‘The Outlaws’ Stars Rhianne Barreto, Gamba Cole Talk Working With ‘Titans of Acting’ in New Amazon Prime Series (Exclusive)

Amazon Prime’s newest series The Outlaws is a comedy thriller starring some big names like Christopher Walken and Stephen Merchant. It also features younger stars Rhianne Barreto and Gamba Cole. In an exclusive with PopCulture.com, series stars Barreto and Cole dished on what it was like working with such “titans of acting” ahead of the Amazon Prime Video premiere.

“It was amazing. I mean, everyone was such titans of acting. It just felt like there wasn’t a weak link,” Barreto said of her castmates. “Especially when all of us were in a scene, it felt like theater, because the scenes would be pages and pages long and everyone would have something to say in the scene. So you just didn’t want to be the person that messed it up.” 

Barreto went on to praise Cole. “Then obviously being with Gamba was lovely, because we’ve worked together before and have a friendship outside of work, and it just felt really lovely to have a person that you love, someone that you knew straight away in the job already. It was just one less thing to kind of worry about, which was amazing.”

The Outlaws follows a group of mismatched people all thrown together in a court-ordered community service project. As the story unfolds, their lives grow much more intertwined than any of them could have imagined. Barreto and Cole play Rani and Christian, respectively, the two youngest members of the group. It’s their connection that the most intense and thrilling elements of the show revolve around, as the pair wind up involved on the wrong side of some dangerous characters, which risks putting everyone in danger. 

In addition to being a cast member, Merchant is also a co-creator of The Outlaws, alongside Mayans M.C.. When it came to having Merchant on-set regularly, Cole says it was he “was so glad that he was there.” He continued, “I mean, Stephen is so great, because I remember a time we was doing a scene and he was directing it, but he was also in it. So as we were outside of a door, he’d have a monitor and he was just looking at the scene and stuff, and as soon as we call action, he switches into his character, walks through the door and me and him have our scene together.”

Cole went on to say, “I was just in awe, because you never, you don’t really get the privilege of seeing something like that, and he would go home and he would start the edit. But it wasn’t just about what he was doing on set as well. He would always check in with us outside and give us calls and FaceTimes, and anything that I was unsure about, or any dialogue bits that I wanted to adjust or change, he wasn’t too precious on. He was happy to let us explore, as long as it obviously stayed true to the story. But yeah, it was amazing. It was so good to have him there.” The Outlaws Season 1 is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.