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INTERVIEW WITH "ALIEN VS. PREDATOR" STARS LANCE HENRIKSEN AND SANAA LATHAN
Fans at the 2004 San Diego Comic Con were treated to never before seen footage of a scene from "Alien vs. Predator" in which an alien and a predator battle it out. The reaction was wildly enthusiastic after the clip finished, with the majority of the 6,000+ in attendance seeming to love what they saw.
Shortly before the public was treated to that scene, I had the chance to speak with "AVP" stars Lance Henriksen and Sanaa Lathan about working on this movie and what fans can expect from the long-awaited film.
LANCE HENRIKSEN AND SANAA LATHAN INTERVIEW :
Are you happy to return to this franchise?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: Of course. For me it’s like a cycle and it’s a closure for that character. Not that they couldn’t bring me back down the road.
I mean they did it, obviously.
But this is a prequel so... When Paul [W.S. Anderson] asked me [about returning], we had a meeting together and he was such a gentlemen, he described the whole movie to me. And then I said, “I’m in, Paul.” It was great. It was a great idea and a great script.
So if this is a prequel that must mean that both the alien and the predator live. How does one win?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: Well, you are really digging, aren’t you? (laughter)
Following the logic here…
LANCE HENRIKSEN: There is a logic but this is a different avenue, a different take on it, but I won’t tell you. It’s only a few days away. It’s brilliant, it really is.
Do you love to watch horror movies just on your own time?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: Yeah, sure. They’re great morality plays, you know? I play a multi-billionaire that hires Sanaa to lead an expedition to Antarctica. She’s an expert on cold weather and a lot of other things. We get down there and walk into the mouth of an alligator without knowing it. Cool stuff.
Sanaa, how was Lance to work with?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: Oh sh** (Laughing). I was great to work with.
SANAA LATHAN: (Laughing) How are you going to ask me that in front of him?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: I’ll leave the room.
SANAA LATHAN: No, he was great. He made it so…
LANCE HENRIKSEN: (Chuckles)
SANAA LATHAN: No, truly. I’m happy to answer this question because he had the most experience out of all of us. Haven’t you done like 90 movies?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: Yeah.
SANAA LATHAN: Which I think is amazing, and he came on the set like it was his first time. I mean, he was so enthusiastic, so fun.
LANCE HENRIKSEN: So were you guys.
SANAA LATHAN: To make a movie – and a movie on this scale – is very grueling at times. Long, long hours and, you know, it’s cold weather conditions. He was fun. He was great. Very dedicated to the character and the story and also at the same time in between takes [he] just kept it light and fun.
LANCE HENRIKSEN: We had a good time. We really did. They are a great bunch of people. All of us work together so well. No fights, no nothing. You know that cliche of bullsh** rolling downhill? Paul Anderson is such a gentleman and the climate on the set with the crew and everybody was so easy. It felt like we were all friends so there was a chance to laugh and to support each other. It was great. It was really great.
What’s it like for you to be revisiting a version of your character after all these years?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: [It's] the atmosphere. When I walked on the set and saw the alien I was back immediately. I remembered being in London and shooting that thing. It was instant. It was instantaneous. Of course, I did “Pumpkinhead” and a lot of other movies with the guys that did those monsters so they were there, too. So I was going like, “Tom, Alec” you know, like a reunion.
The Stan Winston people, Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: Yeah. That was Stan’s first movie and these guys were on it. Now they’ve gone on their own.
Does "Alien vs. Predator" leave it so your characters could possibly come back?
SANAA LATHAN: You can always come back (laughing).
LANCE HENRIKSEN: Yeah, you see what they do. I’m certain Sanaa is coming back. Certain. I would bet everything I made on this.
LANCE HENRIKSEN: You know what I mean? The issue right now is with a sequel, like this is in a sense a sequel, it’s a prequel but it’s a sequel as well, but I don’t think that anything that people are hoping for is going to be missed, and we’ve gone way further than that. The biggest disappointment would be, of course, if you failed it. But that’s not going to happen.
Sanaa, you’re kind of the Ellen Ripley character. Do you have elements of that kind of strong woman?
SANAA LATHAN: Definitely. She’s a strong woman but I would say that’s probably the only similarity.
LANCE HENRIKSEN: That’s true.
SANAA LATHAN: I mean, as different as me and Sigourney [Weaver] look is as different as these two characters are. It really is this character that Paul has created. She’s her own woman. She’s smart; she discovers things about herself and rises to the occasion in very scary situations. She’s pretty fierce.
LANCE HENRIKSEN: There’s nothing more fierce than the female, like the momma lion. Believe me, my wife is a good example (laughing).
SANAA LATHAN: He knows firsthand.
LANCE HENRIKSEN: But it’s got that rich quality.
Did you have to learn a lot of technical jargon to play a scientist?
SANAA LATHAN: I’m not a scientist.
I’m actually an environmentalist who is very familiar with Antarctica. I’m kind of like the safety guide. It’s the other people who are the scientists and the archaeologists.
LANCE HENRIKSEN: We brought together the best. The best that we could find.
SANAA LATHAN: My character is learning as I go along. I’m just there to make sure everybody is safe.
Did you have to do a lot of acting against things that weren’t there?
SANAA LATHAN: (Laughing) Yes.
Did you ever feel kind of silly or did you really get into it?
SANAA LATHAN: Well, you know it’s funny because my mother, when I got the part, we were all really excited and she said, “This will probably be a really hard movie for you physically but easy acting-wise.” And I found that that was completely wrong. It was probably one of the hardest films acting-wise that I had to do because it’s such a high state of emotion and then on top of it you’re – you know, the monster isn’t there – and you’re having to create that for yourself.
Was there a funny prop, like a sock on a stick, in place of the creature?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: No. No, they did better than that (laughing). You know the other thing about this movie is that most of it was physical but parts that just brought that action and the extra mile [were] miniscule by comparison to a lot of stuff being made today. All of our stuff was actually there but then to go that extra [mile], that’s when she’s talking about there’s nothing there [to act opposite].
When you were in “Aliens,” there weren’t any CGI effects, were there?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: There was none of that. None.
How was that a much different experience from this?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: The technology was extraordinary because [James] Cameron and those guys – you know, Stan Winston at the time – they had an Alien Queen with like four guys in it. Two in the top and then they were operating stuff. But we had problems to overcome. Like with CG, you can rip somebody in half. Today it’s nothing. But in those days, I had to actually act backwards. We did a whole scene backwards because the Queen couldn’t actually grab anything. Old stuff like that. But it was, again, it was a little bit like doing a low budget film in a sense that you had to use your cleverness as opposed to saying, “Don’t worry. We’ll get that on the green screen.” I don’t really like giving up that much power to the green screen. You know what I mean? I really want to be part of it. I mean, Dennis Quaid had to do a whole movie where he’s talking to a dragon that wasn’t there. A tennis ball on a stick – that’s what you’re talking about. I can’t even imagine that.
I hope they painted eyes on it at least.
LANCE HENRIKSEN: Yeah. Like the crew gets funny and they draw a little smile on it. You go, “Yeah, thanks.”
How does this incarnation of your character compare with the previous films?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: The only similarity is that Bishop, because he wasn’t human, thought anything alive was the most beautiful thing to see. And in this one, I’m playing a guy who’s dying so the same thing exists. When you’re dying I would imagine that seeing life for the last time or soon, you’d think that all living things are so beautiful. And I think that that was part of the dignity of the character. That’s what I respond to, more human things
How did the finished footage from “Alien vs Predator” you've seen so far compare to your experience of making the film?
LANCE HENRIKSEN: It’s beautiful.
SANAA LATHAN: It is beautiful and it’s so big.
LANCE HENRIKSEN: It’s such a big movie.
SANAA LATHAN: Even though the sets were the most amazing sets I’ve ever experienced to work on, they were massive and so detailed.
LANCE HENRIKSEN: Unbelievable. The sets were a city block and the screen’s going to have to be as big as this wall to be seen.
SANAA LATHAN: It definitely matches that and even surpasses that in terms of the bigness. It was beautifully shot. I think it falls in the “Alien” tradition.
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