popcorn action movies. A bunch of great young actors were in it at the time. This is the same deal. It’s a reboot. It’s really fast, smart, hard action. Great young cast of actors.”

Read the rest of the interview at MTV.com

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Morgan about making comic book adapted films and asked him if he was concerned about doing The Losers immediately after Watchmen, or if he was worried at all about being typecast. “No, I love it,” he said. “We talked briefly about that. It’s kind of an untapped world, this comic book world. I read the same scripts over and over again and comic books are just apt. There’s this big, wide universe out there. If you’ve seen the stuff that has come out and the stuff that they’re making, it’s a trend that’s going to continue for a while. I’m happy to be in this world. I love this. I could do comic book movies forever.”

I continued by asking Morgan if there was a comic book character in particular that he had his eye on playing. “You know, they’re making Lobo right now,” the actor replied. “That would be cool. Lobo would be very cool. I don’t think that I’m as big as Lobo is, but if you could, transplant Mickey Rourke’s body on my head, that would be just great. But I don’t know. It’s an untapped world for me as well. Every time I kind of hear about something I go out and get the book or I look it up. We’ll see. You’re always looking for material that’s kind of smart and fun and this seems to be where it is right now. The studios are really gravitating towards it. More than I’ve ever seen them gravitate towards anything in a long time. Comic books are really the thing right now and I don’t see that going away for at least the next couple of years.”

Since mega-producer Joel Silver and Academy-Award winner Akiva Goldman are producing Lobo as well as The Losers, I asked Morgan if he thought that gave him an extra advantage to getting the part? “That’s true. So I do have an in. I’ll be elbowing somebody soon,’ the actor said. “You know, they had initially talked to me about wanting to do Jonah Hex” he continued. “So I sat down with Akiva. Warner Brothers really wanted me to do it but Akiva was also attached to The Losers. We started talking about it and I said, The Losers is the movie I really want to do.”

“Then there was a chance that I wasn’t going to be able to do it because of the other movie I was doing,” Morgan explained. “I was freaking out because, really, I was wanting to do The Losers for so long. There was a lot of, “Why is he doing this after he just did Watchmen?” But they’re totally different characters. Just because they come from the same genre of graphic novels, otherwise they’re completely different. I think the best stories right now are coming from that world. I’m just happy my foot’s in the door. Like I said, I am not scared of a graphic novel. My agent says, “Well, it’s another graphic novel”. I don’t care. It’s better writing than anything else that’s out there. The characters are much better,” Morgan concluded.

Finally, I asked the actor what he was planning to work on after he finishes shooting The Losers? “I’m jumping back in. I go to work on something about ten days after I’ve finished shooting. I don’t know if I can say. It’s a remake of a movie that I love. I don’t know if I can tell you yet,” the actor said reluctantly. “I knew you were going to ask. Fuck …Red Dawn. I just love that fucking movie, ever since I was a kid. I guess I’m more or less the old Powers Booth character. There are all the kids and Powers Booth is the pilot that lands in the film and kind of helps them take down the bad guys and blow communism away. It’s a really good, young cast. I’ll be the old guy in it, which is cool. The guy who is directing it is Dan Bradley who is the second unit director on all The Bourne and Spider-Man movies. He’s the real deal. A real good, action director
and apparently a really good, stylized director with actors. I’m very much looking forward to it.”

The Losers hits theatres hard in 2010.

source: movieweb.com