'Hobbs and Shaw' star Eliana Sua talks about working with Dwayne Johnson and reveals her hopes for her character Sam's future
High-octane action spectacle 'Hobbs and Shaw' is doing wonderfully well at the box office. The “Fast & Furious” franchise, which now numbers eight films made more than $5 billion at the box office but the success of Hobbs and Shaw speaks for itself. The first spin-off of the 18-year-old 'Fast & Furious' franchise raked in $180.8 million in its worldwide debut on August 2, including $60.8 million domestically — a strong opening that dethroned “The Lion King” after a two-week reign at No. 1.
It is only but fitting that the credit is shared among the cast of wonderful actors who helped turned the spin-off into a speeding success. While the brawn and the fights were the men's forte how can we forget the ladies? Samoan actor Eliana Sua who plays Sam Hobbs the adorable daughter of Johnson's character Hobbs spoke to MEA Worldwide (MEAWW), about how she landed the role in the megastar production and her experience on working alongside actors like Johnson, Statham and Idris Elba.
The movie, as we know stars Dwayne Johnson as Luke Hobbs who is a former federal agent and Jason Statham as Decker Shaw who plays the role of a British soldier turned mercenary, both great actors and brilliant in upholding the 'Strongmen' tag. For Eliana, the wait after auditioning for the role was a pretty long one. But finally, when she came to know she made it to the cast she was ecstatic. She shares, "I was screaming. I was jumping up an down and running around. I was mind blown!"
With a formidable cast on set meeting Johnson would have made any child actor nervous, but not Eliana. She met him the first day on the set and says, "Oh my gosh! it was so awesome meeting Mr. Dwayne Johnson, he is so nice". She shared how he took time in giving her advice on improvising with scenes and also gave her tips on booking more roles in future when she goes for auditions. She followed his advice about improvisation and found that it helped her with quite a few scenes in the movie. Apart from listening to Johnson, the young actor learned a lot by watching the other stars on the set as well.
Eliana's character Sam plays a crucial role in the movie as Hobbs's heart, soul and mind from the beginning of the movie till the end. Everything that he does is keeping his beautiful daughter in mind. While a major part of the movie focuses on the adults, car chases and thrilling action, we see Eliana back on screen towards the end of the film and so that prompted us to ask her now that she has a foothold in the Fast & Furious franchise, where does she see her character in the future if there were to be more films..
Hoping that the story of Sam Hobbs has a future she shared she would like to grow up to be like her dad Luke Hobbs, "Well I would love for my character Samantha to grow up as her dad, like be a fighter or maybe go on some missions with him". She further spoke of having some expertise with kick-boxing, "I would try doing my own stunts too if that ever happens". Hope the director is listening, we have an action hero here in the making.
The movie also served as a huge platform for bringing Samoan culture to the screen. Eliana, who is a Samoan actor, felt that this aspect of the movie made it all the more special for her. She explains, "There's not a lot of Samoan actors in the industry and it's just really cool that in this movie I am able to represent all the Samoans". She was also euphoric about how the movie incorporates the essence of the Samoan culture wholeheartedly.
If it's not the stars and the cars, then be sure the stunning locales of the Fast & Furious films have always been a talking point. Hobbs & Shaw too featured some really stunning places and so we couldn't help but ask Eliana if her role as Sam took her to all the exotic places we saw on film since not everything could have been shot in LA. " Yes I actually went to London and Kwaai and in London, it looked it looked like old New York City, not like the modern but like more old," she tells us excitedly.
Kwaai also fascinated her as she revealed how it reminded her of a tiny picture on a postcard stamp much like Hawaii with the mountains and sea. She even managed to take her first surfing lessons there which according to Eliana, 'was so much fun'. "I felt like I was on a roller-coaster' she shared.
Being her first major movie role we asked Eliana if she cherished any special moments from the film. " Just being able to work with amazing director Mr. David Leitch and to be able to meet all these big stars," says Eliana.
Before ending our conversation she revealed that while school will be in the picture, she will hopefully be starring in a lot more movies in the future as she plans on going for a lot more auditions.