Meeting Nathan Fillion was like meeting an old friend...who I've never met before! The guy is as down-to-earth as you can get, polite, well-spoken and forgive me for saying so: "easy on the eyes". Yeah, the guy's a hunk and he's also a pretty solid actor, so the Arrow and I were ecstatic to sit face-to-face with the man a couple of weeks ago, to discuss his starring role in Slither.
We didn't transcribe our intro banter with the man but suffice it to say that it was us playing the "Canadian card" with the Canadian actor, and ultimately making sure that he knew that he had a couple of friends in Montreal, were he to come shoot a few scenes for his next picture, White Noise 2, in our backyard. We all laughed, but seriously though...call us, dude...we'll go out for a Molson and some other stuff too. Until then, check out our interview with the easy-going gentleman and check out Slither which opens in theaters today!
Arrow: Regarding Serenity and Sci-Fi, you’re kind of becoming quite a genre actor nowadays. Is this purposeful?
No certainly not, people think I have got the choice, and they think I have scripts laid out and then I decide, “I’ll do that one”. No, it’s like you get a script and you say like Wow, this would be a really cool part to play and I get in line with 60, 80, 200 other guys to try to get the part and when they say lets have Nathan comes back, I get really tense and really nervous, I try to relax and I go back to audition again. The whole audition process is a mind-screw and you can blow it at any time because anytime you move forward in the process, the stakes become higher and anything can go wrong at any time. So there’s never any promises, there’s never any kind of, it’s not about, Yeah, I’m gonna do a horror next”.
Arrow: You’re not there yet.
Certainly not, and I’ll let you know what it's like when I do, but until then, I’m shlepping with everybody else, just trying to make a buck. I’ve been really happy that I’ve been able to do projects that are really… I mean, I’m a sci-fi fan. That I get to do a sci-fi movie, you know, that’s like a fan boy’s dream.
JoBlo: You've become a pretty big cult phenomenon...
I wanna do a comic book movie, I wanna play a super hero, but who could I do?
Arrow: Daredevil.
Daredevil’s been done.
Arrow: Yeah, but not right.
You know who I could do? The Green Lantern.
JoBlo: Yeah.
Arrow: I could see that actually.
I don’t know how good a Green Lantern movie could be, but I could do Green Lantern. There’s a couple of comic books I’ve been told about but that I haven’t read, I used to collect when I was a kid, but it got expensive. JoBlo: Yeah.
Here’s the kicker: I loved comic books, but it got really expensive, so I had to stop, I didn’t have any money. And they then they got really good, right after I stopped collecting, the art all of a sudden, got really good, and the paper got better. The technology also.
JoBlo: Graphic novels also...very cool.
Yeah, I remember graphic novels being amazing, so much work put into them, and I remember the stories were just heart-wrenching…I Remember some graphic novels I had that were just great and the stuff they said about ?? Recently, I was in Edmonton at Christmas, I had the flu. I was down for the count. And I broke out a box of comics from my basement, and I remember taking them out and thinking this is great. I remember all these stories, but man they were crap. Really, really crap. we laugh
It was like watching a really bad movie where people are describing what they’re doing, as they’re doing it so you know what they’re doing. But yeah, they got good afterwards. Oh gee, I just lost the point. we laugh again
Some people were telling me about a comic book where basically everybody in the world was a hero, and there’s like a police force, that has to kind of govern… Arrow: It sounds familiar.
It’s like a city where almost everyone has powers, and then the police, what do they do? In that city. I think that kind of movie would be really cool. I’d love to do a superhero movie.
Arrow: I heard actually they might do a Daredevil II.
Really? Arrow: I think it’d be great. That’s just my opinion.
JoBlo: Hey, his career’s going to higher places man, Daredevil II, it’s like Nah… So what’s next actually for you, are you filming right now?
Yes, filming right now, it’s been three days of White Noise 2 and we’re right in the beginning, we just started. What I’ve learned is, when you’re filming a movie, what you want to shoot in the beginning is something that’s really pretty, something that looks really cool, so that when you pick up the dailies, and you hand it over to everybody who’s actually paying for the movie, that they will be very satisfied, and they go, yes, you’re doing a great job, this movie’s gonna be good, and they stop hounding you and stay off your back.
It can’t be something so difficult that it’s going to be really hard to do, and you’re staying late days and you’re over budget already so we filmed some neat stuff already that’s looks really pretty and cool, and really puts you in the mood for a stressful, kind of tension in this movie. Vancouver’s been cooperating amazingly with the weather, there’s a kind of grey and black kind of static theme running throughout the flick, and the sky’s been cooperating amazingly.
Arrow: So where in Canada are you from?
Edmonton, born and raised in Edmonton, and then at 22, I moved to New York and then three years there and now I’m in LA now.
Arrow: How does LA differentiate from Canada? I know it’s a toughie.
No, it’s not tough. I sometimes come down on LA, and I shouldn’t. Because LA’s been so kind to me and I really enjoy living there, here, there. Here. we laugh
What I find is… my theory is in LA, people suffer from isolation. Isolated in your car. Instead of being out in the world and dealing with people, you’re dealing with cars… it’s like “Oh, that Toyota cut me off”, and you see someone signaling, like if I signal to get into a lane, no one will let me in. You roll down the window and you look out and you get eye contact, they’ll wave you right in.