[Written Interview] 'Street Fighter,' Part 2: Noah Centineo, Who Plays Ken Masters, Says Ken's Best Move Is "Pretending to Be Extremely Confident."

​

▶ Continues from the interview with Street Fighter director Kitao Sakurai.

​

Andrew Koji, who plays Ken Masters’ rival Ryu, said the two of you were constantly playfully fighting whenever you had a spare moment on set. Is that true?

I really love Andrew Koji. He’s a huge fan of the Street Fighter games, and he’s a real actor’s actor. On top of that, he has an incredible amount of action and stunt experience. He’s the complete package. I trusted Andrew and followed his lead in so many ways while making this movie. We spent a very long time training and preparing together. Now we’ve become really good friends. I think of Andrew like a brother. It was an incredible stroke of luck for me to meet Andrew Koji through Street Fighter.

​

You say that, but Andrew Koji said you weren’t exactly enthusiastic about the workouts to build Ken Masters’ physique.

Andrew is incredibly disciplined. Almost every morning, he practically dragged me to work out while I resisted and complained. I was always saying, “I really don’t want to do any of this ...” I’m almost the exact opposite of Tom Cruise. I’m the kind of person who says, “You do it. I don’t want to do any of it!” But seriously, Andrew, Callina Liang, who plays Chun-Li, and I went through the entire process together. That was really great. We trained for six weeks before going to Australia, and once we arrived, we had another six weeks before principal photography began. During those six weeks, the three of us worked out together every day and did recovery training by getting into ice baths afterward. It was intense. But it also meant we had plenty of time to talk every day. We talked constantly about everything, from the characters to the story. When you spend that kind of time together, you can’t help but become close. And Andrew did so much for me. I’m genuinely grateful to him for that.

​

​

How would you describe the relationship between Ken Masters and Ryu in the film?

Ken Masters and Ryu are like brothers who have always competed to be the best. There’s a healthy rivalry between them, but it can also become pretty intense. They trained under the same master, Gouken. When Andrew and I first started talking, we spent a lot of time trying to understand what connected the two characters and why they worked so well together in such a distinctive way. The truth is, they don’t really have anyone besides each other. And yet they’ve always butted heads. They weren’t just seeking their master’s approval. They wanted to prove to the world and to themselves that they were truly exceptional fighters, just as they had always believed. When the film begins, Ken and Ryu have grown apart. So early on, we talked a lot about how to make the distance between them feel genuine and convincing. Of course, it had to be as realistic as possible within the world of Street Fighter. The world itself is extremely exaggerated, outrageous and rough. So the question that mattered most to us was this: “How do we properly capture the relationship between two people who love each other but have grown apart? What emotions does that kind of relationship evoke in us?”

​

You said you finally got a real sense of Ken Masters and Ryu’s dynamic on the day you and Andrew Koji wore your full costumes, stood back-to-back and did your first camera test in Street Fighter’s iconic pose. What do you remember about that day?

In a way, you’re playing cartoonlike characters from an 8-bit game in live action. And as the games progressed, including Street Fighter 6, both characters became incredibly muscular, almost like the Hulk. That’s why we kept training. We worked out, ate and worked out again every single day without fail. We were trying to look as much like the characters in the game as possible, but the whole time, I couldn’t stop thinking, “Is this really going to work? Will we actually look like these characters?” We kept doing costume fittings and trying on different versions of the costumes. We experimented with wigs and extensions. My hair was long, but not long enough. We dyed it and bleached it. It’s true that it takes the work of countless people to complete a single character. But even after all that preparation, you still wonder, “Will this really work? Will people buy it?” That’s why the camera-test day was such a big moment. We had talked so much about the camera test before it happened. Then the day finally arrived, and Andrew and I went onto the set and stood back-to-back. We filmed the scene and went to look at the monitor. The moment we saw the image, we both said, “Oh, it’s not bad at all. No, it actually looks really cool. We might be able to pull this off.” It was a truly important day for both of us.

​

​

Ken Masters gets into quite a few fights in this Street Fighter film. Of the signature Ken Masters moves you performed during filming, which was your favorite, and why?

My favorite Ken Masters move is probably pretending to be incredibly confident even though he’s actually nervous inside. (Laughs.) In this dangerous game, I think that’s Ken Masters’ best move! Of course, I also really love the “Hell Wheel.” It’s a brutally intense move that comes at you in a wild, relentless rush. Performing it feels like riding a roller coaster. I like the “Hell Wheel” because it’s extremely aggressive, but it also has something of a judo quality to it. You feel like you could throw anyone with it. That’s why I like it.

​

Director Kitao Sakurai said this Street Fighter has more action scenes than John Wick. What should audiences expect from the film?

John Wick has an incredible number of fight scenes, too. Street Fighter is an exhilarating, outrageous and extremely funny movie. It’s big and epic, but it doesn’t take itself too seriously. The colors are vivid and energetic, and the film’s energy is explosive. We had a blast making it. I hope audiences have as much fun watching it as we did making it.

​

​

▶ Continues with an interview with Andrew Koji, who plays Ryu in Street Fighter.