Dave Bautista's character in 'Stuber' is 'imprisoned by his own conception of masculinity. [He] thinks like his dad — he taught him to ‘be a man.' It’s pointed out later on that his dad was really just a dick.”
The Los Angeles-set"Stuber" marks a rare studio action film led by stars of Asian descent in Kumail Nanjiani, left, and Dave Bautista.
“A lot of times people aren’t really interested enough to talk about personal stuff,” said Bautista, joining Nanjiani in a Beverly Hills hotel suite toward the tail end of a long day of promotion. “And, sometimes, you don’t have time to spend with people. But we had a lot of time to spend together, and a lot of times it was just us, sitting in this car.”
Bautista returned the admiration: “I have a lot of favorite things [about Nanjiani], but one thing that stuck in my head is that Kumail is really drawn to sad songs. I thought it was odd and beautiful at the same time.” The pair forged their paths to"Stuber” from the very different worlds of wrestling and comedy, respectively: Bautista grew up in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and made his WWE debut in 2002; around the same time, the Karachi, Pakistan-born Nanjiani started doing stand-up in Chicago.
Police detective Vic enlists the help of his Uber driver, Stu to help him track down a deadly criminal. amid the shootouts, fist fights, car chases and hijinks that ensue as Stu, desperate for a 5-star rating, begrudgingly takes Vic across Los Angeles and back on the trail of the ruthless criminal who killed his partner.
Bautista agreed. “Vic thinks like his dad — he brought him up and taught him to ‘be a man,’ ” he said. “It’s pointed out later on that his dad was really just a dick.” Their characters’ backgrounds are just part of the fabric of the film, which also stars Cuban American actress Natalie Morales as Vic’s daughter, Nicole, and Indonesian actor Uwais, of “The Raid” movies, as his nemesis.Inclusive casting wasn’t necessarily by design, but “it’s an important issue with me,” said Bautista, who with Nanjiani improvised one of the film’s most pointed exchanges, in which Stu misidentifies Vic as white and spends the rest of the film perplexed over Vic’s ethnicity.
“I get emotional watching commercials,” said Bautista, who showed off his dramatic range in “Blade Runner 2049.” “I wanted to do a comedy, and I’d looked at a bunch of scripts, and most of them were pretty godawful. But I connected with this one on different levels. I believe that if you can leave a theater and want to sit down and talk about the film, that’s what sets films apart. That’s why films get watched over and over.
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