John Leguizamo Hates Christmas Movies, But Had Fun As The Villain In ‘Violent Night’

It’s definitely not your traditional Christmas movie. Violent Night, as the title clearly hints, is violent. There’s lots of action sprinkled with a little holiday spirit and a desire to believe in Santa Claus.

John Leguizamo stars as “Scrooge,” the leader of a group of mercenaries who break into a mansion and take a wealthy family hostage on Christmas Eve to get their hands on $300 million locked away in their safe. And Scrooge and his team face off with an unexpected kick-ass Santa Claus (David Harbour, Black Widow, Stranger Things).

The movie opened at No. 2, competing against blockbuster Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. But it has held its own, continuing to attract big audiences in the U.S. and worldwide since its December 2 theater release.

“Working with David Harbour, who I think is one of the best actors working in Hollywood right now, because this man brings so much depth, so much humor and is so natural in front of the camera that sometimes I thought I was working with the real Santa Claus, made my job a lot easier.”

Easier also because he thinks holiday movies are corny. “I hate Christmas movies,” he says. “This is an anti-Christmas movie movie.”

So how did he end up being the bad guy in one?

“David Leach, who I worked with in John Wick one, we had such a great time together, that he asked me to be the villain here. He told me to read the script. I fell in love with the script that was so original, so unique. I’ve never seen a script like this. I read tons of scripts and they’re all garbage. And this one was a page turner. I was laughing out loud. So I knew there was magic here.”

Leguizamo, who has played a wide variety of roles in film, television and theater, has worked alongside some of Hollywood’s best and renowned actors, including Al Pacino, Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor and Mark Wahlberg, as well as directors Brian de Palma, M. Night Shyamalan and Baz Luhrmann, among many others. He says working with Violent Night’s entire cast and director Tommy Wirkola was a fun experience.

“We would make each other crack up. When I was holding the family hostage, we were all improvising. Tommy Wirkola loves improv and we would make him crack up and he would ruin takes. And he had to yell cut, because he was laughing too loud…So that was the best part, to see who could make Tommy crack up.”

The actor says he had to up his game to meet the challenge of his action scenes and appreciated training with Jojo Eusebio.

“I think the fight sequence with David Harbour was incredible. Working with Jojo Eusebio, one of the greatest coordinators of our time, he was very patient with me because it was like 50 moves and most I’ve ever done in an action sequence. And David was so good that I asked him [Eusebio] to make me better than David, please. So I would go on the weekends when David was resting and I would try to catch up to David.”

A dedicated performer, his extra work paid off and another movie is in the books. But Leguizamo’s mission to improve Latino representation and access to good roles in Hollywood continues.

“We are 30% of the U.S. box office and 30% of streamers. We add $2.7 trillion to the U.S. economy. But we have less than 2% of the leading roles and that’s not right. There’s no equal representation. That’s what I want to change: for us to be 20% of the leads, 20% of the executives, 20% of the movies. And I won’t be happy until we get to that point.”