Canadian actress Sarah Carter's keeping really busy and thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to switch between film roles and the hit TV series Shark starring James Woods. Carter's latest excursion to the big screen is DOA: Dead or Alive, an action film based on Tecmo's Dead or Alive videogame series.
How would you describe DOA: Dead or Alive?
“It’s about the top fighters from around the world coming to this island to compete and they find out that there’s an evil character who wants to steal everyone’s strongest powers and make himself the ultimate fighter. And so all the girls in the competition end up joining forces to take their side down. It goes from a competition to a movie about girls coming together, Charlie’s Angels type of film.”
Were you a fan of action movies going into this?
“Not particularly, but they’re so much fun. I did love Charlie’s Angels and I love Kill Bill. I actually got a Kill Bill scene, which is a dream come true. I got a big bar fight scene, so…I got my Uma Thurman on.”
Had you played the game before signing on to do the film?
“I hadn’t played before I started working on the film, but we all got X-Boxes in our hotel rooms in China so I did get pretty good at it. It’s easy to figure out; it’s a little harder to master. But, I don’t know, probably two weeks of playing helped.”
You didn’t get addicted to it, did you?
“I did! I think everybody got addicted!”
Since you weren’t familiar with the game going in, what grabbed you about the script?
“I like the idea of doing something where I would be able to train for the fight scenes and the characters are all cartoon characters. And it’s just a light alternative to other things I’d been doing at the time.”
How did you prepare physically for the fight scenes?
“We did three months of intensive training here in Los Angeles before we left for China. 9-5, Monday to Friday in a gymnastics gym out by the airport here. They flew in a training team from China and we did four different styles of martial arts, gymnastics, kick-boxing, weight training and wirework. Wirework was the most fun.”
Were there any accidents?
“Luckily, none of us got hurt, which is amazing because safety regulations over in China are a lot more relaxed… In fact, I don’t know if they have any. So we were really having to look out for ourselves and our own safety.”
You have a dancing background. Did that help when it came to the choreographed fight scenes?
“It helps, definitely. I don’t know how I would have managed without it. We had to pick things up pretty quickly. Jaime [Pressly] also has a dance background and so does Natassia [Malthe]. And I don’t know how it was for Holly [Valance] and Devon [Aoki], but they pulled it off really well. I’m grateful for the dance background.”
Aside from the safety regulations, was working in China a difficult adjustment for you to make?
“It was traumatizing. It was, because everything that was familiar to us was gone completely. Everything looks different, smells different, and tasted different. We were supposed to be looking our best and feeling our strongest, eating things that we never heard of or seen before. And it was good - we were sick a lot of the time - but on the plus side, you do a lot of growing when you’re forced into those kinds of situations. We all bonded, as you can imagine. So there were a lot of great things that came out of being there for so long.”
Were you able to roam around the area when you weren’t filming?
“We were allowed to roam around. I actually had four days off at one point and took a trip to Beijing, so I got to hike the Great Wall and see Mao’s dead body. I did all of that.”
That’s an experience you’ll always remember.
“It’s one of the things you check off on your list of things to do in your life, right?”
Do you really think being in China helped you bond more as a cast?
“Of course. There was no room for bitchiness because all we had was each other.”
Can you talk about working with director Corey Yuen?
“He had an interpreter and he would speak with passion and a lot of big gestures to get across what he wanted. Luckily, it was a very physical movie so he, a lot of times, would just show us where we were supposed to be and what we were supposed to do, and he managed to be quite clear. He was also working with a lot of graphic images, so he would just show us a picture of what he wanted the scene to look like and managed to get his point across.”
He must have extensively story-boarded it out so you could follow along.
“Yeah, before every take he would show us the storyboard. It was an entirely Chinese crew so we each had our own interpreters.”
That must have added a whole other level of difficulty to being an actress on an action movie. Was it what you anticipated?
“I had no idea what to expect.”
You also have the horror movie Skinwalkers coming out soon. Did you work with a lot of green screens and are there a lot of special effects in that movie?
“It wasn’t as much green screen as I was expecting. The makeup was pretty much as far as it went for me. It was really fun playing a werewolf, actually.”
It was fun to play a werewolf?
“It was! There’s something cathartic about it.”
What was the makeup process like? Did it take hours?
“Yeah, it did. We had a great team and it’s part of the fun.”
When you first picked up the script and saw you’d be playing a werewolf, did you put it back down for a while or did it immediately catch you attention?
“Now I think I’d put it down, but it caught my eye at the time.”
So now you’re done with any desire you might have had to play a werewolf?
“I think so. I got it out of my system. But it was in there!”
There are campy werewolf movies and ones that take the werewolf legend seriously. How does Skinwalkers approach the topic?
“It’s a serious werewolf movie. It addresses the mythology behind werewolves.”
Growing up, were you a person who enjoyed those old werewolf movies?
“I did enjoy Teen Wolf. (Laughing) But I wasn’t too into the genre, no. It was exciting to learn about it. It’s got a pretty severe following.”
