Tell me about your character. He is one of the bad guys and you don’t usually play bad guys.
“That’s one of the other draws for me: this is the first time I’ve played the bad guy and it was a real departure from what I’ve normally done in my career. I just got to play the big badass wolf. I got to shoot guns and ride motorcycles and do these insane crazy stunts and wire work. And then I got to put on this wolf suit made by the legendary Stan Winston. It was just a fantastic experience for me.”
How did you get ready physically to tackle the stunt work?
“They didn’t really give us a whole lot of time to really prepare the way I would normally like to. But we had a great stunt crew led by Steve Lucescu who is one of the best stunt coordinators in the world. He would give me something to do and I would just go out and do it. I would learn it and I’d come back and say, ‘Give me more.’ I wanted to do as much as they would possibly let me.”
You haven’t really had to do many stunts in your previous movies. Did you expect to pick it up so quickly?
“No, it was a completely new experience. I’d never done that before. I had never done these kinds of stunts. I had never done anything with wire work before in my life. It was a completely new experience for me.
I felt like I owed it to Steve to really raise my level of game and make sure that I did him justice. And more importantly, I really wanted to do Stan justice because, like I said, he’s been wanting to tell this story for a long, long time. He put in a lot of hard work to make these werewolves come to life. I had to live up to that onus and make sure not just that I performed well as a character, but that I really brought a physicality to it that was true, that was truthful.”
What’s up next?
“I have Dragon Wars coming out in a month here. Then I have The Tattooist coming out, which is a movie I did in New Zealand about a tattoo artist who finds himself immersed in the Samoan culture and tradition and all the beliefs that go along with that. And then I have this movie called Senseless coming out which is about based on the Stona Fitch novel about a businessman who is abducted in Europe and held hostage. His captivity is streamed online for anybody with a laptop to observe from the safety of their own home. It’s called Senseless not just because what they’re doing is senseless, but because they’re systematically taking away his senses.”
That sounds interesting.
“Yeah, that was a real character piece. It’s a very well-written piece. And then I just got back from Europe where I was doing a film there called Frost. It’s also an independent. It was by a director named Steve Clark and it’s about this guy in his mid-thirties having sort of an existential crisis. “
It doesn’t sound like you’re returning to the horror genre anytime soon.
“I think the biggest thing is just to have variety and to kind of mix it up a little bit. I’ve done some big budget shoot ‘em up bang-bang genre pieces, and I’m trying to balance it out with some really character-driven, good storytelling independents.”
