Exclusive Interview: Tania Raymonde on Being the Slutty Girl and More for Texas Chainsaw 3D
Steve Barton
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This Friday, January 4th, Lionsgate is unleashing the Texas Chainsaw 3D in theaters everywhere, and to get you fiends ready, we’re bringing you an entire series of exclusive interviews with the cast and director John Luessenhop all week long.
First up in our series is co-star Tania Raymonde (“Lost,” “Death Valley”), who plays Nikki, the best friend of Heather Miller (Alexandra Daddario), who inherits much more than a mansion after her long-lost Aunt Verna passes away. As we discuss with Raymonde, Nikki is the ‘resident slut’ in TC3D but isn’t a total lost cause either- the actress explains why as well as discusses the challenges she faced during one hellacious stunt in particular and talks about the pressure of living up to horror fans’ expectations, too.
Check out the highlights from our exclusive chat with Raymonde below, and look for more interviews all week leading up to the release of Texas Chainsaw 3D on Friday.
Dread Central: So Nikki is a character that seems completely against type for you and definitely a bit different from the roles we’ve seen you in previously. Was part of the appeal of this role that you’d get to have some fun and mix it up a bit in your career then?
Tania Raymonde: Oh yeah; it was fun because she’s this typical free-spirit, slutty girl in a horror movie that you always expect to see in them (laughs). I never expected to be playing this kind of character, but I’m all for doing something vastly different too whenever I can. But it was just freeing playing that kind of expected role and hopefully fans have fun with her, too.
Dread Central: Even though she was the ‘slutty’ friend, she still had a bit of intelligence to her.
Tania Raymonde: Sure; plus she wasn’t written as a one-dimensional character either so even though she’s slutty, she still cares about her friend. She’s not dumb, she’s got a good sense to her and she’s kind of a badass so there were some great qualities to her, too. That’s what I like about this movie; there are a lot of familiar things to this world and this story, but there are also a lot of new qualities and surprises.
Dread Central: Considering the legacy of this franchise, was it daunting to you at all when you came on board Texas Chainsaw 3D because you knew the fans’ expectations for this film were going to be pretty high?
Tania Raymonde: Oh absolutely; plus it’s also one of the best titles of a movie- horror or otherwise- ever. But yeah, there is a lot of pressure on us and on the filmmakers too to keep this legacy going. It is such a beloved, cult horror hit so for sure it’s a huge responsibility for anyone to take on rebooting this entire series.
Horror fans are a particular kind of movie fan so they truly, deeply care about their favorite horror movies so you want to make sure to try and please those people since ultimately that’s who you’re making these movies for. They see horror movies as an art form and believe in it so it’s a big responsibility to make a sequel that in no way denigrates the original film also. You just have to hope that you’ve done something that does justice to the whole franchise.
Dan Yeager Texas Chainsaw 3D interview here
Scott Eastwood Texas Chainsaw 3D interview here
John Luessenhop Texas Chainsaw 3D interview here
Dread Central: There was a lot of physicality to your role, particularly the van scene with Alex where Leatherface flips you guys over and over (Note: not a spoiler, it’s in the trailer)- can you discuss the difficulties of the stunts on Texas Chainsaw 3D and that scene in particular?
Tania Raymonde: Oh yeah, it was tough; in some instances you can kind of plot out what you’re going to do in a scene so you try and practice moves and stuff so you can get an idea of how things will go. But in the case of the van scene, there’s really just no way you can prepare for a scene like that. In terms of logistics, I really had no idea how we were going to shoot that scene in 3D until just an hour or so before we started shooting it.
So it ended up taking us three days just to shoot that scene because we went at it all practical when we shot it. It just took forever to do. And the chainsaw was really going through the glass window, the van was really flipping and we were really in it when it was flipping so that kind of stuff was definitely very challenging for me.
Also, the tough thing about horror movies is that you have to maintain that high level of terror a lot of the time- and for a long period of time too- that after a 13- or 14-hour day, you just feel god-awful. You feel horrible, almost to the point where you feel like you want to throw up but then you just start playing little psychological mind games with yourself to keep yourself going. But it was an interesting challenge; I had never done a horror movie before Texas Chainsaw 3D.
Every Thursday night from now through January 4th @LionsgateHorror will give fans a chance to spread the#ChainsawThursdays gospel. Twitter users that tweet with the #ChainsawThursdays hashtag will automatically be entered to win free tickets to see TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D at their local theater, with DOZENS of winners each Thursday night.
In theaters January 4, 2013, Texas Chainsaw 3D is directed by John Luessenhop from a screenplay by Adam Marcus, Debra Sullivan and Kirsten Elms. Dan Yeager, John Dugan, Bill Moseley, Alexandra Daddario, Sue Rock, Tania Raymonde, Scott Eastwood, Gunnar Hansen, Tobe Hooper, Paul Rae, Keram Malicki-Sánchez, Ritchie Montgomery, Trey Songz, Marilyn Burns, Shaun Sipos, Thom Barry and Richard Riehle star.
Related News: Texas Chainsaw News, Interviews, Set Visit, and More!
Synopsis
Texas Chainsaw 3D continues the legendary story of the homicidal Sawyer family, picking up where Tobe Hooper’s 1974 horror classic left off in Newt, Texas, where for decades people went missing without a trace. The townspeople long suspected the Sawyer family, owners of a local barbeque pit, were somehow responsible. Their suspicions were finally confirmed one hot summer day when a young woman escaped the Sawyer house following the brutal murders of her four friends. Word around the small town quickly spread, and a vigilante mob of enraged locals surrounded the Sawyer stronghold, burning it to the ground and killing every last member of the family – or so they thought.
Decades later and hundreds of miles away from the original massacre, a young woman named Heather learns that she has inherited a Texas estate from a grandmother she never knew she had. After embarking on a road trip with friends to uncover her roots, she finds she is the sole owner of a lavish, isolated Victorian mansion. But her newfound wealth comes at a price as she stumbles upon a horror that awaits her in the mansion’s dank cellars…
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