ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Day Shift stars Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco about their buddy action comedy that sees the duo battling vampires. It begins streaming on Netflix on August 12.
“A hardworking dad out to provide for his daughter uses a boring pool-cleaning job as a front for his real gig: hunting and killing vampires,” reads the logline.
Tyler Treese: Jamie, while there’s a lot of great vampire ass-kicking, I feel like family is really at the core of this story. How important was it to have that grounded element to really just drive Bud?
Jamie Foxx: Oh, man. Listen, it’s so important, man. It’s so important because it makes the movie. It gives it a blue-collar aspect. Like, here’s this guy trying to make sure he doesn’t lose connection with his daughter, which I personally experienced. You don’t want to lose the connection with your kids. Then he has to go to work to make some money and, just happens to have the most interesting job in the world where he’s killing vampires and getting money for fangs. So I think having that, and even, we talk about this, putting [a picture of] my daughter on the steering wheel … things like that keep it grounded.
Dave Franco: Gives it stakes, too.
Foxx: Yeah, exactly.
Dave, your character is so fun. You’re playing this accountant, you’re thrown out into the field. You’re afraid of guns. You’ve got Nickelback as your ringtone. What is your approach to just ratcheting up your reactions? Because the comedy is so great throughout.
Franco: I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, I’m kind of playing the conduit for the audience, right? Like this is a guy where it’s like, okay, if you put a normal person in this scenario, what would happen if they actually faced off against vampires? The truth is, they would probably piss themselves, you know? They’d be freaking out. And so, I was just trying to play the reality of that as much as possible. But again, working with this guy, he just makes it easy, and so I’m just basically reacting off of what he’s doing. Our director, he gave us a lot of freedom to improvise and just kind of come up with stuff in the moment. So we were just kind of flying and having the best time playing off each other.
Foxx: And just to let you know, I said I wasn’t going to do this movie unless Dave Franco is in the movie. That is real because I’ve been clocking him for a long time. I said man, one of these days we’ll be able to do it and do it big. Man, to watch people’s reactions, I call it the fruits of his artistic labor has just been amazing.
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Jamie, you’re such a great musician yourself. “Slow Jamz” is one of my favorite songs. This soundtrack is filled with just great G Funk and 90s hip-hop. We got Body Count there and then Snoop Dogg just has an amazing role. How great was it just embracing music here?
Foxx: It was great because we thought, you know, soundtracks hadn’t been around in a while. I said, “Snoop, what’s up with a soundtrack to go with our movies, sort of bring some of that back.” And it really helps the film, and then having Snoop and seeing him in a different light where he is kicking ass and everything, that was amazing, but also leaning on him and say, “Yo, Snoop, what will we play right here?” Because that’s his whole get down. So when you hear “Murder Was the Case” being broken down at the beginning of the trailer, it automatically launches something in the back of your head like, “Oh,” that’s what we remember as being something incredible.
And then topping it off…
Both: Mowing down vamps with my best friend Bud!
Foxx: Hit me! So that came from him. He adlibbed the line at the end of the movie. I thought it was amazing. Took that line from a video clip. I filmed him, sent it to my producer, he sends it back within an hour. We got a great song. It plays in the credits, but we took it a step further. We actually put lyrics to it and we shot a music video to it. So we’re about to hit the road.
Dave, there are just so many great ways the story can go after the ending. Are you hoping that this is the start of a franchise?
Franco: Absolutely. We want to make as many of these as possible, and without giving too much away, by the end, we’re a team together. So, to be able to start a new one where we’re hitting the ground running, and I can be in on the action from the get-go. That sounds like a blast for me.
Foxx: Come on.
