“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” premiered in theaters this month, starring Will Smith, Martin Lawrence and a familiar face from Scranton.
Actress Quinn Hemphill, a Scranton High School graduate, says playing a part in the fourth film of the “Bad Boys” franchise is her “big break.”
Hemphill has been acting steadily since she graduated from Syracuse University. She moved to Los Angeles after college, signed with an agent and was in several television and film productions, according to her IMDB page. Quinn says this $100 million movie is the biggest production she’s been a part of to date.
“It was incredible, you know, down to the trailers we had, the food we ate, just like the amount of people that they were able to employ on that budget to make things run smoothly was incredible,” she said. “We all had a production assistant that was assigned to the actors to kind of support us all day on set. I think everyone felt really supported.”
Hemphill also had a stunt double for the action-packed scenes. She plays the role of Callie, the 16-year-old granddaughter of police Captain Conrad Howard, played by Joe Pantoliano.
“Captain Howard is a really iconic character who was in the first, second and third movies,” Hemphill explained. “Callie was actually spoken about in the third movie, but not seen. And so it's cool because I got to watch the third movie, and my character is kind of ‘in it’ but we actually meet her in the fourth movie.”
Hemphill found out she got the part on April 5 of 2023. She was on set in Atlanta six days later. She said she easily friended her castmates including Eric Dane, Rhea Seehorn and Melanie Liburd, adding it was a family environment on set.
“When it really hit me was when we went away for those few weeks,” Hemphill said, referring to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike.
The production was halted in June 2023 in support of the strike, and the cast and crew reunited to finish the film in Miami in February 2024.
“When I got to Miami, everyone hugging and kissing me and saying, ‘Quinn! Oh, my gosh, I missed you!’” she said. “Will Smith, Vanessa [Hudgens], everybody, that was when I was like, ‘OK, that wasn't a dream for those three months.’”
Hemphill is now living in Atlanta and continuing to seek out new roles.
She will travel to Los Angeles at the end of the month for the premiere of the short film “Sally, Get the Potatoes” at the Dances with Films Festival.
Hemphill also plays a role in "Goth Slayers," a comedy film, which hasn't set a release date.
"I don't know, I might get a call today," Hemphill said of her next move. "We're always on our toes as actors, so I'm sending in multiple auditions per week and then we kind of just see what we get from there."
Hemphill said she has found the industry to be small.
"It doesn't seem that way when you start, but then all of a sudden you start seeing the same people in the same project or somebody posted they're working with someone you just worked with. So just building and keeping those relationships," she said. "My big thing is I send five emails a day."
