“There were days when Jake would climb up on a ladder and talk to me over a wall,” chuckles Fuqua.

Watching feeds of both the movie and from spy cameras place around the set, Fuqua communicated to the crew through a “God mic.” On “The Guilty,” they didn’t see each other for the duration of the shoot.

On their previous film together, 2015’s boxing drama “Southpaw,” Fuqua, a boxer, and Gyllenhaal intensely trained together twice a day. Movie making is usually a more full-contact sport. It opens in theaters Friday and debuts Oct. But few films have pivoted quite like “The Guilty,” a movie made without its director hardly ever stepping on set. Movie sets are teeming hubs of activity where mask-wearing and social distancing are often impossible when the cameras are rolling. The coronavirus has forced Hollywood to adapt in countless ways to keep productions running through the pandemic. “Literally, I did the whole thing from this van.' I wondered if there was a way to use technology to our advantage,' says Fuqua. “We kicked it around, kicked it around and I looked up a van that’s used for photography. Fuqua would direct “The Guilty” from a van parked down the street from set. “I just felt it kind of falling apart.”īut after Gyllenhaal, Fuqua and producers ran through their options, they settled on a novel one. “You have a 10-day quarantine and an 11-day shoot, so it basically does your movie in,” says Gyllenhaal. Tests were negative for Fuqua, but regulations at that time required him to quarantine. No one on the production had the virus, but director Antoine Fuqua had been in close contact with someone who tested positive. “So I pulled over and I was like: ‘Oh no.’ I had already had COVID so I sort of knew it might not be me, but I didn’t know,” says Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal is almost the only on-screen actor. The whole point of the very contained production was to minimize COVID-19 disruptions. cases were skyrocketing and Gyllenhaal was days away from starting shooting on “The Guilty,” a thriller about a demoted Los Angeles police detective (played by Gyllenhaal) who takes a kidnapping call while working at the 911 dispatch center. NEW YORK - Jake Gyllenhaal was driving when a COVID-19 supervisor called and told him to pull the car over.

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