‘Quicksand’ Interview: Star Allan Hawco Surfaces For Terrifying Survival Drama [Exclusive]
Mary Beth McAndrews
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Face facts. There is not one among us who didn’t fear the dangers of quicksand when were younger. Now Shudder is preying on our deep-sunken fears with the terrifying survival-horror release Quicksand. Today I sit down with star Allan Hawco (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan), who reveals what it was like to shoot the summer’s stickiest thriller.
In Quicksand, an American couple, on the brink of divorce, travel to Colombia for a work conference. While on a hike through the rainforest, a storm causes them to become trapped in a pit of quicksand. Unable to move, it becomes a struggle for survival as they battle the elements of the jungle and a venomous snake, in order to escape. Carolina Gaitàn (Encanto) costars.
Check out my interview with Allan Hawco right here:
Dread Central: Were you ever scared of quicksand when you were younger?
Allan Hawco: Well, Indiana Jones certainly put the, you know, yeah, fair. But I grew up in a place called Newfoundland in Canada. Which is in the middle of the North Atlantic. It’s interesting that the type of quicksand up there, the more authentic quicksand, the one we’re playing with in this film, there are elements of that in Newfoundland when we call them a bog. And I did, as a kid, get stuck in a bog for a very long time.
DC: Wait, how long?
AH: A a long time I had, I had stepped on a nail and, uh, and we were lost in the woods. Me and my friends… the terrain is very similar the top of the mountain in Bogota, where we shot Quicksand. It’s actually very similar. And the climate’s very similar. I’ve lived in that kind of mud. Yeah. My father got me out.
DC: Was doing this film kind of triggering then?
AH: No. You use it, use it, use it. It was real, when you really think about it, I was just a kid, and it was just a little thing. And, you know, I wasn’t that far from home, but at the time it was terrifying.
DC: Were you filming Quicksand in Columbia?
AH: Yeah. In Bogota.
DC: How did they create this quicksand pit? Like what was that experience like?
AH: It’s interesting. We had an incredible special effects team locally, and there was this ringer brought in from Cape Town. And he was really good friends with Nico, our producer, and came to work on the thing for a laugh. And they did an incredible job. It was really, really, really tough. Carolina and I were in that pit for very long, very many days. I think it was like nine days or more. But, you know, part of the fun of our job is doing weird things.
And those conditions were pretty brutal. Cause it was all night shoots, and we were in the woods in Columbia. I like to consider myself a low-maintenance performer. I know that they felt like they needed actors who were gonna be able to just do the job and not be in any way precious about the surroundings. You just can’t in a circumstance like this. I know for a fact that was a factor.
DC: You both click really well on screen in terms of how you’re able to act off of each other.
AH: Thanks for saying that. I think we do too. If either one of us had gone in with a plan about how we were gonna play something, we would’ve been dead in the mud. Our director Andreas was number one from the start and was like, “we’re not doing an action movie.” I had one meeting with him before we started shooting, and it lasted about six minutes. And he was like, “it’s a drama.” And I was like, “great.” And all the prep I had done for it was emotional through lines and backstories and potential outcomes of how things could go and how they could play.
DC: What was the weather like during the shoot?
AH: Bogota is so high up, and plus, we went up the mountain even higher. So you’re already elevated, and it’s freezing. The pit was warm, but the outside was freezing, and Carolina’s the size of a pocket watch. It’s like you’re trying to keep yourself stable while trying to do this work. That’s where your personality comes out. Right? While we were together, we were very similar in that we were both like, “fuck this, we’re doing this together. Like, let’s, let’s make sure that we’re having the best experience here because what can we do otherwise?”
DC: I’m just so curious about how they constructed the pit.
AH: It was a real challenge. It was a challenging thing. But again, like Andreas proposed this, you know, the way he envisioned … he’s a really, really tight director. He’s really trusting in his actors. Just let us play, let us find the scenes. Uh, knew what he was going for. We were all just really in sync. And that’s a rare occurrence.
DC: It sounds like it was a very serendipitous thing where everyone kind of came together and made a really cool movie, and all worked really well together.
AH: I would do it again in a heartbeat. And it was a non-drama , we were all there to do the work. We had a really, really good time. That crew in Columbia, it’s my second time working with a lot of them. It’s very much my way of working where there’s no diva attitude on that set from anyone. And they’ve got an insanely huge talent pool in terms of crew and people, and they’re dedicated to their work. And so everyone there was invested in what we were doing.
Quicksand is available to stream as of today, July 14th, on Shudder and AMC+. Let us know what you think on Twitter via @DreadCentral. We’re always around to chat about all things survival horror.
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