Kevin Hart & EP Bryan Smiley Discuss Peacock's "Fight Night: Million Dollar Heist"

good morning guys how you doing hey Jeff good morning this is Jeff from Awards radar uh first of all congratulations on the series I thought it was great really really engaging thank you thank you man Kevin I thought your performance was fantastic um you worked with some pretty Heavy Hitters on this one um can you talk about working with the cast and what you may have learned from them um I mean every day was an education uh I really love the fact that when you work with names that big uh tanel of that caliber you can see how they approach their workday right and everybody has a different process um a different road to prep and and you know to personal success in making the material the best that it possibly can be so seeing how Sam approaches seeing Dom seeing teraji who uh I was very active with throughout the series um it was amazing right like you know you're you really got to see how um how much they see outside of the material on page how much more matters to the world of the performance and how much they create to make the things that you're doing make more sense so for me it was just good to kind of be a fly on the wall um a sponge and soak things up and they were never not um giving with the information or the reasons too and also they were always supportive and after take what was great uh what we should try you know we we all developed a nice ying and yang of possibility on set which is very refreshing as well what's your process likea are you can you turn it on and off between takes you saying a character how do you work uh I mean the answer is yes I'm I don't want anybody to ever see my process and try to try to uh gravitate towards doing that I'm very much a multitasker so I'm the guy that's in the scene and when you say cut on a call and doing things or I'm behind a camera or I'm talking to and I'm figuring out or like I'm there's always a lot going on so for me it's um it's about being able to react and not taking away my opportunities to do that at a very high level and always doing it within context but the more fresh the material um the more current the more I'm able to do with it so I don't like to overstudy and over engage myself with the page because I become robotic so it's very much um a loose a loose Road up until we're actually rolling the cameras on the day of just making sure I know my story I know my bullet points I know my world now let me operate in the world and see how my partner does it or how she's going to do it and then it's always having a nice uh one foot in one foot out ability to give it to you and you can give it back to me and it's you know I think that's how you get the most out of a scene Brian I know that Shay abana developed the story from the fight night uh podcast but how did the heartbeat Productions get involved in the project well you know it's funny we we've developed great relationships over the years and one of our dear Partners will packer at will Packer media he did the podcast said you guys need to listen to this I think it's a great series here and I think will knowing us so much he was totally right so we we listened to the podcast and we agreed that was a kind of story you wanted to bring to life you wanted to bring to a series uh and from that place forward we we put all hands on deck and really help make this thing reality Kevin what what would you say you have did you bring anything to the role for chicken man that was not necessarily in the page um I mean yeah you you you have to think and know that you did right like um there's there's there's certain uh certain ver of my my perception of what chicken man did um at the time that I felt would better provide like more story more more context to some of these relationships and some of the reason why they fell apart or why they coexisted and you know I think the biggest thing was the relationship between my household and the relationships that I had created outside of my household and that was the toughest story because you want the audience understand why both of these worlds um were necessary and and you know so instrumental in how he approached his life in his day-to- day and making an audience see that but at the same time still root for you still like you um that's a that's a fine line at you're walking so how we developed that that Rapport between me and the other actresses um was I think done very very well and it was done through some creative choices that myself the director um and my my counters that we were all aligned with I would say some kinism were brought to the table in that regard um but for the other part of staying true to the time period trying to get the Cadence trying to get the dialect uh dialogue trying to get all that stuff down and making sure that you're consistent with it um you don't have a lot of wiggle room there you w to you want to play less um and you know the places where you do have an opportunity to maybe play a little bit making sure it's not it's not excessive to compromise the performance that you were doing on the other side so it was it was it was finding that balance the correct side of the balance so that the Seesaw never went too high up on one side or too low on the other well gentlemen uh appreciate the time and congratulations again it was great good luck thank you manci bye