Matt Damon talk

Matt Damon once again took on one of his most recognisable and successful roles of a conflicted superspy in Jason Bourne, the latest in the franchise. Damon reunited with renowned director Paul Greengrass, with whom he has worked on two other Bourne movies, to deliver everything audiences might want. He was also seen in period epic The Great Wall and has just worked with Alexander Payne on Downsizing. Damon reveals the reason he came back to Bourne ahead of the movie’s India premiere..

What was the idea that drew you back in?
Matt: One was just that we were waiting for the world to change a little bit to bring him back into kind of a new era, and it feels like we’re in that now. And this issue of privacy vs. security is such a big topic today that it felt like a good thing to base a Bourne movie around. But the other side of it was just personally for Paul and I, over the years, people would ask us if we were ever going to make another one. After a while we just decided that that’s a reason to make another movie, that there’s actually an audience that wants to see it.

You’re an Oscar-winning writer and deeply invested in this character. How much back and forth was there before Paul and Chris (Rouse) went off to write the script? 
MD: We talked a lot, in broad terms and thematically. The last film that we did was very much about the war on terror and so the set pieces were staged in London and New York and Madrid, and those were all the cities that were affected by terrorism directly at that time, so thematically we’re always trying to seat him in a world that feels like the one we’re all living in. So Paul talked in broad terms about Greece and Athens and that border and migrants and austerity and all these things, and this was a few years ago. 
He said Greece would really kick off and sure enough, it did. So it felt like the right place to start our movie and to start running the character through these environments that feel like they’re torn from the headlines.

Having been away from the character for a few years, is he an easy guy to get back into?
MD:  I love the character. I don’t have a hard time running him down. The physical side is the most challenging part. Trying to get back in shape really in a full time job at my age, to try to get fit like that. It’s not a natural state for a 45-year-old! Unless you’re Dwayne Johnson or something. So that was a lot of work. But the emotional side of him, it always felt very accessible to me.

Did being in shape for The Martian help with ramping back up to Bourne levels?
MD: I had to be in shape for that and then I did a movie in China (The Great Wall), for which I had to be in good shape as well, which then went right into Bourne, so it was an 18-month period where I stayed in shape. But I still had to ramp up. The last eight weeks, when I started picking up the workouts, going back to maybe six days a week and some two-a-days there, and tightened the screws on the diet a little bit more. 

How was the shoot this time? 
MD: This was great. It was just seamless. The last two Bourne movies we did together were 138 and 128 days respectively and so we saved so much time on this one just knowing exactly what we were doing, having a screenplay that we all liked and weren’t re-writing as we were shooting, which definitely can land you in some trouble! 

(Jason Bourne will premiere on October 8 at 1 PM and 9 PM only on Sony PIX)