Mark Wahlberg and his 'Flight Risk' co-stars talk shaved heads and acting in a tiny plane

Here's an intriguing recipe for a movie. Get three actors and stuff them in a small plane, but make sure one of them is psychotic and wants to kill the other two. Or, if need be, all three of them. And then keep them in the plane the entire movie.

That was the flight plan for "Flight Risk" (in theaters Friday), director Mel Gibson's new thriller starring Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery, Topher Grace and ... that's pretty much it until the last few minutes.

The screenplay, a 2020 favorite on Hollywood script appreciation site The Black List, reads more like a play. That required Wahlberg to channel some old-school chops.

"The one play I've done was playing an Oompa Loompa in 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' in fourth grade," says Wahlberg, adding that the get-it-done nature of plays was replicated. "I don't like a set where I'm sitting around, going to lunch, taking a nap, watching people tinkering and lighting. So doing this fast with just the three of us was great."

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Wait, so would Wahlberg be up for doing a Broadway play?

"Look, that's a big commitment, doing eight shows a week. But if it was a one-off and the right thing came along, I wouldn't say no," he says. "For me, it's just about the acting. That's when I'm most fulfilled."

"Flight Risk" is all about the acting, given its singular location. The plot in a nutshell: Dockery plays Madolyn, an air marshal transporting Mob trial witness Winston (Grace) from a small Alaskan town to Anchorage. Her ride is a jalopy of a propeller plane piloted by Daryl (Wahlberg), who turns out to be a mob hit man.

"I love contained films like this, like 'Con Air' or 'Speed,' " says Dockery ("Downton Abbey"), who trades blows with Wahlberg while learning to fly the plane once the villainous Daryl is subdued (or is he?). "You really can't trust that anyone is who they say they are, until the end."

To keep the suspense ratcheted up during the four-week shoot, Wahlberg elected not to socialize with his co-stars. "We met on Day 1, but after that it was all me going after them, trying to get a rise out of them," he says. "We were in character pretty much the whole time. When we were done, I said thanks and apologized if I went over the top."

Mark Wahlberg went deep into character for his psycho pilot Daryl, which included bringing a razor to the set

All three actors say Gibson encouraged his cast to improvise as needed, which found Wahlberg spitting his gum at Dockery in one scene as well as hurling an endless stream of vile threats her way throughout the shoot. When it came time for Wahlberg to beat up Grace's character, things got a bit real.

"Mark was super-professional and concerned about me before we started the scene, and I said, 'Thanks, but I'll be fine.' I had some pads on and everything," says Grace. "But, man, when I got home that night, I had welts all over me. I mean, come on, it's Mark Wahlberg."

Another Wahlberg touch lent a particularly off-putting vibe: his hair. His pilot is bald, but instead of wearing a bald cap, the star brought his razor to the set daily.

"I pitched Mel on the haircut and he said, 'You'd really do that?' I said sure, I'm not doing a wig," Wahlberg says. "You think of movies like 'The Shining' (with over-the-top Jack Nicholson) and that's the kind of guy I was going for. Ultimately, Mel is an actor first, so you felt safe to risk looking ridiculous."

He confesses his wife, Rhea Durham, was not a fan of the 'do. "Yeah, my wife was terrified," he jokes.

Also terrifying was the set the actors called home for a month. Not only did they shoot in what amounted to a real plane, but it was placed three stories up in the air so that it could drop or rise and turn as the script demanded. What's more, the plane was completely encircled by massive screens that projected high-resolution videos of the desolate Alaskan wilderness.

"I was just glad I wasn't someone who gets airsick easily," says Grace. "There was very little acting required. When we dove, your stomach would be in your throat."

Another challenge was acting out fight scenes while the plane shuddered and shook. Often, cameramen would be right next to the actors as they went through their action motions. "It was all you could do not to knee or punch a cameraman during the shot," says Dockery.

For Mark Wahlberg, a highlight of 'Flight Risk' was finally getting to work with Mel Gibson

Ultimately, for Wahlberg, "Flight Risk" represented the realization of a personal wish: working with Gibson.

"He's made some of the most interesting films of my lifetime, like 'The Passion of the Christ,' 'Hacksaw Ridge,' 'Braveheart,' and my favorite, 'Apocalypto.' And whenever I'd see him, I'd say, 'You need to make a movie and let me do something in it,' " he says.

During the filming of the 2017 comedy "Daddy's Home 2," which starred Wahlberg and Gibson as well as Will Ferrell and Linda Cardellini, Wahlberg would pepper Gibson with an endless barrage of accents and voices.

"Mel said to me, 'Hey, I didn't know you could do that?' and then offered me a part (in a planned movie of his) where I would have been an Aussie, but that never came to pass," the actor says.

And then came "Flight Risk," in which Wahlberg not only stars but gets to haul out one of his voices. When we first meet Daryl, he's an aw-shucks Southern boy just thrilled to be helping out an air marshal, until things quickly go sideways and Daryl turns into a street-thug maniac.

"I've done lots of stuff over the years that my family and kids can see," he says. "But, yeah, let's just say I like to mix it up."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Flight Risk' features bald Mark Wahlberg beating up his co-stars