ShockTillYouDrop.com

Source: Ryan Rotten, Managing Editor

April 15, 2009

ShockTillYouDrop.com: Is this the busiest night ever?

Radha Mitchell: 350 extras or something.

Shock: Can you talk at all about what the scene is?

Mitchell: Well, the story is that there's been this situation, a chemical weapon has accidentally been dumped into the water supply system so this town has been infected. Everyone has been victimized by that situation. The government officials are trying to suppress this information and also keep these people contained. In this scene we're lining up, basically heading to the concentration camp and we don't know what's going to happen to us. I don't think the government officials know exactly how they're going to deal with us either. But, they're measuring people's temperatures to see who's got an elevated temperature. And the people who appear to be sick are being pushed in one direction and the other people are pushed in another direction and maybe they're going to be taken out of the town, we don't know.

Shock: And maybe you get on one side of the line.

Mitchell: And maybe we're going to be separated tonight.

Shock: Well, I just want to say that it's terrific to see you in another horror movie and staying within the genre. I mean, you would call this a horror film, right? Not a "thriller"...

Mitchell: It's a remake of a Romero story so it's a thrilling horror movie. [laughs] It's interesting shooting it and actually figuring out how much of a horror and how much of a thriller it is. There are beats that are quite full of suspense and then there are some beats that are quite emotionally intense and there are these horrific-looking crazies walking around who fulfill that sort of criteria of looking quite theatrical and quite designed. That combined with I think this naturalist style that we're working in will be quite interesting.

Shock: Have you ever done a picture set in the south?

Mitchell: I've never been down South before. I've gone horse riding and was invited to go pig hunting. I was going to bring you all some boiled peanuts, I couldn't find any. It's great to be down here. Where were we the other night? We were singing karaoke in Bahama Bob's which is like a trailer which has been turned into a bar. It's double, yeah. Everyone of all different shapes and sizes were in there like, grinding. [laughs] It was interesting.

Shock: This must be emotionally straining, physically straining, so you guys need to cut loose a little bit at least.

Mitchell: Yeah, I had a sore neck the other day because I was bashing the head out of a crazy which was fun. But that kind of thing does take a toll on your muscles. It can, so you need Epsom salts if you're going to do a movie like this.

Shock: What were you bashing the crazy with?

Mitchell: My hand. Oh yeah, it was great. [laughs] It was fun because I don't get the gun. If you don't have the gun, you want something like that.

Shock: How physically demanding is this role compared to the horror films you've done?

Mitchell: Everything you do always seems to be kind of demanding. This has been interesting because a lot of it isn't so much in the dialogue, but it's in just the actions and the activities. You have to be quite fully committed to those scenes. So that fight scene with the crazy can be quite physical, you don't feel it while you're acting, but the next day you're like, "Oh that hurts." But I look forward to that.

Shock: You're basically fighting people off throughout the entire movie?

Mitchell: No, that was the high point and hopefully there'll be more of those kinds of scenes. And then I guess the scene that we're shooting tomorrow night is intense as well. Well, tomorrow night we go into the situation where the people who've got the disease are going to be. I'm going to be strapped to this gurney and injected with stuff, and all this stuff's going to happen. So yeah, it's generally fairly intense and the emotions that go with that are quite intense as well.

Shock: Where does this role stand for you in your genre history? Is there a favorite, a least favorite? Where does it fit?

Mitchell: Well I've really enjoyed it and what I like about the story is that in many ways it's like a married couple and they're kind of normal. It's this normal couple that is going through this crazy situation and they're reliant on each other. I don't think you see that a lot in this genre, like there's normally this heroic somebody. In this case, they're kind of in love, they're married and they've got this hope of the baby that they're going to have and all that. They're just normal and I liked that about it. That's what I guess attracted to me in the story in the first place.

Shock: What ropes your character directly into the action?

Mitchell: Well, I'm playing the town doctor and [Timothy Olyphant's] playing the sheriff [David] so there's a weird thing that's occurring in the first scene which triggers his kind of paranoia, not paranoia, but this suspicion. Then people are coming into the clinic with this weird kind of aura. We can't quite figure out what it is and then the pieces all get put together and David figures out that this is connected to this and this is connected to this and, "Holy shit. What are we going to do?" As soon as we figure it out we're in the middle of it all. So we fall into it as we figure out what it is at the same time.

Shock: Has there been any point of this, especially with the hysteria angle and the bio-weapons, where you thought to yourself, "Holy shit. What if this actually happened or something like this could actually happen?"

Mitchell: The power of this story is it's quite conceivable. This could happen and if this did happen you wouldn't be trusting the government to be taking care of you. I can't site incidents and I won't go into when this has happened and how this has happened, but just the way that society's structured. This is the kind of thing that would get buried if it's possible to do that. If there's a bunch of people that may or may not be infected I can't imagined them invited into society. Who knows what some of these chemical weapons are designed to do and how capable are we of guiding them? Do we really trust the bureaucracy to be able to do that? Then you look even in Russia with post-Perestroika and the situations there and where things have been covered up and people dying from radiation or whatever. So it could easily happen. So it poses that issue.

Shock Till You Drop caught up to Mitchell days before the film's premiere. Here's our chat!

Shock Till You Drop: How did the experience ultimately turn out?

Radha Mitchell: Overall, it went great. I was working in India and then I was called to work in Georgia and Iowa. And Breck is a very dynamic director. He gets it. We have a bunch of a great actors involved in the project. But it was a lot of work, to be honest. It turned out pretty great.

Shock: You’ve since caught up to the original Romero movie…

Mitchell: Yeah, I did see it. I heard from someone that George Romero is happy with this version.

Shock: How’s your character differ from the original?

Mitchell: Well, it’s important to be proactive. The most important thing in these movies is that people are not just waiting for you to die. So you want to create integrity. You don’t want her to be just a screamer, which can be quite fun. Here they do give Judy a gun. And she gets to have a career and an opinion. Women’s lib has taken us far. [laughs] When you look at Romero’s characters, he has interesting casting. It’s always left of the field.

Shock: Breck has eased back on the military aspect…

Mitchell: In the original film there’s this annoying drum roll. That’s gone, thank God. There is a military presence in the sense that the town is being contained. Judy is taken into this hospital situation. We’re not so much covering what’s going on with them, it’s about these four people and what they deal with.

Shock: Surprising you remember the drum roll.

Mitchell: Well, I watched the movie from my bath tub - I don’t know how this relates to our interview - but the TV is far and turned up loud. You can just hear this drum roll. It’s one of the strongest memories I have of it. I’m glad we don’t have that.