Rob Kazinsky Talks Siren, Warcraft, and More!
Jeff O'Donnell
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Rob Kazinsky, best known for his roles in TVs “True Blood” and Guillermo Del Toro’s 2013 smash Pacific Rim, stars in the supernatural fairytale Siren (review), out August 18.
In the film Vinessa Shaw plays a woman who has the uncanny ability to appear to each man as his heart’s desire. Kazinsky plays Guy, a man without the ability to smell, who is consequently immune to the woman’s magical charm. But is there more to him than meets the eye?
Dread Central: Thanks for taking the time, Rob. What are you working on at the moment?
Rob Kazinsky: I’m currently deep into prep for “The Frankenstein Code” on Fox, which we start shooting the end of August and air in early 2016. Mainly, my prep involves working out for 26 hours a day and eating air.
DC: What appealed to you about Siren?
RK: A plethora of reasons really. I liked the script, and I thought if done correctly, it could be very noir and interesting, and on a low budget indie we’d be allowed to breathe into the characters and really try and make something happen.
There was also the massive challenge of doing an American accent. This film was my first ever attempt at it — you can be the judge of how successful or otherwise my attempts were.
DC: How did you hear about the film initially?
RK: My agent sent me it to read, and at the time I was getting ready to go shoot Pacific Rim (that’s how long ago this was) and I was trying to find something that was perhaps a little more low-key and quiet!
DC: As you said, Siren was the first film requiring you to do an American accent for a film – did you find it difficult?
RK: Performance in any accent that’s not your own is difficult. This was my first ever attempt at it, and I found it a unique challenge. Often I’d feel like I was choosing between accent and performance; hopefully enough of both come through.
DC: You and Vinessa Shaw are terrific in the film – great chemistry. How did you enjoy working with her?
RK: Thank you. Vinessa is a diamond, and she’s very much like “Leigh” [her character] I felt, thoughtful and kind. We were all working here on a movie with the kind of budget that found footage movies would scoff at, and as a team we all pulled together as a cast and as a crew.
DC: What can you tell us about the shoot as such and the on-set atmosphere?
RK: There are a lot of mosquitoes in Boston in the fall. I was perpetually covered in chemicals and antihistamines. When working on a micro-budget, you’re doing it for free, for the love of it, and we loved making it.
DC: How does working on something smaller like Siren differ from working on something colossal in scale like Pacific Rim?
RK: Honestly, the process is no different. Obviously there are more SFX and more available facilities, but the process of working with a director – whether it’s GDT and Legendary or Jesse Peyronel – is the same. We all set out to make a film that says something and we try our best to make that vision a reality, whether it’s a crew of 3 or 3,000.
DC: Is there a particular genre you enjoy working in?
RK: I like science. I’ve been a keen student of it my entire life, and good science fiction has to be based on believable science. Otherwise, it’s not sci-fi; it’s fantasy. Good science fiction is what I grew up reading. It’s what I grew up watching, and it’s what I hope to be a part of. I like the fantastical worlds. They’re so much fairer and clearer than our own.
DC: You have Warcraft coming up – which looks amazing. How was that experience? It looks like a pretty loyal representation of the game…
RK: Warcraft might be the topper on my career for however long I’m lucky enough to have one. It was a dream of mine from way back when that one day I might be in the position in my career to have a shot at being in the movie when they made it, and now I’m not just in it… I’m “Orgrim Doomhammer”! Again, as filmmakers we have tried our hardest to walk the line betwixt a faithful representation and filmic representation.
There’s never been a good computer game movie, and the reason for that is very simple; you can’t take 100 hours of gameplay story and squeeze it into two hours and have it be successful. So we’ve tried to make the best film possible, and as a hardcore WoW fanatic, the sacrifices we’ve made have created a great movie that will make us players happy and hopefully enthrall the rest of the world with Warcraft. I absolutely can’t wait for you to see it on June 10, 2016. I think you’ll all love it as much as, if not more than, I do.
Look for Siren on August 18th.
Writer-director Jesse Peyronel’s Siren stars Rob Kazinsky (Pacific Rim, “The Frankenstein Code”) and Vinessa Shaw (Eyes Wide Shut, After the Fall).
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