Briana Evigan

Briana Evigan, daughter of 80′s TV icon Greg Evigan has been slowly been making a name for herself in Hollywood with roles in movies such as Step-Up 2 (a guilty pleasure of mine), S. Darko and Sorority Row.

Her latest film, Burning Bright, will receive it’s UK premiere at London’s Film4 FrightFest next week, before hitting DVD on September 6th 2010. Briana took time out to talk to Blogomatic3000 about Burning Bright, as well as her other forthcoming movies Mother’s Day and Monster Heroes. We even discuss the Step-Up movies!

First off, Burning Bright… the film had me hooked when it was described to me as “girl trapped in a house with a tiger”

[LAUGHS] Yeah, you’re like, “Really?”

Oh yes… How did you react when you first read the script?

I was a little bit worried about it, I wasn’t crazy about the script when I first read it. We beefed up my character a bit, made her a lot stronger of a girl. I didn’t fall in love with it, but now it’s my favourite film I’ve done yet. Y’know it’s just scary signing on to a film, taking on a film by yourself pretty much. But I was really happy with the outcome and really glad that I did it.

Have you seen the finished film? I know Garret said he hadn’t yet when I interviewed him.

Yes, I had a big party at my house for it

How did you think the film holds up? Especially the special effects work, the compositing of your scenes and the tiger, etc.

It was cool. I never worked with the tiger so to be able to see it all come together was really awesome and I really enjoyed it. There was a couple of times where you could see the CG and I was like “Oh no!”, but other than that I was really happy with it.

Speaking of not being in the room with the tiger, just how did you cope with reacting to something that’s not really there?

Just make it all up! That’s the fun part about acting I guess. I just really had to imagine that this was all happening and come up with really screwed up scenarios and just pretend that this really was real. It was kind of the biggest challenge for me and the most fun part – to be able to prove to myself that I could do that without having anything in front of me.

Your young co-star Charlie Tahan is pretty amazing in the film, how well did you get on with him?

Awesome! Charlie Tahan is so amazing, I think he’s going to be huge. He was so great, he became my friend… He really researched autism and I felt like he had it down back and front. He was really great.

In my interview with Garret (Dillahunt) he said he was jealous at how Charlie could turn it on and off. Did you feel the same way?

Yes! I agree! [LAUGHS]

You seem to be carving out a niche for yourself in scary movies, is that a choice or just the scripts you’re geting?

You know what, it’s kind of been happening that way. Things have been moving and I’ve just taken what’s coming. I don’t necessarily want to get stuck in this genre, but I’m really enjoying it, I’m having a blast. It’ll be funny to go back to something “normal”. But I don’t have a complaint in the world, I’m really happy.

I know you’ve completed production on Mother’s Day, how was that experience?

Mother’s Day was great. Darren Bousman, the director, was fantastic – I got to have so much fun on that trip, I made such good friends and as scary and messed up as that film is – obviously it’s very disturbing – none of that played off set and we all had to have a really good time. I had so much fun playing the character I got to play, Annette, she’s a really tough girl and I got to dye my hair red, which was kinda cool. [It was] really fun. It’s a disturbing movie, I’m excited to see it.

How do you think audiences are going to react to Mother’s Day?

I feel like you’re going to walk out of that movie and you’re going to be in a weird mood. It’s not a horror film, it’s really a psychological thriller, it’s not like a slasher horror movie at all – it’s really real, and character based, and it’s got a really good story behind it. I think it’s really going to affect people.

What other movies do you have in the pipeline?

I’m going to be starting [a film called] Rites of Passage soon, which stars Val Kilmer, Crispin Glover and Christian Slater. I’m so excited, all my scenes are with Crispin and I’m so looking forward to it. I think it’s going to be really cool, different, I’m really excited for it.

You have another film coming out called Monster Heroes, the IMDB description really peaked my interest. Can you tell us about that?

Monster Heroes [was made] by a friend I went to high school with. He wrote it, asked me if I’d do it for him. I play an evil Russian cheerleader! It’s definitely a comedy. There’s so many cameos in it it’s unbelievable, I think it has like 22 cameos in it or something – pretty huge names – so again I got to meet a lot of fun, cool, people. It was a fun two days of work for me and I can’t wait to see what they do with it. It’s all over the place and there’s so many people in it that I’m excited to see the outcome.

Going back to Burning Bright, you said you beefed up your character, did you have a lot of input in the end?

Yeah I had a lot of input on my character. Me and Carlos Brooks, the director, who’s one of my favourites so far, literally sat down and talked about her and made her story together. Everything that she had came from me and Carlos sitting down and taking all the time to make her someone the audience would really care about. But yeah I had all the input in the world and it was awesome.

Would you like to have more input in your films? Is that something you look for, or do you just consider it a bonus?

I think it’s a bonus. If it’s already written there then that’s cool because I have a lot to work with, but I always hope to be able to work with people who let me voice my opinion and what I want to do and of course make compromises and work together y’know.

I asked for questions for this interview on Twitter today and someone asked if you’d ever consider going back to the Step-Up movies?

I would love to! I really wanted to be a part of Step-Up 3. I don’t know what happened, but they didn’t bring any of us back for three, so I’m hoping Step-Up 3 does really really well worldwide and we can all come back for Step-Up 4.

Well that all the questions I have so I’d just like to say thanks for speaking to us and take care.

You too, nice to speak to you. Bye.