'Tetris' star Taron Egerton claims movie is actually a ‘cold war thriller’

Tetris is not a traditional game movie, opined star Taron Egerton to Yahoo Entertainment.

“But yeah the movie’s called Tetris, and it’s in big bold font, so I can understand why people might think it’s more of a traditional video game movie.”

The Rocket Man actor said the movie is more of a 'Cold War thriller'.

“It’s a Cold War thriller,” posits Egerton of Tetris, which was written by Noah Pink (Genius), directed by Jon S. Baird (Filth), and produced by the actor’s Kingsman director Matthew Vaughn.

Egerton plays Henk Rogers, the Dutch-born video game designer and entrepreneur who risks nearly everything to negotiate with authorities in Soviet Russia for the rights to Tetris.

“I knew the game. I had played it a bit when I was young, but didn’t know the story,” the Welsh actor says.

“I couldn't believe that no one had made a movie out of it already, to be honest. And that seemed a really good reason to make the movie. Matthew sent me the script during the first lockdown and I found it to be a very compulsive read. And I really, really liked the character of Henk at the center of it. Just this kind of puppyish, charismatic, dogged person. So I signed up to go along for the ride.”

“Pretty much all of it, aside from a [car] chase at the end, it really did all happen,” he says. “And [with] the sense of jeopardy and danger at the time in terms of being behind the Iron Curtain just before the fall of the Berlin Wall and what was happening across the block at that time, I think it was a dangerous place to be. So all of it, really.”

“I think all actors that I've spoken to relate to that sense of it being a real hustle when you first start out,” he says. “That time for me, when I first left drama school, I do remember that feeling like a hustle. But I was lucky. I got that Kingsman role very early on. I remember going to audition for Matthew and that meant that I had a slightly easier ride of it from there on out because it was great exposure.

“But I liked that about Henk. I like the fact that he's one of those people that no matter how many times you knock him down, he keeps getting better back up. We love people like that.”