Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Giles Keyte(NEW YORK) — While nobody can mistake Matthew Vaughn’s madcap action comedy sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle for Academy Awards bait, its cast is laden with Oscar gold.
The King’s Speech winner Colin Firth reprises his role as suave British spy Harry Hart; Still Alice‘s Julianne Moore plays a homemaking icon/villain bent on world domination; Monster’s Ball lead Halle Berry plays a tech genius akin to “Q” in the James Bond movies, and Crazy Heart‘s Jeff Bridges can be seen as the head of the Statesman group — an American cousin to the very secret, veddy British Kingsman spy agency.
And there’s one other Oscar winner, too: Elton John.
Bridges tells ABC Radio, “Well, I was a big fan of the first one, and when I was invited to come on board the next one, said, ‘Oh, this is wonderful! Does it have the same director?’ ‘Yep, Matthew Vaughn’s gonna be in it, and Colin Firth, and Taron Egerton, yep!’ ‘OK! Who else?'” and then they started to list the other folks who were on board, you know, Channing Tatum, Pedro Pascal, Halle Berry, and my gal Julianne Moore, you know, so it made it easy to say yes.”
Bridges explains of the film, “I play the head of the Statesman organization…My name is Champagne — I don’t particularly like that name, I make everybody call me Champ — but my official name is Champagne, all of the agents in the Statesman organization are named after booze. The Kingsmen, their cover is a tailor shop — you know, they’re tailors, at least that’s what they say. And we’re…distillers.”
The distillery cover made for a bit of product placement: Statesman whiskey, which is actually being made by acclaimed real-life, Kentucky-based Old Forester.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle opens nationwide today.
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