L.Goss and Anna Walton: a royal pair for ‘HB II’ 7/2008

Jul 18, 2008

By El Bicho
July 16, 2008
http://www.comics2film.com/index.php?a=story&b=34685In ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army‘ actors Luke Goss and Anna Walton play the Elvin twins Prince Nuada and Princess Nuala. Nuada has returned from exile to break the treaty with the humans. He wants to unleash the Golden Army but Nuala tries to stop him.

The actors had to undergo a good deal of time to get into make-up, which for Walton was all right “if you know that you’ve got a scene shortly after your make-up, or if you know there’s a chance you’re gonna be sitting in your trailer for six hours before you go on set, which sometimes happened.”

“The first three or four hours” for Goss “was using any technique to be peaceful that I could get to that point where you want out before you’re ready and you start doing what you normally do. It definitely is a challenge. That’s a job in itself just learning to traverse through that for sure. For me it was challenging.”

They both also had to deal with contact lenses they could only wear for three hours and then needed to have a 30 to 40-minute break.

As the villain of the film, Goss had a great deal of physicality for all his action scenes, but “had a great deal of help. The stunt team were fantastic. Max White with swords was on ’300.’ Jackie Chan’s team for the spear, which is unbelievably difficult to use. I tried to do everything. There was some of the stuff I wasn’t capable. It takes three to four years to learn.

“A lot of credit has to go to those guys because they were amazing. They were patient. It’s tough because they go to work nine weeks of training for that. You go to work and you have to accept that you are going to look stupid, you have the embrace the concept of being utterly a student. And you are a student up until the day you start filming, because then it’s like wherever you are at that’s what you have to deliver, and it’s intimidating but it’s also really exciting. When you are done, you have like–when I did ‘Blade II’ it was the same thing you have that ability. It’s really useful. It all kind of helps the other.”

His training involved “swords and spears also a lot of flexibility, a lot of stretching and you have to also work with—we was doing a lot of sparring for example with spears for cardiovascular. The one mistake was actually we didn’t train with costumes so it seems like such an obvious thing to do, but I didn’t. So when you have all this movement and freedom of movement and then you start training and then filming with costumes…that learning curve was in front of my cast mates and directors. It was very intimidating.”

Walton wanted to, but didn’t get to join in the action. “The film I did before, ‘The Mutant Chronicles,’ [which she had worked on with Ron Perlman] I was fighting throughout the whole. ‘C’mon, give me a sword I can contribute here,’ but no unfortunately it wasn’t in the character’s journey.

“I was learning a lot. It was fun to watch. Some of the fights scenes literally took three or four weeks that was the only time I struggled was when I just had to be watching day after day as good as it was and it was amazing that was quite a focus test.”

Goss empathized with Walton. “People say, ‘Oh you’re doing the physicality jumping around and your hot and sweaty and stuff,’ which is true, but it’s a lot easier than being stationary that is such a regal kind of pose and very demure and you have to stand there hours and hours and hours.”

However Walton’s character got to be involved in a love story with Abe Sapien. “It was lovely. [Doug Jones is] a beautiful person, and he played Abe so charismatically, and it was very easy, really. Because it wasn’t a sexual attraction, it was just that they made a connection and they both had a little flutter, which was I think was very new to both of them and was slightly frightening and also quite exciting. She was very alone and somebody there was reaching out to her.

“The very first scene I filmed was the scene in the library when we have that connection and I remember during the rehearsal he didn’t have his all his things working and then in the first take when I was talking to him and suddenly his eyes blinking and his gills kind of go and it was quite extraordinary really, which was quite helpful because I think she was quite overawed by this creature.”

After seeing finished film, Goss “realized as soon as I watched it I needed to see it a few more times because there’s so much to take in. Also, I watched it the first time in its entirety at the premiere so there’s a buzz there at the event; you’ve got family and friends. But also you think there’s going to be a color signature to the movie or some kind of a stereotypical thing about the film. It’s just constantly changing shape and color and there is a lot more comedy in it than I thought and the visual effects were seamlessly intertwined with the practical effects and I was like ‘Okay, wow, just when you think you can get even close to Guillermo del Toro’s mind you realize it simply impossible.’”

For Walton, “being on the set and all the sets being there, you sort of had a general idea of how incredible that was and how it would look, so actually seeing the elemental that was the one of the very few things that we didn’t see was just so beautiful. She also found “Hellboy such an attractive character and he’s funny and he’s attractive and he’s quite sexy really. Ron loves it when I say that.”

Watch Luke Goss and Anna Walton as Prince Nuada and Princess Nuala in ‘Hellboy II: The Golden Army‘, in theathers now!