“’Hero’ is not a badge that I even want to wear,” says Mike Williams. “What we did that night was react to a very bad situation.” Yet it’s impossible to watch Deepwater Horizon, in theaters Sept. 30, and not feel a sense of awe at what the real-life Williams—played by Mark Wahlberg in director Peter Berg’s gripping new film—endured. On April 20, 2010, Williams was working on board the Deepwater Horizon, an offshore oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, when a well exploded, ultimately killing eleven people. But Williams helped guide countless more survivors to safety, eventually jumping ten stories from atop the burning structure into the water.
The devastating environmental impact of the resulting oil spill is what dominated headlines in the months after the disaster, but Berg’s film puts a human face on the tragedy by documenting the grit, determination and ingenuity of the hard-working men and women who were thrust into harrowing conditions. “The remarkable things that they did in order to survive and help others survive was incredible,” says Wahlberg. “Those are the kinds of stories that I’m drawn to.”