Q: Congratulations, you had a pretty big weekend last weekend. [He got married]
A wonderful weekend, thank you. It was phenomenal, the best day of my life.
Q: How did you get involved with this – did you audition or did they come to you and say, ‘You’re our hero?’
Joel came to me and said, ‘You’ve been doing such a great job with everything else, I’d really love to have you as a part of this film.’ I always thought in the back of my head, can I do a horror, and I thought, ‘Hell, man, I can’t wait to give it a shot.’ And it was fun; it was a great time.
Q: Do you like horror films?
I do, particular horror films, I like Night of the Living Dead, the original, the ’50s version of Vincent Price’s House of Wax, I love those types of films.
Q: This is very different from Vincent Price’s House of Wax.
Oh, completely different. We took liberties. We contemporized it just a bit, but it’s fun, you can go in and sit down and get a few scares and then go home.
Q: What’s it like when you get that call from Joel Silver? That’s a pretty big phone call to get.
It was an honor, how else do you say it, it was such an honor. Joel has just done so much for this business: Matrix, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, that to have the opportunity to sit back and learn from him was a gift that I couldn’t turn down, you know what I mean? It was such a blessing. So I was obviously a little nervous, which I don’t really get nervous, but when you’re sitting down and you’re like, ‘Dude, that’s Joel Silver,’ it stresses you out a bit.
Q: What did you draw from to play the evil twin, do you have any sibling stories?
No. I have a very, very large family, I’ve three or four brothers and a sister – well, I have a half brother and I have a sister, so I really understood the relationships that I have, and I bonded with my siblings. Elisha and I didn’t really have much time to bond, but the time that we could find we made it work, and it was exciting. I think everyone has kind of wanted a twin at some point.
Q: So what did you and Elisha find that you had in common?
Well, we look very similar. She could easily be my sister. But I think just our dedication to film, and working on professionalism and growth as an actor, is really where we ended up finding our bond. We really take our craft seriously.
Q: Was it as physical a shoot as it looked?
Yeah, it was definitely physically enduring. Just with the wax, it’s not as easy to move around in the crap as it looks. We had to shoot this one scene in a peanut butter bed, it looks like a peanut butter bed, when I’m wrestling around with one of the villains, and the first time we shot it, I guess the consistency was not as stable as it should have been, we sunk right down to the bottom, and the bed fell apart, and we were sprawling out, and in order to get out it took two or three guys to actually pull you out of the bed. You could not get out on your own. So it was definitely physical.
Q: Was that something that you anticipated from the moment you signed on?
When I read the script I thought to myself, ‘How the hell are we going to pull this off?’ And then I went, ‘Well, Joel will do it, Joel’s the man.’ And we did it.
Q: What did you think of your other female co-star, Paris Hilton?
She impressed us all, she really did. She’s a sweetheart. Her and my wife, I can say now, get along well, and I think she just made everybody in the cast comfortable with her.
Q: Had you socialized with her before?
No, we just met in rehearsal.
Q: With the grisly side of the movie, did you guys screw around on the set?
Jared and I have known each other for a few years, we did the first season of Gilmore Girls together, so we’ve been best friends for quite awhile, so we actually roomed together in Australia and that was a riot. We’d sit up to all hours at night playing videogames and having a drink or two, and just beating the shit out of each other. That’s what I did in my off-time, but when I go to work, especially on a film, I try to really separate myself from all that, unless it’s really not an emotional scene or really physical, I tend to want to just stay to myself, put my i-pod in and just do my work.
Q: And when you’re finished for the day is it easy to walk away from something that’s so gruesome?
Yeah, I didn’t go home and have nightmares, because I’m there, and I go, ‘Hey, it’s not real.’ Elisha’s still got her finger. But I think that especially in this business you definitely take your work home with you. You never really get to go home and forget about it, because you go home and you start working for the next day. You want to make sure that everything’s prepared, and you go home and take your phone calls, and everything else for business to come, and I think it’s the one thing that you can’t go home and just forget about it.
Q: Have you had a chance to see the movie?
Yeah.
Q: When you’re watching it, and they put in the all the special effects and the sound, can you just enjoy it as a movie?
I think the first time you see it it’s going to be one of those where you’re like so critical of yourself. You’re your own worst critic, so you watch every little thing, and you walk away and you go, ‘You know, I’m happy with what I accomplished for the picture,’ And then the second time you can watch it more as a viewer, more as an outsider. But, dude, I’ll be the first to admit, I jumped a couple of times.
Q: What bits did you jump at?
I jumped at the campsite when Elisha leaves the tent, I don’t want to give too much away. And I jumped when Paris was in her tent, after the little striptease, which everyone’s going to want to hear about anyway. And I jumped there, at the climax of that point. I was like, ‘God, it got me.’
Q: Speaking of climax, the end was pretty spectacular – how hard was that to shoot?
Oh, god. Without giving it away – it was incredibly grueling, and you went home every day and all you wanted was a shower, because you had wax everywhere. I’m not trying to be gruesome here or anything like that, but my God it sticks to your hair, and you’re pulling crap out, it’s horrible. But I think you just look forward to getting home and getting in the bathtub.
Q: So they really used wax?
They used a lot of real wax, they used a lot of compounds that they put together for the slippery wax, because you really don’t want to be sliding around in hot, melting wax, that’s really not a great idea. But the floors, the entire set was made of wax, because they did use a lot of wax.
Q: You had your hair short, so you got off easy.
I loved it. To go to work, I was ready in five minutes and I was ready to go. It tends to be a summer tradition for me, to shave it off, but I’m not doing it this summer because I’ve got projects upcoming.
Q: What projects?
I’m doing Stealing Cars with Warner’s again, my home. So that’s going to be one hell of a piece for myself.
Q: Do you see doing something like this as a career move?
I do, and the reason that I can say that is because you can sit back and watch One Tree Hill and this, and you won’t see an ounce of Lucas in this project. There’s not an ounce of Lucas in Nick, and I think that’s just a little bit of what I wanted to show, it’s not necessarily Good Will Hunting or Taxi Driver, but it’s an opportunity that I had to create another character with mystique and show that to the world, and age up a little bit and show another audience what I have to offer.
Q: Are Good Will Hunting and Taxi Driver the kind of movies you want to do?
Those are the kind of films I really appreciate when I go to watch. I really love films that I sit back and for two weeks after I’m still thinking about it.
Q: What was your experience with the director?
Jaume is awesome. Jaume was such a badass, he had a Mohawk the whole shoot, and by the end of the project his beard was down to like here, he just didn’t have time to shave. He was such a great guy, I really enjoyed him. He’s just got such a great personality. We created a real bond.
Q: Did you bring home anything from the set, did you steal any wax props?
I wish I could have. No, I have nothing. [looking around at the wax figures on the soundstage] They have to be here for the next three days, but if one goes missing, they’ll never know, right?
Q: Is there anything else in the can at this point?
Just this and the rest of Tree Hill. I’m shooting One Tree Hill like ten months out the year, and so I have a very, very small window – we’re supposed to go back July 13th and I’m shooting a film right in the middle and then promoting this and getting out there so people will check it out, and I think that’s a pretty busy summer.
Q: What would you like to see happen with the character next season?
I don’t really get involved in that, that’s not my place, I let the writers take care of that, they’ve done a pretty good job so far obviously, and I just go and do it. They give it to me, and some things really spark my interest, and others I’m just kind of like, ‘Dude, I’m going to go knock it out.’
Q: How much do you think about your audience, you did Cinderella Story for a much younger audience and now this R rated horror movie. Are the Cinderella Story fans going to come to this?
I hope so, with their parents. Here’s the thing, I think especially with the MTV show we’ve got, I think it definitely portrays to those young adults who might not be able to distinguish the difference between a movie and real life, you get to see the whole process, behind the scenes of making this film, so I think they can differentiate between the film and what’s really going on with us, and so I think it’s a great opportunity for the young adults to be able to get an opportunity to go see a rated R movie with their parents, because they’ve seen the creation, they are a little bit more attached to it.
Q: How did you deal with being so far away from home?
Oh, it sucked. It sucked, I’ll be honest. I like Australia, I really did, but I wish I had a little bit more time to travel, loved their cranberry juice and their food, but I think to be honest, you just miss American television, and you miss your things, I missed my dog, I got Aussie [another dog] over there, which was awesome, but my first born child, Joe, my first born son, he’s my dog Joe, I was away from him and I was away from Soph and I was away from everything back home, so I think that’s hard, especially for three and a half months when you do not get an opportunity to leave.
Q: Did people come to see you at least?
Yeah, I had a few visitors that came out, but my family didn’t get to make the voyage, they were too busy, they were working their asses off as they should, Soph came on a few times, so it was nice.
Q: Was it shot in Australia just because of the money?
Not my territory. They said, ‘Hey, you’re going to Australia,’ I said, ‘Dude, rock and roll,’ I always wanted to go.
Q: Have you ever gone on a camping trip and did anything memorable happen to you?
Oh, god. I love camping trips, I go on camping trips all the time. Me and my boys go up to Sequoia, I believe that’s in northern California, I never drive, I fall asleep. I just love sitting by the campfire and leaving food out for the bears to come and attack. But one time me and my boy went up to go get some hotdogs from the stand that they had, there’s like a Christian camp that runs up there, but they serve food and I was sick of eating our fish, and I went up there to grab a hotdog and I’m standing there and I’m talking to my boy, and he’s looking right here, and he’s in the middle of a conversation, like, ‘Hey, so you want to go back to there’s a big bear right behind you do not move.’ And his eyes are open wide, and I’m like, ‘Dude,’ and I turned around and there’s a big brown bear, not more that 10 feet behind me, knocks over a trash can, so that was memorable. But I survived, some asshole decided to throw a board at it, and I’m thinking, ‘That’s brilliant. Piss it off.’ And the bear walked away and took the garbage can with it.
A wonderful weekend, thank you. It was phenomenal, the best day of my life.
Q: How did you get involved with this – did you audition or did they come to you and say, ‘You’re our hero?’
Joel came to me and said, ‘You’ve been doing such a great job with everything else, I’d really love to have you as a part of this film.’ I always thought in the back of my head, can I do a horror, and I thought, ‘Hell, man, I can’t wait to give it a shot.’ And it was fun; it was a great time.
Q: Do you like horror films?
I do, particular horror films, I like Night of the Living Dead, the original, the ’50s version of Vincent Price’s House of Wax, I love those types of films.
Q: This is very different from Vincent Price’s House of Wax.
Oh, completely different. We took liberties. We contemporized it just a bit, but it’s fun, you can go in and sit down and get a few scares and then go home.
Q: What’s it like when you get that call from Joel Silver? That’s a pretty big phone call to get.
It was an honor, how else do you say it, it was such an honor. Joel has just done so much for this business: Matrix, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, that to have the opportunity to sit back and learn from him was a gift that I couldn’t turn down, you know what I mean? It was such a blessing. So I was obviously a little nervous, which I don’t really get nervous, but when you’re sitting down and you’re like, ‘Dude, that’s Joel Silver,’ it stresses you out a bit.
Q: What did you draw from to play the evil twin, do you have any sibling stories?
No. I have a very, very large family, I’ve three or four brothers and a sister – well, I have a half brother and I have a sister, so I really understood the relationships that I have, and I bonded with my siblings. Elisha and I didn’t really have much time to bond, but the time that we could find we made it work, and it was exciting. I think everyone has kind of wanted a twin at some point.
Q: So what did you and Elisha find that you had in common?
Well, we look very similar. She could easily be my sister. But I think just our dedication to film, and working on professionalism and growth as an actor, is really where we ended up finding our bond. We really take our craft seriously.
Q: Was it as physical a shoot as it looked?
Yeah, it was definitely physically enduring. Just with the wax, it’s not as easy to move around in the crap as it looks. We had to shoot this one scene in a peanut butter bed, it looks like a peanut butter bed, when I’m wrestling around with one of the villains, and the first time we shot it, I guess the consistency was not as stable as it should have been, we sunk right down to the bottom, and the bed fell apart, and we were sprawling out, and in order to get out it took two or three guys to actually pull you out of the bed. You could not get out on your own. So it was definitely physical.
Q: Was that something that you anticipated from the moment you signed on?
When I read the script I thought to myself, ‘How the hell are we going to pull this off?’ And then I went, ‘Well, Joel will do it, Joel’s the man.’ And we did it.
Q: What did you think of your other female co-star, Paris Hilton?
She impressed us all, she really did. She’s a sweetheart. Her and my wife, I can say now, get along well, and I think she just made everybody in the cast comfortable with her.
Q: Had you socialized with her before?
No, we just met in rehearsal.
Q: With the grisly side of the movie, did you guys screw around on the set?
Jared and I have known each other for a few years, we did the first season of Gilmore Girls together, so we’ve been best friends for quite awhile, so we actually roomed together in Australia and that was a riot. We’d sit up to all hours at night playing videogames and having a drink or two, and just beating the shit out of each other. That’s what I did in my off-time, but when I go to work, especially on a film, I try to really separate myself from all that, unless it’s really not an emotional scene or really physical, I tend to want to just stay to myself, put my i-pod in and just do my work.
Q: And when you’re finished for the day is it easy to walk away from something that’s so gruesome?
Yeah, I didn’t go home and have nightmares, because I’m there, and I go, ‘Hey, it’s not real.’ Elisha’s still got her finger. But I think that especially in this business you definitely take your work home with you. You never really get to go home and forget about it, because you go home and you start working for the next day. You want to make sure that everything’s prepared, and you go home and take your phone calls, and everything else for business to come, and I think it’s the one thing that you can’t go home and just forget about it.
Q: Have you had a chance to see the movie?
Yeah.
Q: When you’re watching it, and they put in the all the special effects and the sound, can you just enjoy it as a movie?
I think the first time you see it it’s going to be one of those where you’re like so critical of yourself. You’re your own worst critic, so you watch every little thing, and you walk away and you go, ‘You know, I’m happy with what I accomplished for the picture,’ And then the second time you can watch it more as a viewer, more as an outsider. But, dude, I’ll be the first to admit, I jumped a couple of times.
Q: What bits did you jump at?
I jumped at the campsite when Elisha leaves the tent, I don’t want to give too much away. And I jumped when Paris was in her tent, after the little striptease, which everyone’s going to want to hear about anyway. And I jumped there, at the climax of that point. I was like, ‘God, it got me.’
Q: Speaking of climax, the end was pretty spectacular – how hard was that to shoot?
Oh, god. Without giving it away – it was incredibly grueling, and you went home every day and all you wanted was a shower, because you had wax everywhere. I’m not trying to be gruesome here or anything like that, but my God it sticks to your hair, and you’re pulling crap out, it’s horrible. But I think you just look forward to getting home and getting in the bathtub.
Q: So they really used wax?
They used a lot of real wax, they used a lot of compounds that they put together for the slippery wax, because you really don’t want to be sliding around in hot, melting wax, that’s really not a great idea. But the floors, the entire set was made of wax, because they did use a lot of wax.
Q: You had your hair short, so you got off easy.
I loved it. To go to work, I was ready in five minutes and I was ready to go. It tends to be a summer tradition for me, to shave it off, but I’m not doing it this summer because I’ve got projects upcoming.
Q: What projects?
I’m doing Stealing Cars with Warner’s again, my home. So that’s going to be one hell of a piece for myself.
Q: Do you see doing something like this as a career move?
I do, and the reason that I can say that is because you can sit back and watch One Tree Hill and this, and you won’t see an ounce of Lucas in this project. There’s not an ounce of Lucas in Nick, and I think that’s just a little bit of what I wanted to show, it’s not necessarily Good Will Hunting or Taxi Driver, but it’s an opportunity that I had to create another character with mystique and show that to the world, and age up a little bit and show another audience what I have to offer.
Q: Are Good Will Hunting and Taxi Driver the kind of movies you want to do?
Those are the kind of films I really appreciate when I go to watch. I really love films that I sit back and for two weeks after I’m still thinking about it.
Q: What was your experience with the director?
Jaume is awesome. Jaume was such a badass, he had a Mohawk the whole shoot, and by the end of the project his beard was down to like here, he just didn’t have time to shave. He was such a great guy, I really enjoyed him. He’s just got such a great personality. We created a real bond.
Q: Did you bring home anything from the set, did you steal any wax props?
I wish I could have. No, I have nothing. [looking around at the wax figures on the soundstage] They have to be here for the next three days, but if one goes missing, they’ll never know, right?
Q: Is there anything else in the can at this point?
Just this and the rest of Tree Hill. I’m shooting One Tree Hill like ten months out the year, and so I have a very, very small window – we’re supposed to go back July 13th and I’m shooting a film right in the middle and then promoting this and getting out there so people will check it out, and I think that’s a pretty busy summer.
Q: What would you like to see happen with the character next season?
I don’t really get involved in that, that’s not my place, I let the writers take care of that, they’ve done a pretty good job so far obviously, and I just go and do it. They give it to me, and some things really spark my interest, and others I’m just kind of like, ‘Dude, I’m going to go knock it out.’
Q: How much do you think about your audience, you did Cinderella Story for a much younger audience and now this R rated horror movie. Are the Cinderella Story fans going to come to this?
I hope so, with their parents. Here’s the thing, I think especially with the MTV show we’ve got, I think it definitely portrays to those young adults who might not be able to distinguish the difference between a movie and real life, you get to see the whole process, behind the scenes of making this film, so I think they can differentiate between the film and what’s really going on with us, and so I think it’s a great opportunity for the young adults to be able to get an opportunity to go see a rated R movie with their parents, because they’ve seen the creation, they are a little bit more attached to it.
Q: How did you deal with being so far away from home?
Oh, it sucked. It sucked, I’ll be honest. I like Australia, I really did, but I wish I had a little bit more time to travel, loved their cranberry juice and their food, but I think to be honest, you just miss American television, and you miss your things, I missed my dog, I got Aussie [another dog] over there, which was awesome, but my first born child, Joe, my first born son, he’s my dog Joe, I was away from him and I was away from Soph and I was away from everything back home, so I think that’s hard, especially for three and a half months when you do not get an opportunity to leave.
Q: Did people come to see you at least?
Yeah, I had a few visitors that came out, but my family didn’t get to make the voyage, they were too busy, they were working their asses off as they should, Soph came on a few times, so it was nice.
Q: Was it shot in Australia just because of the money?
Not my territory. They said, ‘Hey, you’re going to Australia,’ I said, ‘Dude, rock and roll,’ I always wanted to go.
Q: Have you ever gone on a camping trip and did anything memorable happen to you?
Oh, god. I love camping trips, I go on camping trips all the time. Me and my boys go up to Sequoia, I believe that’s in northern California, I never drive, I fall asleep. I just love sitting by the campfire and leaving food out for the bears to come and attack. But one time me and my boy went up to go get some hotdogs from the stand that they had, there’s like a Christian camp that runs up there, but they serve food and I was sick of eating our fish, and I went up there to grab a hotdog and I’m standing there and I’m talking to my boy, and he’s looking right here, and he’s in the middle of a conversation, like, ‘Hey, so you want to go back to there’s a big bear right behind you do not move.’ And his eyes are open wide, and I’m like, ‘Dude,’ and I turned around and there’s a big brown bear, not more that 10 feet behind me, knocks over a trash can, so that was memorable. But I survived, some asshole decided to throw a board at it, and I’m thinking, ‘That’s brilliant. Piss it off.’ And the bear walked away and took the garbage can with it.
