So the easy highlight of the RESIDENT EVIL: EXTINCTION
set visit was the sit down with Milla Jovovich. She’s got enough energy to power a city block (or more), and she was still in costume which meant I had a supermodel in a thin white tee and no bra sitting
two feet from me. Tough to stay focused as you can imagine, but I did my best for you guys!
Milla Jovovich
[Talking before she even takes her seat] Let me just say that it’s really too bad that you guys came on the one really boring day. Before we were doing all this wire work and stuff. It was crazy. I can’t even imagine what you guys are gonna write about. It’s like, “She got a coffee!”
Did you design your own outfit for this?
Well, yeah, me and my partner, Jovovich-Hawk our clothing line actually designed it. It’s fun.
Any other looks?
No, no, no. She’s kind of a loner, living by herself in the desert so she doesn’t change much.
We’ve heard that Alice is sort of a Charles Bronson-type character out of a Sergio Leone western. Would you agree with that?
I would like to see more of a Clint Eastwood thing honestly. It’s always just trying to keep it real.
Did you have any input on the script as it was being written?
Um, a little bit. When [Paul Anderson] finished the script he sent it to me, and I had a few comments, but I really liked the script. I thought it was really interesting and a real departure. All three movies are like 360 degrees from each other, which is great. Different look, different characters. I think more than anything [Alice] started fairly innocent, and now she’s – not bad or defeated but – this is life, there is no future.
Were you able to utilize any of the martial arts you learned for Ultraviolet in this movie?
Yeah, it was great, because I have to do a lot of blade work with these two knives. Since I already knew how to use swords and police sticks, it’s sort of the same movements just with a knife. So I didn’t have to do a six month rehearsal process.
Was the script set at the start of filming or were there re-writes?
Always re-writes, but less on this than any of the others for sure. This was the strongest script. On the first one we had major re-writes. The ending and all that. And on the second one there were things we ended up re-shooting and changing. So small things to fill up space, or “would my character really do that?”, but nothing like changing direction, or changing the ending.
Speaking of the ending, we already know this one has a cliffhanger. Can you tell us a little about that?
Well I don’t die in this one. Although even if I did, there’s like a hundred clones of me in this movie so it wouldn’t really matter. There’s a whole scene where they’re dumping these clones. They’ve got her DNA so they’re trying to get the real Alice again, but one that’s cooperative.
So they have selective memory choices. They send her through the glass corridor to try and escape the laser grid. They send her on kind of the same steps that she took in the first one, but each time the clone dies. So they dump all of them in this pit. It’s really cool.
So how does it feel to see a mass grave filled with yourself?
I haven’t actually seen that yet.
Do you get to fight yourself at some point.
[sounding unconvincing] No, no, no.
Is that a real no?
Yes, it is a real no. It’s just a really good idea, and I’m like “change the script, change the ending”.
Can you talk about Alice’s new powers?
She gets very psychic. Not Carrie, I’m trying not to do the Carrie-thing. Just my own little thing. But yeah, she bursts everything into fire and stuff. It’s really cool. It’s great for me because I didn’t have to do stuff. It’s really useful against the birds and such.
So were the powers given to her by Umbrella?
No. In the last movie her metabolism bonded with the T-Virus so she sort of adjusted to the sickness and her abilities come from that.
Is there any romantic interest in this movie?
Not at all. And I think the movie just wouldn’t be interesting if there was. Can you just imagine Alice having a baby and cooking? Like, “Yeah, I used to work for Umbrella and I had these crazy powers. I still have them but I keep them under wraps.” It’d be like Bewitched. But with knives.
Can you talk about working with [director] Russell
Mulcahy?
Russell is just a really fun guy and has a lot of energy. Super frantic, super panicky, always in ten different places. We always have to be like, “Russell, go back to the monitor OK.” He’s very sweet, and very cute. The dailies look gorgeous – the way he’s shooting everything is so cool. The way he’s taking advantage of the desert. It looks different, I think the camera work is much better in this one than either of the first two.
He brings an energy. A lot of directors, in my experience, they kind of tell you what you’re doing in the scene, but they don’t remind you where you just came from, or where you’re going. So I’d go to do ADR and think, “I wish I was more like this because I just came from a fight with my boyfriend, or zombies, and it doesn’t look like it”. But he’s always there getting you into the moment. And that’s really important. One of the problems with these kind of movies is when people just walk through it. They kind of cash it in, and we’re trying to feel the reality of it.
How do you keep from just walking through it the third time around? How do you keep the energy and passion up?
Well listen, with me it’s hard to keep it down [laughs]. It’s a movie for God’s sake, I mean it’s exciting.
I heard you didn’t really like how the second one turned out.
I think the second one, for whatever reason, just wasn’t my favorite. I liked the first one better. Plus I did some really dangerous stunts that I felt like you didn’t really see what was happening. Like what we did was insane, and then when I saw the frickin’ shot I’m like, you can’t even tell that it’s me. You can’t tell how high I am. So I’m telling everybody, “Look, I jumped off a six story building and I’m running down it,”. So whatever, I had my own little problems with the second one.
Saying that, as part of a trilogy I think it’s an exciting film. You know after I saw it and they changed a lot in the dubbing. That was one of my biggest problems with the director. I just felt like he wasn’t there for us. One of my scenes I just started talking in my normal voice, “Carlos, the T-Virus has bonded with my DNA”, and at the time I was just being real, but when I look back I sound like a Valley Girl talking about the T-Virus.
It’ll be like Mission Impossible where the trilogy is good, but the second one sucks.
You think? I think this particular film I’m very excited for.
What’s the future hold for you since you’re sort of the screen action heroine of our time?
Well, my next film I’m playing an upper class woman from the Second Empire and it’s a Russian part. Unfortunately for me, the action films are the biggest films I do. Everything else is tiny, and God knows when it’s gonna come out. Or how it’s going to be distributed.
[The action films] are the films that people see. These are the ones that make it overseas, that have a lot of money put into their publicity. For me one of the most depressing things, and why I have a clothing line and why I do other things, is that you have to do so many movies to have one that you’re happy with, or that comes out and is genius.
So many things can go wrong. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt I gave the performance of a lifetime, and then I see the movie and I’m like, “Oh my God, how did that happen? Why did they pick that and not this”. So you just have to keep churning them out as much as you can to get that one that just works. It’s the nature of the beast.
Picking up with that concept, the last I’d heard Kurt Wimmer had not seen Ultraviolet and was not at all happy with where it went. Have you spoken with him at all?
All I can tell you is that I was completely blocked from the editing room. Which is unfortunate because I was promised that I wouldn’t be. He was a real cad who reneged on his promises. I mean, I don’t want to step on your toes, but there are certain things that I did that I would remember.
Like remember that scene, in take three there’s a thing I did with my eyes that would be cool on the close-up. See how that works. That’s a perfect example of a movie I spent a year of my life preparing for and shooting, and then, OK onto the next!
And with that turn of phrase the publicist deftly stepped in and ended the interview. It’s really impossible to describe what it’s like being in Jovovich’s presence; you have to experience it. You go in thinking that her overwhelming hotness is what’s going to screw you up, but it ends up just being a fight to hang on to her runaway train of thought. The woman’s got moxie, and it was a blast to get a taste of it!