‘Heart of Stone’ Director Tom Harper Discusses Working With Gal Gadot to Create an Original Secret Agent Character for Netflix (New Images Revealed)
HEART OF STONE. Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone in Heart of Stone. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2022.
While there are some hot Netflix titles coming out this summer, like the new season of Black Mirror or the sequel to the 2020 hit Extraction, perhaps a project that has gone mostly unnoticed is the spy thriller Heart of Stone, which stars Gal Gadot as secret agent Rachel Stone who is tasked with a mission that could save the world.
The film is highlighted in the new Entertainment Weekly Summer Preview, through a brand-new set of pictures and a big breakdown piece of the entire production. Peaky Blinders season one director Tom Harper helms the movie, which is being billed as female James Bond and has high hopes of becoming a new franchise for Netflix. For him, what really excited him about the project is that it was an original film in a world full of franchises:
“There were a couple of things that immediately jumped out at me, the first was that it was an original movie in a genre that is full of great franchises, but things that have been around for a long time — the ‘Mission: Impossibles’ or the Bonds or the Bournes. I love those films, but they’ve all been around for decades, so working on something that was an addition to that genre but an original piece of material felt really exciting and was a real opportunity. And I also just loved the fact that it had a female protagonist at the heart of it.”
Heart of Stone – BTS – (L to R) Director Tom Harper, Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone and Jamie Dornan as Parker on the set of Heart Of Stone. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2023.
However, films like Mission: Impossible have built a reputation on their ability to show incredible stunts and jaw-dropping action setpieces meant to cause a visceral reaction in the viewer. Heart of Stone does have a couple of those, but it’s also a lot of people talking in rooms, as Harper explained:
“We do some extreme things within the movie, but we’ve tried to keep it as close to reality as possible while still maintaining that elevated action feel. What I really love about films like this when it works is that, yes, you have the thrills and spills and action, but it can also just be two actors in a room going at each other, head to toe. That’s something that works here — you see that from Gal, and she does that really beautifully.”
Heart of Stone – (L to R) Jing Lusi as Yang, Paul Ready as Bailey, Jamie Dornan as Parker and Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone in Heart Of Stone. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2023.
The plot will find Stone as the only woman between “an ultra-mysterious, powerful, global, peace-keeping organization the Charter, and the loss of its most valuable — and dangerous — asset, the Heart.” For Harper and the producers at Skydance it was important to do a good characterization of Rachel Stone, so that it wouldn’t feel like a woman playing a man’s role or stripped of her gender. Gadot plays a female assassin, and the film will explore what both of those words mean, according to the director:
“That’s something that we’ve seen very rarely in that genre. The thing that Gal and [producers at] Skydance spoke about a lot was they wanted Rachel to be a character that wasn’t just a female actress playing a sort of male character, but a woman at the heart of it who was responding differently. Often in spy action thrillers, you have a central character who it falls upon to save the world, and the world rests on their shoulders alone and they have to defeat everybody else and come out on top. That’s in part true of ‘Heart of Stone’, but also very much the center of it is that she needs to rely on the relationships and the trust that she builds up with other characters. It’s a team effort, and that struck a chord in me.”
Heart of Stone – BTS – Director Tom Harper on the set of Heart Of Stone. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2023.
And despite completing Heart of Stone and telling a full story about Rachel, Harper added that he would still like to add more to the character in possible future installments:
“Even the strongest amongst us still need to work as a team to overcome the odds, and it’s not just about being by herself. There’s plenty that I’d like to explore more with Rachel in that regard. There’s plenty of rich territory with Rachel, with the Heart, with the Charter. Ultimately we have to see how well it does and see how people like it, but I’m excited about it.”
The cast includes Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan, Alia Bhatt, Sophie Okonedo, Matthias Schweighöfer, Jing Lusi, and Paul Ready. It will be released on Netflix on August 11. You can check out the teaser trailer for the film here:
Heart of Stone – BTS – (L to R) Director Tom Harper and Alia Bhatt as Keya Dhawan on the set of Heart Of Stone. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2023.
Heart of Stone – Gal Gadot as Rachel Stone in Heart Of Stone. Cr. Robert Viglasky/Netflix © 2023.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
