When Daniel Ezra signed on to play Bradley Throckmorton in The Running Man, he knew he wasn’t just joining an intense thriller; he was stepping into a reflection of modern society.
The film, directed by Edgar Wright, reimagines Stephen King’s dystopian world for a new generation. It’s loud, chaotic, and uncomfortably familiar, a world where entertainment, power, and exploitation collide in a televised blood sport.
In The Running Man, Glen Powell stars as Ben Richards, a desperate father who volunteers for a deadly reality show where contestants must survive 30 days while being hunted for the world’s entertainment.
Jayme Lawson plays his wife, whose strength and devotion to their sick daughter give Ben his reason to fight. As cameras roll and the nation watches, the show’s charismatic host, played by Colman Domingo, narrates the chaos.
But when Ben crosses paths with Bradley, a resistance fighter determined to expose a corrupt system designed to crush people like him, survival turns into something bigger, a fight for justice, humanity, and hope in a world addicted to watching people fall.
“I think he feels like a lot of people in the real world,” Ezra says about his character. “We feel like the game can be rigged against us. Bradley is a big representation of how the audience, how a lot of people in the audience are going to feel. He’s that mirror to the real world.”
In the film, Bradley becomes “The Apostle,” an underground voice broadcasting the truth about the system behind The Running Man, a metaphor for the ways marginalized people fight back using their own platforms.
For Ezra, that theme of resistance resonates deeply, especially when discussing what it means for Black men today.
“Living honestly and deliberately,” he says when asked what resistance looks like beyond protest and hashtags. “I love seeing Black men be themselves. I like Black men having like really out there, obscure hobbies and doing things that you can tell are just for them. They’re not trying to fulfill an image or trying to be something that they’re told they need to be. It’s just them expressing themselves in their own unique way. That’s always the most inspiring thing to me and the coolest thing in the world.”
That authenticity translates into how Ezra approaches his craft. “It always starts with: is this a character I want to play?” he explains. “There’s got to be something in the character that’s interesting to me — not even necessarily something I connect with, but something I want to explore. I’ve always said acting is the most fun way to study psychology for me.”
Ezra sees the story as more than just entertainment; it’s a challenge. “The Running Man is about real issues, but it’s also like being on a theme park ride for two hours,” he says. “The audience is going to walk away remembering how much fun it was to watch — but also thinking about what they just saw.”
And when asked how long he’d last if thrown into the deadly televised competition himself? Ezra laughs. “Probably a day and a half,” he admits. “A good effort — but then they got me.”
The Running Man hits theaters on November 14.
Check out the full interview.
