Finding your way into speaking roles after being a stunt performer can be difficult for the best performers. Yet, for Stephen Oyoung, his mindset of pushing himself to new heights has helped him break into the industry. Working as a stuntman, a motion capture video game actor, and eventually as an on-screen presence, Oyoung has built an incredible career. This week, he’s one of the stars of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. This comes after a handful of roles in blockbuster features, including the John Wick films, Star Wars, the Spider-Man video games, and Twisters.

Oyoung was kind enough to speak with FandomWire about his incredible career and unusual path to joining the Mission: Impossible franchise. Working with professionals like Tom Cruise and Keanu Reeves is inspiring, and he shouts out the behind-the-scenes talent that helped put him in this position. Check out the full interview below.

Stephen Oyoung Interview with FandomWire

FandomWire (FW): You have a very cool and interesting career. I wanted to start with that. How did you first know you wanted to get into film and stunt work?

Stephen Oyoung: When I was a kid, I would annoy all my friends. Every day I would come to school and say that I wanted to be a fireman, and then another day I would say policeman, and then the next day I’d say I want to be a spy. I think I always had it in me that I wanted to play different roles. Like most actors, I was a theater kid. But I think the difference was that I also really loved martial arts growing up. My father just loved kung fu growing up, and when The Matrix came out, that lit the spark in my brain.

I saw Keanu on the big screen, and everybody was embracing it. I thought, “Boy, I would like to do that one day.” That led me down the rabbit hole. Ironically, Keanu and The Matrix led me down the rabbit hole of the OGs, like Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Donnie Yen. I got obsessed with martial arts growing up.

After college, I was faced with a choice. “Do I go into a normal job, or do I perhaps pursue a martial arts career?” And what does that look like? My father said, “Hey, if you like acting, you should try it. I’ll support you until you’re 30.” So I kind of melded the two. My love of martial arts and acting, and like most guys, we all want to be Bruce Lee. That was my goal. I wanted to train up, get good, and then make kung fu movies. That is what led me to doing stunt work. Stunt work is what led me into doing full-on acting.

FandomWire: I also found it very interesting that you said Keanu and The Matrix is one of your inspirations, because you would later work on John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. Tell us what working on a film like that meant for you in your development as a student choreographer.

Steven Oyoung: They always say never meet your heroes. But I encourage everyone to meet Keanu. He is amazing. And for John Wick: Chapter III, that was a reunion for me. Keanu meets so many people, but I worked with him on 47 Ronin in 2011. We were doing sword fighting for a samurai movie. To fight him in John Wick was amazing.

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Everybody at 87North is talented. So anyone who’s in martial arts, anyone who wants to do stunts, anyone who wants to do acting, they know 87North, Chad Stahelski, David Leitch, and Jonathan Eusebio, all those guys. To be able to work with them was just really awesome.

FandomWire: We’ve seen you a lot on screen in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, but this was not even your first exposure in the Star Wars universe. Tell us about how you first got involved working with the Star Wars team at Lucasfilm.

Steven Oyoung: I was doing some work with Legacy Effects, which created a lot of their suits and creature effects for their shows. I had done work with LucasFilms in mo-cap. I had done video game stuff. There were video games, but it didn’t hit the critical mass that it has now.

Thanks to my very good friend Liang Yang, who is an amazing young coordinator himself, I did fight training with Adam Driver. That was a special time because they were starting up the new trilogy. It was new, exciting, and really cool to see firsthand. I also got onto Book of Boba Fett and now Skeleton Crew again because I was working with Legacy Effects. They liked how I worked.

I auditioned to be Brutus, the Wolf Man, in Skeleton Crew. I didn’t know what the creature looked like. I just knew he was going to be the main baddie, and Legacy put your name in to do the audition. So Lucasfilm liked it and approved it.

You know, anytime I’m able to work on the Star Wars universe, I always feel like, could you just call me back again? Because I always want to play. Same thing with John Wick, same thing with any of these franchises. It’s very humbling, and I feel an immense sense of gratitude.

FandomWire: What’s the most difficult thing about performing a character like Brutus? Because you are under makeup and a costume.

Stephen Oyoung: All my credit goes out to the puppeteers at Legacy Effects. They don’t get enough credit for all the robots walking around. I had a team of people controlling the face mechanism underneath the wolf costume. I had the costumers helping with everything, and there were so many accouterments on Brutus.

I’ll be completely honest; it was probably two to three months of complete darkness. It’s not for anyone who is claustrophobic. You put on the mask, and you have animatronic gyros literally crunching your face. I was completely blind for the entire show.

In fact, when I met Jude Law for the first time, I didn’t know it was him. I couldn’t see anything. I was standing, about to do the scene, and I heard this very nice English voice. They’re saying, “Wow, that’s an amazing suit.” I thought it was a producer examining the suit. And he goes, “Oh, by the way, my name is Jude.” What do you mean, your name is Jude? I know who you are. You’re Jude Law! I’m blind, and I’m freaking out, and all he sees is a wolf guy hugging him.

It was challenging. I have to literally push Jude’s face into a glass wall, I have to shoot my laser blaster, or I have to pick up a coin. Do you know how hard it is to pick up something from the ground when you can’t see and you have a latex glove claw? It was madness. But the finished product looked incredible.

FandomWire: You’ve also recently stepped up from behind these suits you were in Twisters. What did that mean for you to be out in front of the camera?

Stephen Oyoung: That was the dream. Since 2011, I was trying to transition from doing stunts and stunt performing to strictly acting and action acting. To have a role in a giant movie like Twisters, where I’m acting but also doing cool action stuff. We were driving and drifting around on the dirt for three months in Oklahoma, tearing up corn fields. It was an amazing experience.

I will always thank Lee Isaac Chung for remembering me because he directed an episode of Skeleton Crew, and he was very loyal to a lot of the crew members. He remembered me for this role because they needed an actor who could also do action stuff. They said I was the first one that they remembered. So, Isaac and Doug (Seok), his producing partner, I will always thank them because they gave me the audition for Twisters.

FandomWire: One other huge credit that I think a lot of people may not realize that you had, but our readers definitely will, are the Spider-Man video games. Those are two of the greatest games I’ve ever played, period. Tell us about the process of making a game like that, especially the mo-cap.

Stephen Oyoung: Not to sound like a broken record, but all I have is gratitude for Insomniac Games. I had done a lot of mo-cap work as a stunt performer leading up to then. I’ve done cinematics for Blur Studio with Tim Miller, who directed Deadpool. I was doing a lot of motion capture with Phil Silvera, their stunt coordinator, but never really doing face capture. Never being the character.

I auditioned for Spider-Man way back. I knew it was for a Spider-Man game. But I didn’t know how huge Spider-Man was as a franchise for the video games. There was that long hiatus between their last game and rebooting of the franchise. I go in, and originally, Mister Negative was envisioned as the introductory player boss that you fight to get to know the controls. But once we did the audition and they started fleshing out the story, they took it in a different path. They really bumped up Mister Negative to be one of the two main baddies in that game.

Related: ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Villain Reportedly Confirmed

They didn’t have to use my face, but they did. They did the whole performance. That was the game that put me on the map when it comes to video games and voiceover work. I didn’t even have a voiceover agent before Spider-Man. I was only doing TV and film. So Insomniac and Spider-Man opened up all those doors.

Spider-Man 2, incredible. I thought it was just going to be a cameo, but they had a full-fledged story arc with Miles. And I love all those actors. Yuri [Lowenthal] was one of the first big-time video game voice actors I met. I was a little intimidated because I didn’t know how the video game world worked. But Yuri was very gracious and very kind. I appreciate the fans recognizing me from Spider-Man. I get that on film sets sometimes, where some people are like, “Hey, you’re Mister Negative!” You realize there are A-listers over there? Why are you talking to little me? But Spider-Man obviously had a huge impact on people.

FandomWire: One of the big things you have on the horizon is Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, which everybody is just abuzz about. What is it like to work with Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie on an action spectacle like that? Can you give us any hints for where we should start to look for you in that movie?

Stephen Oyoung: I actually don’t even know where you would start to look for me, but I can say that working with Tom and McQ was a whole other level. The level of detail, the precision, and the vision that they have. It was very inspiring. I feel like they are also the most gracious and professional directors and actors out there.

McQuarrie, he’ll bring people behind the monitor, and he’ll literally teach about anything, about lenses. He’ll teach you about film. Tom will do the same thing. They’ll explain why they’re shooting what they’re shooting. If you have a question, and they’re very open about that. They even let me take my wife and my mother to set. My wife sat on set and watched Tom Cruise do his acting. I’m always thankful to McQ and Tom for that. I told them to their face, and I’ll say it to everybody else. They operate on the highest level, so everybody else brings up their A-game when they’re on set.

One last funny story about Tom is how gracious he is. I had just gotten married and was at a fancy restaurant with my wife, my new father-in-law, and their family. This was a Friday night at some fancy restaurant in London, and out of nowhere, I felt two hands slap my shoulder. I turn around, and it’s Tom Cruise and McQuarrie. They just so happen to be eating, and this is their favorite restaurant.

They go to their table, and in the middle of the dinner, Tom Cruise comes to our table and says, “All right, let’s take pictures!” Because he knows me, he takes pictures with my family-in-law and my wife. Everybody in the restaurant is like, “Is Tom going to do this for everyone at the end of the meal?” Tom secretly paid for all our dinners. That was my Mission: Impossible experience.

This interview with Stephen Oyoung has been edited for length and clarity.

Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning is now in theaters.
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