Interview: Jake Gyllenhaal & Antoine Fuqua on The Guilty

In the middle of the Toronto International Film Festival, I was lucky enough to speak with Jake Gyllenhaal and director Antoine Fuqua about their latest film, Netflix’s The Guilty. The film is an adaptation of the Danish hit film of the same name. The premise is essentially the same, in that Gyllenhaal is a cop who’s been taken off the streets due to a pending court case. The case’s factors become apparent as the movie goes on, but suffice to say, he’s on thin ice, with being a dispatcher for 911 the last move he can make before his day in court, which is supposed to be the day after this all goes down.

He despises his new gig, which he sees as a step-down. He spends his shift having to send help for johns who’ve been roughed up by hookers, drunk cyclists, and mostly rerouting calls to the fire department, with this taking place with the California Wildfires as a backdrop. However, he suddenly starts to feel like a cop again when a young woman (Riley Keough) calls, saying she’s been abducted by her estranged ex-con husband (Peter Sarsgaard).

During the interview, Gyllenhaal revealed that he was the driving engine behind getting the original film remade. He had attended a screening at the Sundance Film Festival that inspired him to seek out the rights. Gyllenhaal and Fuqua have worked together before (Southpaw) and seem to be great friends and colleagues. The affable Fuqua has always struck me as one of the most liked directors in Hollywood, with many folks working with him again and again. I’ve spoken to both men before and enjoyed talking with them again, with Fuqua telling me about the unreal situation he was in when he shot the film – basically that he’d been exposed to COVID-19, so could never actually visit the set and had to shoot the whole thing remotely. It’s pretty fantastic stuff. 

The Guilty, which I really enjoyed, hits Netflix on Friday!