"I Love Him For His Self-Hatred": Taron Egerton on Being a Bad Guy in She Rides Shotgun

In She Rides Shotgun, released on Friday via Lionsgate, a man named Nate seeks to begin a new chapter after his release from jail. Nate (played by Taron Egerton) continues to find himself burdened by his past — while in prison, he made enemies with a dangerous gang that has since put a bounty on his head. In a stolen car, he goes on the run with his daughter Polly (Ana Sophia Heger), who has grown up without him.

Based on Jordan Harper's 2017 novel, She Rides Shotgun is a heavy crime thriller in which Egerton gives one of his grittiest performances yet.

We meet with Egerton and director Nick Rowland on a Friday afternoon at the Ritz-Carlton in Dallas, as they’ve been on the road, thankfully, to promote the movie, and not because they’re on the run from bounty hunters.

For Egerton — who came to fame from the Kingsman franchise and from playing Elton John in the 2019 biopic Rocketman — this role presents a different type of challenge.

“He worries he's a bad guy,” Egerton says of his character. “But I don't think bad guys worry if they're a bad guy, you know? And I love him for that reason. I love him for his doubt and his regret. And honestly, it sounds a bit heavy, but I love him for his self-hatred, which he has a lot. So, I found [this character] very stimulating.”

Egerton was initially drawn to the pure emotion that bleeds throughout the screenplay, which he read before reading the book.

“I thought it had soul, and that's a difficult thing to define,” he says. “But I thought the script had a quality in it that moved me, and I wanted to keep reading it. You'd be amazed how many scripts you read where it feels like homework. And it's normally because there's something very relatable and human in it that keeps you reading it. And there's something about this central relationship where I really cared about this duo.”

Over the course of the movie, Nate goes to extremes to protect Polly, going so far as to dye and cut her hair to make her unrecognizable. Much of what unfolds onscreen stays true to the book, but one major difference allowed Rowland to encapsulate the rigor and high stakes of the story.

Although parts of the book take place in Los Angeles, the movie is set — and was filmed entirely on location — in New Mexico.

“When I landed into Albuquerque, I just fell in love with everything that I was seeing,” says Rowland. “I think there's a real mythic and ethereal quality to New Mexico. There's obviously the lineage of other great American stories that have been told there, and I was just so excited by everything that I was seeing. There were so many gifts being presented to us that I wanted to use in the film.”

She Rides Shotgun might be an overwhelming two-hour watch for some. Egerton says that despite the “heavy and intense” material, though, it didn’t weigh down the mood between takes, as he and Heger would often take breaks to “jump around” and “dance.” When it was time to resume filming, the pair would lock back in.

“The stakes are really high,” says Egerton. “You have to throw yourself into it, and your body's really going through it. And if I'm not really invested, I worry that it would be underpowered.”

For Rowland, the film offered a similarly new challenge, too.

Known for foreign indies like Calm With Horses and Floodlights, the director finds his widest release to date with She Rides Shotgun. While working with an indie-film budget and time constraints may seem like a hindrance, Rowland executed the production with great detail, something he hopes will make the film a timeless classic years on.

“We made the film with a lot of gratitude, and I also feel we were making something that we cared about, and that doesn't always happen,” says Rowland. “It's like a superpower — we were really grateful to be there. I know that I'll watch this film in 20 years, and if I haven't seen it in 20 years, I'll go, ‘Bloody hell, we did a good job then.’”