You both, no doubt, see a lot of thriller scripts come your way. What was it about Atomic that stood out?
SHAZAD: I think it was the amount of stuff we got to do. It was action. It was comedy. It was a buddy movie, a road movie . . . It just had every genre. It was like Midnight Run and Sicario and a western — and very deep, emotional characters as well.
Alfie, your character, Max, is described as a “free-spirited drug trafficker.” That’s a rare turn of phrase . . .
ALFIE: I’ve never really played a character like this before . . . He works for the Venezuelan drug cartel; he’s a driver. But he very much tries to distance himself from the murky side of that industry and say that he’s all about “love.” That’s the only thing he really believes in. He’s got his relationship with his girlfriend, and that’s what keeps him going. So, he’s an optimist, definitely — but as with any interesting character, there are some questionable things about him as well.
Max meets his opposite in the form of the more jaded J.J., who threatens to shoot him in the spine. How does their relationship blossom from there?
SHAZAD: I think, weirdly, even though they lie to each other throughout the series, there’s something honest about saying, “I’m gonna shoot you through the spine.” The blunt honesty of that means they can be open with each other, even if they’re keeping things from each other. There’s a vulnerability there. There’s also hilarious comedy that comes out of that, because definitely one of them talks more, and the other one just gets annoyed. But then they realize they need each other. It’s survival in a high-stakes situation — and there’s a mutual understanding and a kind of respect that gets built out of that.
Stunts are obviously a huge part of the equation here. What was that like?
ALFIE: Well, it was all very hands-on from day one. There’s not a lot of CGI in this. It’s all kind of done for real. And I love having someone say to me, “Drive from Point A to Point B as fast as you can!” Because I myself like driving; something I shared with Max, without a doubt, was my love of going fast.
How do these men change each other during their unlikely journey together?
SHAZAD: They definitely change and grow. My character starts off completely guarded. He softens, and even for him to say, “I’m going to become less violent” at one point — it’s a huge step [laughs].
ALFIE: Max starts to question his own belief system a little bit. What is his idea of “love?” How does that transform throughout the series? Because it does, without a doubt . . .
These guys both carry dark pasts, and now have the chance to be heroic. Even if they aren’t looking for redemption, are they forced to confront themselves?
SHAZAD: It’s a question we all have, isn’t it? Every day. Do I do enough good? What bad things have I done?
ALFIE: I think that’s at the core of this whole story — their humanity. In terms of do they or don’t they [do the right thing]? You’ll just have to wait and see.
Atomic, streaming on Paramount+
MEMORABLE ROLES:
Neither of these two Brits is a stranger to explosive action. Alfie Allen first hit most viewers’ radar as complicated antihero Theon Greyjoy on HBO’s zeitgeist-throttling fantasy epic Game of Thrones, before playing the young punk who killed Keanu Reeves’ dog in the first John Wick flick, and stalwart soldier with a wild streak Jock Lewes in Second World War thriller SAS: Rogue Heroes. Shazad Latif, meanwhile, is fresh off playing Captain Nemo in AMC’s Nautilus, a swashbuckling adaptation of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.
CURRENT GIG:
This five-part thriller casts Allen and Latif as Max and J.J. One is a drug trafficker with a heart of gold. The other is a man on the run from a dark past. After meeting up in the deserts of North Africa, the two chaps unwittingly stumble into possession of some enriched plutonium, and suddenly find themselves hunted by the CIA, MI6, arms dealers and extremists — scrambling to save their own skin and, just maybe, prevent a nuclear apocalypse.