Cast Interview, Street Fighter Legend of Chun Li

MoviesOnline sat down with the bad guys of “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” – Neal McDonough, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Taboo -- to talk about their new movie, what it was like shooting on the wild and crazy streets of Bangkok, and how they prepared for the ultimate battle of good versus evil.

The forces of darkness are led by Bison (Neal McDonough), a crime boss of seemingly limitless power, and whose past holds a shocking secret. Bison's syndicate, Shadaloo, is taking over the slums of the Thai capital, a task overseen by Balrog (Michael Clarke Duncan), a massively built enforcer and killer. Also in Bison's employ is the assassin Vega (Taboo, of the group The Black Eyed Peas), a masked talon-wielding warrior, whose weapon is tailor-made for slashing and stabbing attacks. Bison's attache is the beautiful but deadly Cantana (Josie Ho).

As Bison instigates a wave of violence in the slum districts, grabbing power and land no matter what the costs to its residents, a team of heroes emerges. Chun-Li (Kristin Kreuk) is a half-Caucasian/half-Asian beauty who gave up a life of privilege to become a street fighter, battling for those who cannot fight for themselves. Her kung-fu master, Gen (Robin Shou), once a feared criminal, now fights for the forces of good. Equally determined to stop Bison is Interpol cop Charlie Nash (Chris Klein), who has tracked the crime boss all over the world, and Nash’s partner, gangland homicide detective Maya Sunee (Moon Bloodgood).

These vivid characters and their world are long known to fans of the iconic videogame "Street Fighter," which Capcom released in 1987. At the time, the 1-2 player game set a new precedent in two-dimensional interactive entertainment. In 1991, Capcom released to arcades, Street Fighter II, featuring new characters and fighting styles. The games' action and imaginatively staged fight scenes are a natural fit for a big screen translation.

Neal McDonough, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Taboo are fabulous guys who know how to have a good time and we really appreciated talking to them. Here’s what they had to tell us:

Q: Hi guys!

Michael Clarke Duncan: Hi there! I have a very big announcement to make. I am the newest member of the Black-Eyed Peas. I’m the hype man who’s going to be running back and forth getting the Peas all peaked up so when you see our world tour, they’ll put me in the background with the microphone going, “Yeah! Yeah! Black-Eyed Peas!” That will be me. (laughs)

Taboo: Yeah. He starts in June.

Michael Clarke Duncan: I start in June when we go on tour.

Q: You must have known he has a voice for it?

Taboo: He’s amazing. And he has the stamina to be on stage for two hours rocking thousands of people.

Michael Clarke Duncan: How cool it must be to be in their group and come out and see 60,000-70,000 fans. See, Neal and I, we get our adulation later during the movie. You know, nobody’s there to clap us on during the take. But, to come out live and say, “What’s up, Scotland?!” I would flip out. I want to do that. Since he’s coming onto my genre, I think it’s only fair that I produce a rap album.

Neal McDonough: I like that.

Taboo: Works for me.

Q: Are any of you fans of the Street Fighter series?

Michael Clarke Duncan: Oh, I am. I think all of us are.

Taboo: We are.

Neal McDonough: I think everyone was. I mean, growing up everyone, whether you played it or not, knew what Street Fighter was. And obviously, with 2-1/2 million copies sold the first weekend and almost 10,000 people showing up for the game night downtown at the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art), I think people know about Street Fighters.

Michael Clarke Duncan: How many got turned away?

Neal McDonough: 5,000 people got turned away. It was awesome. I mean it was crazy, so hopefully we’ll get that kind of turnout for the movie.

Michael Clarke Duncan: Yeah, that would be good.

Q: So you got to play the new game?

Michael Clarke Duncan: I can’t play the new one. I played the old Street Fighter game 20 years ago, but I can’t play the new one. I’m not that technologically advanced.

Neal McDonough: I’m still playing Pong.

[Laughter]

Q: Neal, there’s really not one redeemable quality about your character.

Neal McDonough: (laughs) Yes, there is! That goatee was sweet!

Q: Do you have to like the characters that you play or at least some aspect of them?

Neal McDonough: I love every character that I play, and the thing about Bison is he doesn’t have an evil bone in his body. Literally, that’s just the way that I play it. I based him after Richard Branson, this worldly bon vivant with great clothing, he had the best of schooling, everything. This guy did whatever he needed to do, and speaks all the different languages, and he’s a phenomenal guy, and if you saw him walking down the street, you’d say, “I want to be like Bison.” Right? Until he does some things that are absolutely twisted in our thinking, but for Bison it’s just a matter of fact. So you never see me lift the eyebrow and do the stylie whiplash. He sticks to the corporate greed of life and he enjoys it.

Q: You didn’t get the big red suit?

Neal McDonough: No. I look a lot better in Savile Row than I do in a big red suit. We had the great tailors making us suits and shoes and everything. I had a wonderful, delicious time playing Bison, that’s for sure.

Q: Why did Bison have an Irish accent? Did he spend some time in Ireland?

Neal McDonough: Well originally how we drafted it was that he grew up in Ireland then moved to Bangkok, and then his parents were killed there, he was on the streets of Bangkok, then he went back to school in Ireland and grew up there. That’s where he learned culture and the ways of the world and then as soon as he amassed his power, he was going to go back to his homeland and squash it, or go back to the place that squashed him, and squash it. So that was kind of the thinking of Bison for this film. With me being Irish, it was kind of a no-brainer.

Q: Can you talk about the training you had to do?

Neal McDonough: (laughs) I’m a natural. Dion Lam who choreographed the whole thing, he trained us and we worked so hard, and there’s Michael Clarke doing 1,000 push ups a day and lifting VW buses.

Michael Clarke Duncan: (laughs) We had nothing else to do.

Neal McDonough: He had 10 Thai guys on each arm doing curls. (laughs) That was his way of training. And then, Taboo to come over for his first major feature film, he’s been acting since he was a kid, he’s been doing music for so long, he’s been doing martial arts since he was 12, to come over and have his energy and infuse it into what we did was fantastic. This whole film was like a breath of fresh air to all of us. We had a great time and if they ask us to do part two or three, we’d do it.

Michael Clarke Duncan: And four.

Neal McDonough: And four.

Michael Clarke Duncan: I stop at four.

Neal McDonough: Is that so? I stop at five because I’d go into the Black-Eyes Peas now too.

Taboo: For me, it was just an honor to work with such veterans in the game and just to get pointers. Michael came to a Black-Eyed Peas show before the movie was filmed and he’s like, “Hey, I wanted to meet you to get a personal relationship with you and become your friend and build a relationship like that going into the movie,” so that when we were on set, or even now, we’re friends.

Michael Clarke Duncan: I’m excited to know him.

Taboo: I’m excited to know you guys.

Neal McDonough: It feels so good in here. There’s a lot of love!
[laughter]

Q: Your character seemed to have a lot of fun with everything that he did. Is that something you brought to it?

Michael Clarke Duncan: Yeah. You know, I didn’t want to be the stereotypical big heavy who is mean and growling. I believe that the person who is more scary in a room is a person that smiles a lot and who’s big. Because I’m already big, I have the size, but if my boss tells me to go do something, I do it with a smile, it’s way more sinister. I like to do things with a smile. I was having fun beating people up and destroying stuff. 

Neal McDonough: When you shoot that missile and blow the building up and you’re laughing your ass off, that’s one of the best moments of the movie.

Michael Clarke Duncan: Exactly. Because it was fun!

Neal McDonough: But that’s just Michael being Michael. He was just being himself in the film while he was beating the snot out of people. He was just having a great time and it was infectious.

Michael Clarke Duncan: But, if you can tell, this is Bison right here. These are his clothes but he’s still the same.

Neal McDonough: These are my pajamas actually.

Michael Clarke Duncan: His acting is phenomenal. I always tease him about his acting because he is so precise. My style is more street ghetto style basketball. He would be Tim Duncan, the precision, the person that used the backboard all the time, that knows all the angles on the court. I would be more like a Kobe Bryant just shooting anymore, just slashing to the basket. When you work with Neal and you watch him act, the acting is precise. And I look at this guy and I said, “I didn’t know that you could do that on film.” Neal has things down to where if he takes his fork, he’s going to tell the director, “Hey, I’m taking my fork. I’m going to chew four times, then I’m going to say this.” That’s how precise he is. I never thought about that. I chew and my mouth would be full of food whereas he’s studied acting and his acting is the shit.”

Neal McDonough: Should I be blushing yet?

Michael Clarke Duncan: His acting is the shit. I’m just saying that. When I watch guys like Neal and I watch guys like Taboo, Neal is a trained actor and Taboo is a trained entertainer. So, for him to make a jump to movies, it’s like you can do videos, but this is different from a video because now you have the speaking lines and you have to get into character. He didn’t know nothing about that. He’s an entertainer. For him to take a jump like that, it’s like the most phenomenal thing to me to see a musician, a trained entertainer, come into our realm and hold his own.

Neal McDonough: I’ll say one thing though. I was never nominated for an Academy Award.

Taboo: Yes!

Michael Clarke Duncan: But I never went to the prestigious school of … What was that school?

[laughter]

Neal McDonough: LAMDA (London Academy of Dramatic Arts).

Michael Clarke Duncan: LAMDA! I never went to LAMDA either. (laughs)

Neal McDonough: But you got the nomination. I didn’t get it.

Michael Clarke Duncan: But you went to LAMDA!

Taboo: The cool part about this movie for me as a performer is I was able to do what I do with Black-Eyed Peas and that’s present a martial arts mystique in the group. I do that in the videos. When people see me on stage, I always have forms or stances to represent that. And now, to be able to do that on the big screen, it was a natural progression for me. And I want to continue making action films.

Michael Clarke Duncan: And just for the record, Will.i.am has nothing on him. Just to let you know, he will kill Will.i.am. in any type of match, anything, wrestling…

Neal McDonough: Don’t mess with Taboo.

Taboo: Thank you, guys. X-Men Origins has nothing on Vega.

Michael Clarke Duncan: There you go!

Taboo: John Wraith.

Q: Are you guys in competition?

Taboo: Yeah, we’ve had a couple conversations where we’re doing a Black-Eyed Pea press junket and a journalist has asked, “In a fight, who’s gonna win? Vega or John Wraith?” I always say, “Hands down, Vega!”

Michael Clarke Duncan: No brainer!

Neal McDonough: It goes without saying.

Q: Were you able to see through that mask you wore? Was it heavy or light?

Taboo: It was light. I actually got to keep the mask.

Q: Did you bring it on stage with you?

Taboo: Yeah. There’s gonna be a lot of Black-Eyed Pea fans that want to see Vega and John Wraith on stage. So I’m gonna bring out the mask for the Street Fighter fans.

Q: Oh, please fight each other!

[laughter]

Taboo: It’d be like, “Let’s get it started!”

[SPOILER ALERT]

Q: Neal, of all the cold blooded things that Bison gets to do, what was your personal favorite?

Neal McDonough: I think without question my favorite moment in the film is when I’m beating ******* and I turned around in the scene and I look at Balrog’s face, and Balrog’s done some obviously heinous things…

Michael Clarke Duncan: Nothing like that!

Neal McDonough: The way he looks at me is like, “Oh shit!”

Michael Clarke Duncan: ‘Cause that was cold blooded!

Neal McDonough: The look on his face was my single favorite moment in the film. There I am just wailing away and splashing blood on my face and I turn around and I look at Michael and he’s just like, “What the fuck!”

Michael Clarke Duncan: In the movie, you think he’s in the bag like I am and he’s actually beating ******* to death.

Neal McDonough: Yeah, it was good.

Michael Clarke Duncan: When I saw that part, I was like “Oh my God!” Now that’s worse than anything I could have thought of. I’m not even that evil and diabolical. That was evil.

Neal McDonough: I had a very good time.

[END SPOILER ALERT]

Q: Do you think he could use a hollowed out volcano and a cat or does he not need those kind of things?

Neal McDonough: (laughing) A what?!

Q: You know, James Bond? The evil mastermind has the hollowed out volcano.

Michael Clarke Duncan: Oh yeah.

Neal McDonough: Well I had that big lair. You know, that big castle I have in the middle of nowhere. That’s my Castle Doom, I guess. But it was all good fun.

Q: Neal, had you seen Raul Julia’s performance in the original Street Fighter and was there any consideration?

Neal McDonough: I had never played Street Fighter and I hadn’t seen the original Street Fighter film either, so when they asked me to do it I really didn’t want to see anything, because everyone spoke so much about Raul Julia’s performance and how fantastic it was, and can you live up to that and can you live up to Bison in the video games? I said to myself, I’ll make a new spin on it, and that’s what Andrezej (director Andrzej Bartkowiak) and Ashok (producer Ashok Amritraj) and Patrick (producer Patrick Aiello) wanted to do. I think it really worked, and I still have not seen it, but as soon as the film comes out and I see it in the big theater with everyone, then I’ll go watch Mr. Julia’s performance and be happy that I changed it because he was an amazing performer.

Q: Taboo, can you talk about your fight scene with Kristin and what you did to prepare for that?

Taboo: I actually trained for two months with a fighter named Eddy Millis who was a K1 fighter before I went to Thailand. Dion Lam, who was the stunt coordinator, prepared all of us for every scene that we had where we had to do stunts. I was on a wire. It was amazing because I learned from one of the best.

Q: Was that the first wire work that you’ve done?

Taboo: No. Actually with Black-Eyed Peas’ Let’s Get It Started, our video, we had wires, and Joints & Jams from our earlier work, we used wires as well.

Q: How does your martial arts background fit in with Vegas’ style? Is it completely different?

Taboo: It’s a whole new learning process because Vega was ninjitsu and he had matador kind of skills but he’s not a matador in this movie. He was a little bit edgier, a little bit darker, not as “Woohoo! Ole!” You know, that was the vibe that I got from the video game. When he would beat somebody up, he would have a laugh when he would be on the fence, but we’re not laughing in this movie. I had to learn kick boxing and Jikwondo which is the martial arts that I brought to the table and kind of gave it a twist to Vega.

Q: Michael, we hear there’s a finished script for Sin City 2 going around?

Michael Clarke Duncan: I haven’t seen it yet. I will hopefully get that finished script and start shooting with Robert Rodriguez who is a phenomenal director, but I have not seen it yet.

Q: Jamie King told us that Frank Miller had finally finished it. Do you know if there’s a big role for Manute?

Michael Clarke Duncan: I hope so. I really hope so. I love playing Manute. Manute is another heavy guy that I love to play who’s a no nonsense type of guy who had his eye taken out years before but he’s one of those guys as Balrog is, he’s a no nonsense type of guy and a very easy character for me to play.

Q: Why is that easy for you? You were so sweet in The Green Mile.

Michael Clarke Duncan: (laughing) That’s it, that’s it. That’s exactly why I want to change it. I just want to do something evil. People say, “He’s such a sweet, gentle giant.” No, I’m “Kill, kill, kill!!!”

Q: How was it working with Kristin Kreuk and Chris Klein?

Taboo: Amazing. Like we’ve said before in other interviews, Kristin was there early before we came to Thailand.

Michael Clarke Duncan: She was there a month and a half.

Taboo: Even after we were finished with our scenes, she would still be going hard. And the fact that she had enough stamina and strength to carry the movie like that.

Michael Clarke Duncan: She worked a double [shift] every day, 6 days a week for 3 months.

Neal McDonough: Yeah, it was unbelievable.

Michael Clarke Duncan: She was by far the hardest worker on set and the woman never complained one time. Chris Klein was the same way.

Neal McDonough: He complained all the time.

Michael Clarke Duncan: He did? Ah man! See, I didn’t know that. He complained?

Neal McDonough: He was the happiest cat in town.

Michael Clarke Duncan: He got to kiss Moon Bloodgood which was really cool. He got to kiss and make out with her and I thought that was pretty cool because she’s a hot chick and she’s going to be in the new Terminator movie. She left our movie and flew back to the States and started filming there which I thought was fantastic.

Neal McDonough: I’ve said it before. This is the ultimate chick flick. It’s a woman’s empowerment because of what Kristin does and she worked so hard and for so long. If she didn’t do it right, the film wouldn’t have worked. We all worked so hard to make sure this film would work. It’s difficult to make a video game into a really cool movie and I think what Hyde Park and Ashok and Andrzej did was to make it a fresh new look at the Street Fighter game and all because of Kristin’s hard work, it was infectious – her good attitude and her good spirits – and we had a blast doing it and it shows on the screen.

Taboo: And I like that they also gave us the opportunity to add our own personal experiences or our own critiques to the characters so that we could bring something that is personal to us.

Q: Neal, you had some really tough scenes with Kristin. Did you guys talk about them beforehand?

Neal McDonough: We choreographed for a long, long time to make sure because those were pretty trying scenes. The emotional scenes were actually the most challenging. We rehearsed a lot in the beginning and we shot almost chronologically so by the time we got to that, we didn’t rehearse for a few weeks on purpose just to keep everything kind of fresh. I think it was one take, maybe two takes for each angle. That scene where I’m not so nice to her daddy is a pretty powerful scene because we try to keep it raw and simple and truthful instead of being over the top with everything. Bison keeps his word on everything and he doesn’t lie. By being so truthful to the character, it makes him so completely twisted to watch. But when I was playing it, I played it like the guy next door and by doing so, it makes him despicable, which is great.

Q: What did you think of his business strategy?

Neal McDonough: John Daily, whenever he gets behind a ball, he says three words to himself, “Kill, kill, kill.” And that’s kind of the same thing with Bison. It’s not so much kill people as go after it, go get it. In a world of such corporate greed, it really speaks volumes when you have a lead guy like this and you get to see how they think and what they try to go for. For him, he was just going to squash Bangkok and that means killing lots of people, destroying live, but that’s okay, I have my goals to achieve which is pretty sick.

Q: What about his relationship with his daughter? Was there any love there?

Neal McDonough: When he was a kid, he had all the goodness. He had everything but then he realized that the goodness wasn’t working for him so he sold his soul and gave all of his goodness and fused it into this baby. The only piece of goodness that was left in Bison is the remembrance of his child. Granted, he kept her in captivity for 17 years or 14 years, 6 months and 4 days but he remembered exactly how many days she’s been in prison for. He thinks, “I’ve been doing the greatest thing in the world for this girl. Now I’m going to give her the empire.”

Q: Is she a good choice to run the empire though?

Neal McDonough: She’s my offspring. She must be.

Q: She has all your innocence.

Neal McDonough: Yeah, but we’ll figure that out in the next episode. There’s a little cliffhanger. My neck may be a little bent, but I’m okay.

Q: You guys are all coming back?

Neal McDonough: (laughs) Yeah. We’ll all come back. It’s a video game.

[laughter]

Q: From an acting/stuntwork standpoint, is it more fun administering the beating or being the one taking the beating?

Neal McDonough: (to Michael) I think you can answer that.

Michael Clarke Duncan: (laughs) Yeah.

Neal McDonough:  It’s harder to take the beating and make it look real. Like
Kristin, she beat the two of us.

Taboo: Yeah, she beat us.

Neal McDonough: (referring to Michael) Not champ here. He didn’t take a beating. So it’s harder to take the beating and make it look real. It’s easy to grunt and throw a fist but it’s harder to take a punch to the face or get a stick to the face or be flipped over. That’s where you really have to concentrate and tell the truth and I think we all did. I keep going back to it, what Taboo did his first time in that big fight scene with Kristin, it was just awesome to watch. He went for it 100 per cent and it shows on screen so we’re all proud of him.

Taboo: Thank you.

Q: What was the hardest stunt to do?

Neal McDonough: Like I said, it was such an infectious set. We were all so happy to be doing what we were doing, we never thought about the pain of it or that it was 110 degrees and raining all the time.

Michael Clarke Duncan: 120. 120, not 110.

Neal McDonough: We just enjoyed it. It was a challenge. We embraced the challenges and again it shows on screen that we had a great time.

Q: Was it fun shooting in Bangkok?

Neal McDonough: (to Michael) You can do that?

Michael Clarke Duncan: (laughs) It was hot. It was very hot. It was very humid and we had a lot of down time so Neal was like my sandbox buddy.

Neal McDonough: Would you say your skipper is now Gilligan? “Hey, little buddy.”

Michael Clarke Duncan: Yeah, we were calling each other all the time. “What are you doing?”

Neal McDonough: Watching badminton for 7 hours.

Michael Clarke Duncan: Or trying to catch the NBA playoff game which came on at 5:30 in the morning there.

Neal McDonough: You know which movie showed 50,000 times? The Green Mile. I’m telling you, I’m sitting there and I’m saying, “I’m not going to watch this again! [laughter] Room service!” It was classic. It was the only thing on.

Michael Clarke Duncan: That was all we had to do.

Neal McDonough: That was it!

Michael Clarke Duncan: And he ordered…what was your favorite dish?

Neal McDonough: Gai Pad Gra Pow.

Michael Clarke Duncan: (to Taboo) What was yours?

Taboo: Chicken fried rice.

Michael Clarke Duncan: Chicken fried rice with an egg on top with prikniba (?).
That’s this hot sauce you put on it. That was so good.

Taboo: For me, it was good to be a tourist because with Black-Eyed Peas, we always have a certain itinerary that we have to follow and we don’t get to walk around and enjoy the city and so being on Street Fighter I was able to be there for a month and a half. Most of the time I had down time as well and I got to walk around and it wasn’t like, “Fergie! Will-i-am!” It was just very subtle and I got to appreciate the country.

Q: They didn’t recognize you?

Taboo: Not really. I’m not that famous.

Neal McDonough: I, on the other hand, had the experience and opportunity of walking down the streets of Bangkok with Black Elvis.

[laughter]

Michael Clarke Duncan: I hate it when you call me that! I hated that!

Neal McDonough: People just lined up and screamed for him. Like I can’t be your bodyguard, what am I going to do? They were so respectful, but they were just like…

Michael Clarke Duncan: You know what? Neal would not help me out at all. We were over at Pad Kong (?) shopping and I looked up and he’s half a block away. I’m like, could you at least stand right here and say something to divert the people or something? Like “Yeah, I do movies too.” He wouldn’t do nothing. He walked  way ahead of me and left me. That’s what I couldn’t understand. Why did you leave me?

Neal McDonough: I had so much fun watching you.

Michael Clarke Duncan: You walked away. I would have never done you like that. Never in a million years would I have left you like that.

Neal McDonough: (Laughing) It’s because I love you so much.

Michael Clarke Duncan: Yeah! Right. Okay.

Q: So Desperate Housewives has not made it to Thailand?

Neal McDonough: No. I wasn’t on the show at that point.

Michael Clarke Duncan: But they do have a Thai show called Six in the City and it’s these 6 Asian chicks. I used to watch Six and the City every night which is pretty interesting. That, and I watched Ben 10 all the time on the Cartoon Network every day -- between that and Nyquil shots  trying to get to sleep – because our timing was still off over there and 4:30 in the morning you’re just up.

Neal McDonough: And they were doing night shoots every day.

Michael Clarke Duncan: And then we were doing night shoots so I had to take some Nyquil. What’s going on? What day is this?

Neal McDonough: What was the time difference? 15 hours back?

Michael Clarke Duncan: 15 hours. So it was totally bizarre.

Taboo: We were there during monsoon season so it’d be raining.

Neal McDonough: We were shooting exteriors in monsoon season.

Q: Michael, could you catch your WWE over there?

Michael Clarke Duncan: No. In fact, we just saw each other recently at the WWE at Staple Center. I look up and here comes Neal with his wife and his entourage.

Neal McDonough: It was awesome. We had a fun time.

Michael Clarke Duncan: He had like 10 people with him. You talk about me. He didn’t tell you he had 10 people with him when he came to the WWE. It was just me and my girlfriend. We came in and Neal comes in and they’re like, “Who’s that? Is that Neal from Desperate Housewives?”

Neal McDonough: It’s payback time, huh? I get it. I get it. (laughing) He’s calling me out and getting his payback.

Michael Clarke Duncan: We had the biggest fight overseas and we did not speak to each other until just recently.

Neal McDonough: We had three weeks left.

Michael Clarke Duncan: Three weeks. We were playing basketball.

Neal McDonough: And we missed our girls so much.

Michael Clarke Duncan: And we were just full of testosterone and playing ball. He made a call that I didn’t agree with. We argued. I told him he was from Coney Island. He’s from Cape Cod. That insulted him. He took the basketball and said, “I do not have to take your insults. I am leaving.” I said, “You can’t leave with that ball, Neal.” He said, “No, I checked it out. I’m checking it back in.”

Neal McDonough: Three weeks later we’d walk on the set and sit right by each other (not speaking).

Michael Clarke Duncan: He’d sit like this (looking in one direction) and I’d be looking like this (ignoring him while looking in the other direction). I thought, “Oh boy, he’s gonna take all day.”  So I messed with him one day. We had this car scene. We were still mad at each other and his light was pointing right at him. I just turned his light like this. And right before we started shooting, he said, “Andrzej, is this light supposed to be this way?” I was sitting over there saying, “Yes! I got him!” Every time we’d go to shoot, I’d just move his light a little bit. But that’s what I’m talking about – precision! I would have never noticed that little bitty light. Neal noticed that light was not on him. He’d say, “Stop! Where’s my light?”

Neal McDonough: (laughing) Yup. You got me on that one! So I left you hanging in the market.

Q: You guys had way too much fun!

Michael Clarke Duncan: We had way too much fun.

Taboo: They should have their own reality show, huh?

Michael Clarke Duncan: Too much down time. Yes. I’d be the slob. I already know that. He’d be …

Neal McDonough: The Odd Couple 2.

Michael Clarke Duncan: Yes. Oh man! You’d be the clean one. I’d be the slob.

Neal McDonough: We’ve gotta pitch that.

Michael Clarke Duncan: Yeah, for real!

Neal McDonough: I’d be the killer Felix.

Michael Clarke Duncan: Oh yeah, you would be.

Q: Neal, where do you see your character going on Desperate Housewives?

Neal McDonough: Uh…to jail. (laughs) I don’t know. We talked about it. Originally, there was a definitive ending to my character but we’ve had so much fun. I can’t tell you how blessed I am to be part of the show. You know, like Street Fighter, if they ask me to do more of Street Fighter, I’d do it in a heartbeat. If they asked me to do more Housewives, I’d do it in a heartbeat because it’s such a great group of people and I’m really enjoying my character. That being said, I don’t think I could come back out of this character and have to have some kind of frontal lobotomy because I’m pretty nuts on this one so who knows? But I’m having a great time with that one and I get to come home every day and kiss Ruve and my kids so that’s a blessing in itself.

Q: Is there any chance of a Black-Eyed Peas movie?

Taboo: You know what? Right now we’re focusing on a new Black-Eyed Pea album which will be out in June and it’s entitled The End but it’s an acronym for something. Don’t worry, it’s not the end of the Black-Eyed Peas. We’ve still got more in us. I feel like the sky’s the limit with Black-Eyed Peas. We started with just wanting to do music and now we’ve become this international success and then we’re also philanthropists who are giving back to communities like in the Philippines and Mexico and South Africa. We have the Peapod Organization which is a benefit that we’ve had since 1999 and now it’s grown and it’s becoming an international thing as well.

Q: Neal, are there more super villains in your future or superheroes for that matter?

Neal McDonough: Sure hope so. I love acting first and foremost, whether it’s a good guy or a bad guy. Last year I had the good fortune to play Wyatt Cain in Tinman and that could have been my favorite performance of anything I’ve ever done. That was a character that was really close to me. I do enjoy playing the villains and I’ve had a great run in the last year or so doing it. I certainly would love to go back and visit a guy like Wyatt Cain again -- whether it’s Tinman the series that we’ve talked about or just to explore. You know, my characters are the characters I like to play in the gray area. I think we all as human beings live in the gray area. I don‘t know anyone who’s really good or anyone who’s really bad. That’s impossible. Everyone has their flaws. That’s the way we were created I think. So, to go back and play someone on the nicer side of the scheme of life, I think that’s the next thing I’m going to do.

Q: Is that a real possibility? A Tin Man series?

Neal McDonough: Yes, Sci-Fi and Robert Halmi have been talking about it. We were literally going to start it up when I got back from doing Street Fighter, but then Desperate Housewives came along and we weren’t ready yet. So I said, “Let’s do some Housewives for awhile and we’ll see if we can get that done when we come back.” But that’s a definite possibility.

Q: Where does it stand now?

Neal McDonough: They just talked about it a couple of days ago. Obviously, it’s the biggest hit Sci Fi ever had. 25 million viewers watched the mini-series. It was massive. Again, if they would like to do it, I would love to jump back in the saddle and go play him because he was great.

Q: Michael, would you ever consider playing the Kingpin again?

Michael Clarke Duncan: Yes. It would be an honor to do the Kingpin again. When I did Kingpin, I was weighing 335 though and I weigh 275, 280 right now so I think if I could play it at this weight, it would be much more comfortable for me. I always tell them, if you think about it, maybe he goes to prison and he realizes that the only reason he lost it there was because he was too big so he slimmed down a little bit and then wants another piece of Ben Affleck. Ben Affleck hit me dead in my face with that damn stick. I was so goddamned mad at him. No, he did. I told him, “You’re gonna hit me in the face with that!” He said, “No, I got it.” And then on the first take, “Crack!” He got me. And I said, “Get the goddamned stunt guy in here because you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.” When we first did it, I was really pissed at him because that stick was made out of metal. Instead of me getting a substitute, I trusted him to just do this and not crack me.

Q: There’ll be a sequel.

Michael Clarke Duncan: Oh yeah! There you go! I’m gonna have my payback. So, to answer your question, hell yeah!

“Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li” opens in theaters on February 27th.