Don’t F With Sterling K. Brown: Atlas Star Is Bad-Ass in New Sci-Fi Film

Netflix is warning fans not to mess with Jennifer Lopez … but we also think the same goes for Sterling K. Brown.

Ahead of the release of  the movie Atlas on Friday, May 24, the streaming service shared a snap of a billboard that read, “DON’T F WITH JLO.” Netflix then captioned the Thursday, May 23, post on X (formerly known as Twitter) with, “Any questions?”

Now after seeing the film we think the same goes for Brown. The award-winning actor stars opposite Lopez  and is simply bad-ass. In the film he plays the no nonsense Col. Elias Bates while Lopez plays a data analyst with a deep distrust of AI who is thrust into a mission to capture a renegade robot.

Check out our conversation with Brown below where he dishes on delivering one of the best lines of the film.

HH: Why did you want to play Bates?

SKB:  I don’t say yes to everything. There is the movie itself, and there’s the logistics that it offers as well. So you get a chance to work at home because it’s shot in L.A., so that’s a big thing.

One of the main producer is a guy by the name of Jeff Pearson. He and I went to grad school at NYU together, and he said, ‘Dude, you should come do this movie with me.’ And I was like, ‘Yo, if I get a chance to spend all day with you, yes.’

Number three, I get a chance to do something that is family-friendly. My youngest son always tell me, Dad, you don’t do stuff for kids. I was like, I do.  I’ve done Frozen 2,  and I’ve done Angry Birds, too. And he’s like, yeah, but we never get to see your face. I was like, alright.

HH: Have you finally said alright, let me just start to learn about AI and figure it out?

SKB:  I got chat GPT on my phone, you know what I’m saying? And every once in a while, I’ll ask it a question just to see what it’ll come up with. And it is astounding an ability to learn from a machine. And then at a certain point, you’re like, this ability to learn, when do you stop being a machine? And when does that become sentient? I think that’s the question that the movie is starting to explore. And then how do you cohabitate with this sentient intelligence that’s not human, but it’s not purely machine either? It’s a fascinating conversation to have, and I don’t know where it ends.

HH: You deliver the best line in the film. How many times did you do the ‘eat s–t’ line?

SKB:  So this was actually one of my favorite lines, and I gave alts on this line. Now, I gave alts because I didn’t know if we were PG-13 or if we were R. So some of my favorite outtakes, if you’re ever able to get the DVD outtakes to Atlas, if they’re able to show all the alts to the eat blank line, you will pee on yourself because I get real dark and real gully. Unfortunately, it was not an R-rated movie, so it didn’t come out ultimately the way that I would hoped it to, but I still think it plays. It still plays. But when you see the alts, Magnifique.

HH: Sounds like you had a lot of fun shooting this movie.

SKB: We were in these mines in Cupertino, and it was interesting because a lot of the crew were wearing masks. I was like, Hey, if all these cats was wearing masks, how come my black ass is walking around just open face? I was a little scared. I don’t know exactly what I’m breathing in here, but it was a lot of fun. It was a good time.