John Boyega kept himself apart from his Breaking co-stars Nicole Beharie and Selenis Leyva to create “an energy” between them on set.

In the thriller, inspired by true events in 2017, Boyega plays former Marine Brian Brown-Easley, who held up a bank and took its managers Estel and Rosa hostage after being cut off from his disability payments.

Speaking to Metro.co.uk, the Star Wars actor revealed he kept himself mostly separate from his co-stars, which created “an energy” between them all.

Director Abi Damaris Corbin let Boyega improvise some moments in the bank so the two actresses had no idea how he was going to behave in certain scenes.

“A lot of times, they didn’t know what the hell I was going to do,” he explained. “Abi just said, ‘You’ve got this space, you got focus from here to here… Play.’ And I just do my thing in there. After the cameras are cut, Nicole would be like, ‘Damn, okay… I didn’t even know he was going to do that.’ There was something cool about that, it was fluid.”

The British actor believed this decision helped all of them give more convincing performances.

“Nicole, especially when you watch the film, I know she genuinely was like, ‘What the hell was going on? Why is this guy running around here, freaking out?’ That’s what helps the performance. I was really strengthened by them giving me that support in that way,” he added.

Breaking was released in the U.K. earlier this week.

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