Kate Beckinsale on “Underworld: Evolution” Being More Physically Demanding Than “Underworld:” “Yeah, I think so. In some ways, definitely. I got to do a lot more stuff. In the first one they didn’t really know what I could do and I was kind of running around getting. I’m more of a girl in the first one. And this one, I got to do a lot more action stuff, fighting and boy stuff. Now I’m the she-male, officially the she-male.”
After Wearing Leather for so Many Months, Is it Hard Not to Wear Leather?: “I must say, it is quite hard to make the transition back into regular clothes. I’ve gotten used to how I look now all shiny. It’s a bit sad when you get back into jeans. It was quite a relief to get rid of it, very nice after all that time,” admitted Beckinsale.
Kate Beckinsale on How Selene Changes from “Underworld” to “Underworld: Evolution:” “I’ll tell you how. Len [Wiseman, director] and I both felt she was very sort of repressed in the first one. We wanted to open up the feel of the film, to give her just a tiny bit more humor. It’s not like gags and all that stuff, but just to have a little lightness. A little bit more fun with it this time. So in terms of her relationship with Michael, that’s kind of opened up a bit as well.
…She’s not sort of underneath anybody else’s [control]. Kraven’s not in charge of her anymore. She’s out there on her own. We thought we should have a bit more fun with her as a character this time.”
Kate Beckinsale on Preparing to Play Selene Once More: “I was so un-violent the first time around. I really had to train a lot. And I did ‘Van Helsing’ as part of my training, I suppose, as well. So this time we still had the training period but everybody was much more aware of what our strengths and weaknesses - especially our weaknesses - were this time so they knew kind of what we had to work on.
We’ve got a lot more fighting this time. I think it’s cheaper just to fire a few guns than it is to actually choreograph a huge great big fight sequence. So this time we have a little more money and we have got a lot more fist fighting and running about. So we practiced that a lot.”
Bill Nighy’s Role in “Underworld: Evolution:” “Sadly, he’s not in it as much as he was. We’d visit him a bit and that was very [nice]. …He’s just a kind of rock star god to us. We were sorry to see him go so quickly. We sliced his head in half last time. If we had only known he was going to be so cool we wouldn’t have done that.”
Scott Speedman on Donning the Prosthetics Again to Play Michael: “It was lot more time that I had to do it this time. It was a little more extensive than last time - but it was pretty easy. The prosthetics stuff – it wasn’t that bad. I didn’t complain that much…”
On Their Action Figures: Kate Beckinsale said, “Mine had a touch of the she-man about her. I wasn’t that happy,” while Scott Speedman claims he has no idea what his looked like. “I never saw mine,” said Speedman, to which Beckinsale prompted exclaimed, “Liar, liar, liar!”
“Underworld: Evolution” is presented by Screen Gems and will be released on January 20, 2006.
