Paris, Berlin, Tangiers, Turin… Sydney?
The Bourne franchise – Matt Damon’s high-intensity, ultra-high-voltage string of espionage thrillers – is known for its exotic locations. But last night, the fifth installment in the series made its international debut in Sydney, Australia.
“[Bourne] goes everywhere,” Damon joked on the red carpet. “I never would have thought he would end up in Las Vegas, but he does in this one [Jason Bourne], so I definitely wouldn’t rule Australia out [in a future film].”
Both Damon and Bourne’s new leading lady Alicia Vikander, 27, were on hand to fete Jason Bourne.
“We were really lucky that she said yes to our movie because everyone in Hollywood is trying to get her right now,” Damon said of his new co-star.
But it seems like luck had very little to do with it. Vikander admitted that she’s probably the world’s number one Jason Bourne fan, and used to binge-watch the movies when she was living in a sharehouse in London several years ago.
“When we didn’t have any other things to do on a Sunday we would be like, let’s just watch Bourne again,” she laughed. “So they were probably the first people I called when I found out i had the job, they were freaking out as much as me that I was going to be in it!”
After walking the red carpet at Sydney’s Entertainment Quarter, the Swedish actress revealed to marie claire that she hadn’t even seen a final cut of the film, and was looking forward to watching the movie alongside the legions of fans in attendance.
“I’m really nervous and exciting at the same time,” she told marie claire. “But it’s something very special to see a film for the first time with a big audience who have not been involved in making it. It’s why I love going and watching movies in general, that thing of feeling the awe and seeing how people respond to a story, watching it at the same time together.”
The Oscar-winner was clad in a stunning Rodarte gown from the AW 2012 collection, featured an apron-style fitted bodice and a tiered, ruffled skirt embellished with oversized crystals.
“They make them fit so well,” she joked, of the many appointments involved in getting a showstopping premiere gown red-carpet ready. “When I was young and I saw people who wore these dresses on red carpets, [I never knew] that was the trick, to get a seamstress to make it fit perfectly.”
This isn’t Vikander’s first time in Australia. In fact, she’s been spending quite a lot of time Down Under, filming a string of movies (Son of a Gun and the forthcoming The Light Between Oceans) around the country. She’s also been in town recently visiting her boyfriend Michael Fassbender, currently based in Sydney while he shoots the latest instalment in the Aliens franchise at Fox Studios. The pair met in Tasmania while filming the much-anticipated The Light Between Oceans, an adaptation of M.L Stedman’s award-winning post-WWI romance set on a remote island off the coast of Australia.
“I’ve travelled a lot in this country, which I’m very happy about,” Vikander said. “I love being out in nature and the beach. It’s great being able to have such a city life mixed with the beach culture, it’s perfect.”
Damon is also a closet Aussie-acolyte, revealing on the red carpet that his recent multi-million dollar space epic The Martian – for which he received an Oscar nomination – was almost filmed in Sydney.
“We couldn’t get the rebate, we were too late to get the deal, so we shot it in Budapest,” Damon said. “I was looking at rentals on Bondi Beach, so I was close! But maybe next time.”
