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Movies & TV

21st Oct 2019

Wendell Pierce describes a pretty terrifying day on set in Russia for Jack Ryan Season 2

Rory Cashin

wendell pierce russia

Bunk’s story should go down in the history of on-set stories.

If you haven’t watched the first season of Jack Ryan yet, then we highly recommend you do, because it is a very entertaining and solidly made action thriller series with a great duo of central performances by John Krasinski (as Ryan) and Wendell Pierce (as his partner James Greer).

JOE was invited to London recently to chat with Krasinski and Pierce, as well as their new co-stars Michael Kelly and Noomi Rapace, ahead of the launch of the show’s second season and the conversation turned to the globe-trotting nature of the story.

While most of the action takes place in Venezuela, the new season finds Pierce (perhaps still best known as Bunk Moreland in The Wire) as an intelligence agent working in Russia. It was something that the actor Pierce was incredibly happy about, but he also divulged a story that would make most actors’ hair stand on end.

“To shoot in Red Square was just absolutely phenomenal,” Pierce told JOE.

“But, we had everything in place, we had all of our permits, but then that morning, we were shooting, they said no. They came in and shut everything down. At the time, the driver and I, in between shots, we were looking at a [boxing match] on the phone.

“And then all of a sudden, all cell communication, all data, shut down. The police rolled in and stop production and it was as if we were in the middle of a mission, you know? And we were like ‘Wait a minute, we have the permit and everything!'”

“While we were there, you could feel the presence of some craft work going on in the hotel,” Pierce continued.

“When I was working with my Russian tutor, I was working on some of the Russian and in the middle of it she goes (waves hand) ‘No, wait, just one second’, and she turned over the script.”

When the tutor indicated that they were being watched by a Russian intelligence agent, Pierce asked how the tutor knew.

“She said ‘I had a fiance and he was a cadet and they send the cadets to the American hotels to practice their craft.’ And this guy was obviously trying to see what we were doing, so it was all very exciting!”

Exciting isn’t a word we would’ve used to described it…

“Maybe I shouldn’t have said any of that, huh?” laughs Pierce.

We laughed too, although it may have been the most nervous laugh we’ve ever had.

Jack Ryan Season 2 premieres on Prime Video on Friday 1 November. Check out the action-packed trailer for the new season right here:

Clip via Amazon Prime Video

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