Action star Dolph Lundgren took time out from his busy schedule to give us some exciting information on his new starring role in Don’t Kill It.
STARBURST: Your character Jebediah Woodley is an interesting one. Tell us about him.
Dolph Lundgren: He’s a mix of a few different characters. He never stops talking and has a lot of weird mannerisms to a degree. That’s what attracted me to the character. He was different than anything I’ve played before. He’s a demon catcher that uses non-lethal weapons while trying not to kill anything. He doesn’t hurt anyone… well, not much anyway. He has an interesting back story.
Your co-star Kristina Klebe, who plays FBI agent Evelyn Pierce, is a tough by-the-book skeptic until she becomes a believer in your mission. You have a great yin and yang character dichotomy. Did you rehearse a lot working out the characters before filming?
I didn’t get to meet Kristina until I had started filming a week into the movie so there wasn’t much rehearsal or preparation, but we worked it out on the set and we made the character’s chemistry work for the film.
The town hall sequence was the most difficult sequence to shoot. Let’s talk about that.
The rule of the story was that if you kill the person who has the demon inside them, the demon absorbs the next person who kills them and so on. It’s a supernatural riddle that I have to solve and all chaos takes place in the church. Mike did a great job putting it all together and we shot it in two and a half days. It was an intense scene, but it was also my favorite in the film. My friend, James Chalke, plays the preacher and as soon as I walk into the church, he starts going off on me during his sermon, so I shoot him with a rubber bullet that they think is real as he falls over. The congregation looks over at me in shock and I tell them, “Don’t worry. It’s a rubber bullet.” It was a lot of fun working with James.
So, what’s up next for you?
It would be great to do a sequel, but we’ll see where the film goes. I think it will find its own audience. Overall, it was a great experience working on Don’t Kill It. Right now, I’m doing Arrow for the WB network shooting in Vancouver, Canada and a horror/action zombie film Dead Trigger. I’m very fortunate to be directing a period piece film in Sweden later this year. I’ve never done a film in Sweden, so I’m looking forward to this. I like period piece films. I’m a busy guy.
Don’t Kill It opens in the US on March 3rd.
