London Calling Interview: Weaving Geek Culture Into The Buddy Cop Comedy

London Calling director Allan Ungar and star Jeremy Ray Taylor discuss working with Josh Duhamel, adding in geeky layers, and more.

The new action-comedy London Calling (2025) is a really fun buddy-cop throwback movie. Starring Josh Duhamel as the down-on-his-luck hitman Tommy and Jeremy Ray Taylor as Julian, the geeky son of a crime boss, the film follows the mismatched duo as they are forced to go on the run across Europe. Blending fast-paced action with witty banter and heartfelt moments, the movie promises a good time with plenty of laughs.

Mama’s Geeky had the pleasure of speaking with co-writer and director Allan Ungar and star Jeremy Ray Taylor about the upcoming movie. Both gave fantastic insight into the making of the film, from the inspiration behind it to the on-set challenges they faced. We also spoke a lot about their experience working with Josh Duhamel and their shared passion for gaming, which played a big role in the film.

Director Allan Ungar Talks London Calling

Mama’s Geeky: What is the inspiration behind London Calling?

Allan Ungar: I grew up in the 90s, loving all those seminal buddy-cop movies, films that I feel we don’t make much anymore, or at least not in the same way. When my agent sent me this script on the last day of shooting Bandit, I was exhausted, but I’m OCD, so I read it anyway. I fell in love with the characters and the story immediately. The original draft was great, but I had ideas about what I wanted to inject as a gamer, so I added more gaming subplots and a bit more heart. I wanted it to harken back to films like Midnight Run, which I think is a bygone era.

Mama’s Geeky: I wanted to ask you about the gaming stuff because I’m a gamer too. How fun was it to pepper in things that you personally relate to?

Allan Ungar: Oh, so much fun. What’s even better is when the trailer came out, people online noticed things like the Broforce poster. I love the Devolver folks, and I was even trying to make a Broforce adaptation at one point. People also picked up on the subtle nods to Street Fighter and Resident Evil, and they even noticed the Alienware computer. The LARPing and gaming subplots were in the first script, but I wanted to take it even further. It was fun, especially because Jeremy is also a gamer, and we spoke the same language. I always thought it was interesting—what happens when someone who loves escapism and immersion has to apply that in the real world?

Mama’s Geeky: I love the relationship between Josh and Jeremy. London Calling doesn’t work without it. Can you talk about what makes their relationship work so well?

Allan Ungar: Very early on, Josh and I talked about finding our Julian. We looked at a lot of great young actors, but as soon as we met Jeremy, there was just something. I actually think of him as the heart of the movie. It’s an action movie, but there are themes of fathers and sons and coming-of-age, all these really relatable themes. As soon as we got them together and they started joking around, I could tell we had the right guy. On set, their chemistry was undeniable and was key to the film’s success. Jeremy is actually a power lifter, but I told him, “I need you to be the antithesis of all of that. I need you to be soft and cuddly.” He was constantly saying, “Can I get a hero shot? I want to show off my arms,” and I’d be like, “No, I need you to be gentle.” We had a lot of fun with that.

Mama’s Geeky: What would you say was your biggest challenge on London Calling, filming-wise?

Allan Ungar: We filmed this whole thing in Cape Town, and we doubled Cape Town for London and LA. After Bandit, people were like, “Oh, you filmed all of Canada and the south of Georgia,” and I was like, “Yeah, I can do anything now.” But we shot this during Christmas holiday and summer vacation because in that part of the world, they coincide. So you have everyone flocking down to party for the summer, but you also have Christmas. We would get a location and lose it. We showed up one morning for the sequence where Josh teaches Jeremy how to drive stick, and not a single resident had left. There were 60 cars in the parking lot. It was just madness. It was the busiest time of the year that you could ever shoot in Cape Town, and I would say that was the hardest part.

Star Jeremy Ray Taylor On Working With Josh Duhamel & More

Mama’s Geeky: Speaking of all the geeky, gamer stuff, how fun was it to include that in London Calling?

Jeremy Ray Taylor: It was absolutely incredible. This is what I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’ve done a lot of comedy and some action in real life, so I was ready to show that on screen. I was a huge Transformers fan growing up, so working with Josh Duhamel was obviously incredible and a bucket list item. It was definitely one of the best experiences I’ve ever had on a film.

Mama’s Geeky: How did you and Josh Duhamel find that chemistry?

Jeremy Ray Taylor: So many people have asked about our chemistry, and the answer is that it was completely natural. Josh is just incredible. We’re both from smaller towns and kind of like that lifestyle, so we hit it off initially. I’ve had extensive firearm training outside of acting, and I’m a huge car enthusiast. I was actually teaching him how to teach me how to drive stick, so we bonded over a lot of different things.

Mama’s Geeky: How fun was it to play around with the aspect of you and Josh being in each other’s worlds?

Jeremy Ray Taylor: I think that was the most fun part, especially having to do some of the stunts. In the diner scene, he’s teaching me the eye poke, and you have to get over the fact that it’s Josh Duhamel standing in front of you. That’s weird! The hard part about doing action is figuring out the boundaries of the other person, but Josh was down for whatever. We made that work, and it was super awesome.

Mama’s Geeky: Allan told me that he had to fight for the LARPing stuff to stay a big part of London Calling.

Jeremy Ray Taylor: Yeah, which is insane to me. I don’t know who he had to fight, but I hope it was with swords. He called me and told me he was really having to fight for it, and I was like, “That’s like the whole thing! Why is that even in talks of getting rid of?” I think that’s a huge part of his arc. It wasn’t necessarily that becoming a man meant dropping the LARPing; it just needed to be taken on a different route. It’s a huge layer of the story, and I’m glad it didn’t get cut.

Mama’s Geeky: How would you describe London Calling to someone who knows nothing about it?

Jeremy Ray Taylor: It’s an action-comedy with a lot of heart and a beautiful underlying story with some really incredible relationships. It’s about a down-on-his-luck hitman who takes his new crime boss’s incompetent son on a bounty hunter hit, and that gets very, very fun.

Mama’s Geeky: How hard is it to play someone that is so incompetent?

Jeremy Ray Taylor: It was actually really funny, because I have some extensive firearm training outside of this. So Alan had to kind of unteach me some things, which is obviously a huge no-no for guns. You have to have very, very strict safety. And so every time he’d be like, “Hey, Jeremy,” I’m like, “Okay, yep, sorry, I know what you’re coming over here for.” I’ve always had my hand off the trigger, and I’d hold it, you know, because why would you have your gun out whenever there’s a person right in front of you? So I had to like, unteach myself this stuff, which was a lot of fun. And that made it more derpy anyway, so that was awesome.

Jeremy Ray Taylor Is Also Excited For It: Welcome To Derry

Mama’s Geeky: I just recently watched IT Chapter One with my 12-year-old daughter and she loved it. What was it like working on that film?

Jeremy Ray Taylor: It wasn’t as scary as people would think. We knew Bill Skarsgård and he was such a nice guy, it was kind of hard to be afraid of him. We were all also new to it, so we were focused on doing our jobs more than we were on the clown in front of us. I think we were all much more scared to mess up our lines than we were to see the clown. It was absolutely incredible; I owe everything to that film. I miss the Losers’ Club. We still hang out and love each other, and kind of learned everything together. It was an amazing experience.

Mama’s Geeky: Are you excited for the new show, It: Welcome To Derry?

Jeremy Ray Taylor: Oh, yeah, absolutely. I wish that we were involved somehow, some way, some form, but we’re not. And it’s totally fine, because I just can’t wait to watch it. I actually thought that it came out in September, and now it’s like in October, so that was a big mental bummer. I think it’s gonna be awesome.

London Calling releases in theaters on September 19th.

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