Charlie Hunnam Dishes on Paparazzi Snafu That Spoiled ‘Triple Frontier’

Triple Frontier has finally hit Netflix for audiences to take in and critique, but it wasn’t always the case for the Charlie Hunnam, Ben Affleck vehicle. As The Hollywood Reporter points out, the film was a long-gestating project that started life back in 2010 with Kathryn Bigelow attached to direct with Tom Hanks and Johnny Deep attached to star.

Many more names passed through before the film was acquired by Netflix from Paramount Pictures in 2017. This is when Ben Affleck, Charlie Hunnam, Pedro Pascal, and the others joined up — with a slight delay for Affleck to deal with his own health issues.

Not many knew the film was still happening and likely wouldn’t until now if it wasn’t for paparazzi catching Hunnam and co-star Garrett Hedlund on a Hawaiian beach in March 2018.

Hunnam and Hedlund wrestling on the beach went viral for fairly obvious reasons — you can see the photos here at Pop Sugar — and helped to reveal that the film was nearing production. For Hunnam, the paparazzi photos were a nuisance, but not enough to spoil the experience.

“Yeah, that was unfortunate. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I have been very, very dear friends with Garrett for about 15 years. In this film, he plays an MMA fighter, and I am a jujitsu practitioner. So I was teaching him some jujitsu, and we were rolling a lot and fighting a lot,” Hunnam tells The Hollywood Reporter. “The sun was shining and we were in good spirits, so I just tackled him and had a little wrestle. But it was not intended to be photographed and documented for the world to see.”

It was just one of the few unintended things revealed by the film, particularly the status of Hunnam’s American accent. While the star did an admirable job during his time on Sons of Anarchy, he admits that he’s lost it a bit since leaving the show and it showed during this production.

“I did some ADR on this film, and I certainly didn’t do quite as good a job as I have in the past with the accent. By virtue of that, and of itself, I definitely struggle more now that I don’t do it every day,” Hunnam tells THR. “I’m gonna address that next time out when playing an American. Actually I’ve played two American roles since I finished this and I’ve addressed that on both occasions.”

He adds that director J.C. Chandor did his part to fix any mistakes during post-production. He even had a dialect coach come in to watch the film and identify the moments where Hunnam had slipped.

Triple Frontier is currently streaming on Netflix.