An Interview with Julian McMahon, star of “Premonition”
BY KEVIN CARR
On March 16, “Premonition” will open. The film stars Sandra Bullock as a woman whose humdrum existence is thrown into an uproar when she has premonitions of her husband’s death. Julian McMahon plays her husband, Jim, a man who doesn’t believe her messages about the future. Excepts from the interview follow.
Excepts from the interview follow. Hear the entire interview here…
KC: HAVE YOU EVER HAD A PREMONITION?
JM: I have actually, to a certain extent. I’ve had a feeling – a very strong feeling – about something that actually occurred a couple days later.
KC: WAS IT ODD TO FILM A MOVIE THAT TAKES PLACE OUT OF ORDER, SINCE MOVIES ARE ALREADY SHOT OUT OF ORDER?
JM: All movies are all shot out of order, so you have that concept of what came before and what came after. This was a little more difficult because the time frames were so skewed. This is all over the place. As much as it was all over the place in the movie, it was at least as much in the script, maybe even more. For me, because I come in and out of it consistently, I’d play a Tuesday before I even got to it. It was a little tricky, but it did span over a week, so you could kinda contain it.
KC: DO YOU PREFER THE OFF-CENTER OR QUIRKY ROLES INSTEAD OF THE NORMAL GUY ROLES?
JM: Yeah, definitely. I’m always attracted to something that’s a little skewed, that’s a little off – sometimes extremely off. I like those characters that are a little more extraordinary than just everyday life. That’s what I like playing, and that’s what I seem to have spent most of my career doing.
KC: WHAT WERE THE CHALLENGES WITH AN INTERNATIONAL CREW?
JM: I’m not from this country myself, and I’ve spent a lot of time working with people from different parts of the world. Every set that you go to has different personalities. The only thing here is that you had Mennan and Torsten who were the director and the DP, and Sandy, who could all speak fluent German. There was a lot of “Was is das?” being thrown around.
KC: WHAT WAS IT LIKE PLAYING SUCH A PSYCHOLOGICAL ROLE?
JM: I think all roles are psychological. Just because it’s been tagged as a psychological thriller doesn’t mean it’s any more psychological for the actor. All roles are psychologically involved. It’s more the concept of the movie and the way it is delivered.
When I read the script, it was a very emotional piece at a point in time. In the last minutes of the movie, it becomes about an attempt to save the life of someone who is so integral to your existence. In watching the movie, I got very involved and emotional about the fact. I think it’s a pretty extraordinary deliberation to think about that.
KC: CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE STORY’S SETTING?
JM: The film’s story is not set anywhere, and that was a very specific thing. We kinda wanted to be middle American, anywhere, nowhere. We didn’t want to establish anything geographically or with any sort of dialect.
KC: CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHERE THE FILM WAS SHOT?
JM: The whole thing was shot in Shreveport so it was a very Louisiana-based crew. A lot of people came from New Orleans. The film industry there was very supportive. It was actually quite a wonderful experience. The state kinda brought itself together to heal it heal from the devastating effects of what happened only a few months before.
KC: WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO THIS FILM?
JM: I was initially interested in this movie because of Sandra Bullock, and then I was interested in this movie when I read the script and then I was interested in it because I had seen the director’s first film.
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