Emily Skeggs' Character Was Originally Scripted For a Male Actor

'Mile 22' follows an American elite intelligence agency that tries to smuggle a mysterious lone officer with sensitive information out of the country. Directed by Peter Berg, the film that stars Mark Wahlberg in the lead hit theatres in India on Friday, August 24. 'Mile 22' also stars Emily Skeggs, but little do we know that her role was actually meant for a male actor. The actress who plays the character of M.I.T - a  coding prodigy, describes her character as “a self-taught prodigy coder" who is the tech brain of the team and looks at everything from a tech perspective.

The role of M.I.T. was initially  scripted for a male actor, but the decision to switch the character’s gender was a challenge that intrigued Skeggs. She said, “I think there’s a stereotype, an idea of what we think a coder looks like — and that stereotype is totally wrong."

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“I was excited to take on the role from a female perspective, bring gender into play, and crack that stereotype open,” she added. The actress also learnt about the gender disparity in the tech world.  She said, “I watched this awesome documentary called Code: Debugging the Gender Gap, and the main thing I took away from it is that a lot of young women and girls are taught in school that they’re not good at math or science — so they don’t perform at the level they should”.

It made her realise she’d doubted her own abilities and encouraged some self-reflection. Emily further added “I took a step back and said, ‘I’m good at language, logic, and puzzles. I can do that. That’s all that coding is, so let me try.’ I learned really basic code, and now I’m hooked!”

Here's another interesting fact about the movie: It was filmed on a surprisingly short 42-day schedule between November 2017 and February 2018. Majority of its indoors was in Atlanta, Georgia during the first five weeks, before moving to Bogota, Colombia for the remainder of the shoot, where the exterior action scenes were staged in the middle of the bustling city on practical locations.