Mark Wahlberg, Peter Berg, Cast and Producers Discuss Tackling Tragedy of Boston Marathon Bombing in ‘Patriots Day’

Sandra Miska

Three years after the bombing that took place at the 2013 Boston Marathon and forever changed the city, Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg teamed up to make a film that would accurately tell the story of this attack, the days that followed and the people whose lives were impacted. The result was the drama “Patriots Day.” Wahlberg and Berg, along with actors Michelle Monaghan, J.K. Simmons and Jimmy O. Yang, as well as producers Scott Stuber, Hutch Parker and Michael Radutzy, recently spoke about the making of this stunning film and the message of unity that they hope it will convey.

Being a Boston native, Wahlberg, who co-produced as well as starred in the film as Sgt. Tommy Saunders, discussed the tremendous responsibility he took on in becoming the face of the film. “Obviously I was extremely aware of it, and there comes a lot of responsibility and pressure with that, because I like to go home and show my face at home and be welcome with open arms. They were, I think, relieved that it was one of them who would be responsible for it, and also they could hold me accountable, and I just wanted to make sure that everyone else was being held to the highest standard. I knew Pete was the perfect guy to make this movie because of how much he cares. As soon we were able to communicate to them what our intentions were, I think everybody felt relief.”

Director Berg explained how he set out to make a film about people, not a thriller. “Something that we all talked about, particularly Mark and I spent a lot of time talking about, was not wanting to make a film that devolved into something that felt overly action-oriented or suspense-oriented. If you analyze what happened from the time of the bombings to the time bomber Jahar Tsarnaev was caught in the boat, there was obviously a lot of intense things that happened … The reason why we thought the movie should be made is we were really interested in exploring how the community comes together and how a community processes and moves through and past something so horrific as having your child killed in front of you at a marathon. We really wanted to explore the themes of love and inclusion and support. We wanted that to be the primary takeaway of the film at the end of the day, love wins.”

“Mark kind of naturally has it,” said Michelle Monaghan of the scenes in which she and Wahlberg, who play husband and wife, exude domestic warmth. “Mark and I sat down with Pete in an afternoon and we worked on the scenes. I think all of our hearts were in the right place and we really just wanted to convey, I think, a side the story that was really the untold story. It was just everyday, normal people coming together and uniting and feeling fear and helplessness, but at the same time conveying strength and doing heroic things.”

While Wahlberg and Monaghan played fictional characters inspired by real people, J.K. Simmons portrayed one of the real-life figures from the days following the bombing, Watertown Police Sgt. Jeffrey Pugliese. Simmons discussed how vital becoming acquainted and spending time with Pugliese was in his preparation for the role. “It was very valuable to just meet him and hang out with him and talk to him and spend time with his family, but then the technical expertise I got from him – I was dragging his butt to the firing range time after time after time to work on that stuff … And he was on set, I think, almost all the time that I was shooting, so we asked ‘Exactly how did this happen?’ The phrase that kept going back and forth between everybody, between Pete and I was, ‘Let’s get it right.’”

Jimmy O. Yang, a comic and actor best known for his role on the series “Silicon Valley,” was given the somewhat daunting task of portraying another real-life person, in his case Dun “Danny” Meng, who was carjacked by bombers Tamerlane and Jahar Tsarnaev. Yang spoke about taking on this serious role and relating to Meng. “It was definitely a challenge at first. I could really relate to Danny, even though I don’t have his accent or anything in real life. I was an immigrant myself. I came here when I was 13, but he came here when he was 22, which was a huge gap. I’m much more Americanized, and when he got carjacked, I think, he was only two months in America, so America is already a very scary place for him. Coming from a comedy background, I’m very comfortable with improv, especially on ‘Silicon Valley.’ Working with Pete there’s a lot of improvisation, so I just jumped in and it was great, so I think a lot of my training paid off. Danny made himself very available, which was awesome, because at first we said, ‘This was a very traumatic event. We have to be sensitive about this.’ But he was just so open. I could read about all the details online, but what I could get out of him was what he felt at the time, his emotions, and also what he was thinking at the time.”

Berg agreed. “He remembered the way that Jahar smelled. He remembered the sound of Tamerlan’s fingernails on the gun on his knee and how loud that noise was in his head.”

Wahlberg noted his Boston pride. “Boston has grown so much in a short amount of time. I remember growing up as a kid and being bused to different areas and there was this huge racial divide. Cut to this horrific incident and everybody from all walks of life coming together to help, and that made me extremely proud to be from Boston, and I wanted to share that message. Pete and I were constantly talking about, ‘Is it too soon?’ And I just felt it was not soon enough because these things are continuing to happen, and they’re going to continue to happen, and we need to come together.”

Producer and L.A. native Scott Stuber said it was important to him to help tell this story about a monumental event in Boston “I was in New York for 9/11. I was actually there with Pete. It was so raw and so awful. People would just burst into tears at any moments. It was that thing in your life that I think was analogous with our parents’ lives in Pearl Harbor, where you said, ‘OK, our world’s different now.’ And that took a long time to process as a human being. I think that I have grown now that I have a wife and kids. As a citizen of this world and of us this country, when I saw what happened in Boston, like all of us I was interested in it from a news perspective, but when I started to learn about it from the human perspective, it was a story that I felt should be told.”

Producer Hutch Parker agreed. “What I found, in a way that shocked me, was how much I didn’t know, and deep how deep and rich the humanity was throughout all of it, reflected not just in the first responders, through the doctors or the victims, but everybody. Seeing the way in which that community rose up and came together, in some ways consciously and in some ways unconsciously, was so powerful to me and such an important antidote to the helplessness I think I felt when seeing San Bernardino or seeing another one of these.”

Producer Michael Radutzky discussed what Wahlberg brought to the table. “I think that he and Pete, in a sense, but Mark specifically because he’s from Boston, felt this enormous responsibility to get it right. And it has to be done tastefully and it has to be done accurately, and at the end of the day the city of Boston has to feel that they were respected, and he passed along that urgency and that requirement to us, and it pervaded everything that we did. ‘How do we know what we know?’ Every constituency in Boston needed to know that we cared, because we were partnering with them in a sense. Our job was to partner with them.”

Monaghan remembered the scenes in which the bombing was re-enacted, scenes that included hundreds of Boston background actors. “I had the pleasure of meeting Boston citizens, and I met a few that had come out to show support; they had been there on the day that it happened. That really resonated with me. It really exemplified ‘Boston Strong.’ To experience that kind of trauma that day, and yet want to show up and be supportive, and to essentially re-experience that, that was incredibly humbling. That was something that I have taken with me.”

“Patriots Day” opens Dec. 21 in Los Angeles, New York and Boston, and Jan. 13 nationwide.