Last week, we at Infamous Horrors was lucky enough to be invited to the press junket of the new werewolf movie ‘The Cursed’ and we talked to a couple of the leads, including Alistair Petrie and Boyd Holbrook (which will be a video interview). Here is the one with Alistair Petrie, hope you all enjoy!
AJ: Thank you so much for joining us today on Infamous Horror, man. Congratulations on The Cursed. Your performance in this movie was just incredible. How did you get involved with The Cursed?
Alistair: I got sent a script and, it said it was written by Sean Ellis and to be directed by Sean Ellis. The name I immediately knew because I was a fan of his work. I’d seen Metro Manila and completely loved it, and then I’d seen anthropoid, and obviously his Oscar-nominated short work as well. And so to sort of step into the world of Sean Ellis, and to collaborate with him was a pretty easy decision to make. I have to say coupled with obviously getting to work with Boyd Holbrook and, Kelly Riley, who are just two phenomenal talents.
AJ: Yeah. And your screen time with Kelly was also phenomenal and she’s breaking out from Yellowstone. So how was it like working with her on this project as well?
Alistair: I’ve admired Kelly massively. I think her, performance amongst many others, but her performance in Flight that she did with Denzel Washington, I was astounded and totally dismayed that she didn’t win an Academy Award for that because, I thought, you know, she’s an extraordinary, extraordinary actor. She’s also enormously a collaborative and we became really close friends working on this film, I hugely cherished because she’s just a phenomenal talent and cause we are playing husband and wife. We had a lot of conversations before we started shooting the movie and during as well about the nature of the detail of the relationship of how they met, how they fell in love and their children and so forth. It was an enormous privilege to be in the same orbit as a talent like Kelly and I love I adore Yellowstone and to watch, I think she had done season one, I think maybe season two of Yellowstone and she was about to go and do anyway the subsequent season.
AJ: And when I was watching The Cursed I thought immediately afterwards, I mean, there’s gonna be no better horror film of this year and it’s one of the better werewolf films that we’ve had in recent decades too. And one of the things I love about the genre is that you can kind of feed people vegetables with their desserts. You know, this is also a family drama and it’s a war drama as well at times. So how did that all feel to you when you were reading the script also knowing that there were so many different elements involved?
Alistair: You’ve nailed it. You’ve absolutely nailed it. I couldn’t agree with you more. I think as a actor, you approach it very much as a family drama, you’re dealing with human beings and the emotions they’re in and then from that builds everything else. You spend a lot of your time talking about the nature of relationships, trying to find that depth, finding the things that obviously aren’t written in the script out of necessity and doing your own kind of background developmental work and, you know, Kelly and I, to our note, to your point, we did a lot of the at finding the human beings and trying to understand their actions not condone, not judge, but trying to understand how these human beings function and how they function together. That was hugely important. And then everything certainly from an actor’s perspective sort of builds builds from there. And so when you’re reading the script, it’s those little human details of the first thing that start to kind of fire your imagination. And then once you find yourself working with collaborative people like Kelly Boyd, and Sean obviously is the writer and director, you know you’re on a pretty good track.
AJ: Right? It took a while for him to get screen time, but when Boyd came in, he was really commanding. So how was it like witnessing him perform his character on this as well, just being amazed by how he’s done it?
Alistair: I was such a fan of Narcos, you know, and, Boyd and Pedro Pascal kind of exploded onto the screen, that remarkable show. Boyd again, you know, Boyd is a very deep thinking collaborative act, we come from the same sort of stable in that we’re always open to learn from each other and to collaborate. And I say the word collaborate a lot because in this job you have to, and want to work with people that are collaborative. You don’t wanna be told where to stand, or this is what I’m gonna do. And then you do what you need to do do, but this is what I’m gonna do, you know, a lot of discussion. I don’t mean to use the word proper, but, you know, boy is a proper actor in the sense that it’s for him, it’s about the detail of the work.
AJ: How do you feel that, like, this is an independent film, but it’s so cinematic with its cinematography and the visual effects, then it’s getting a release in theaters that has to be kind of so positive for you, your team, to just know that it’s gonna be getting released into theaters as well.
Alistair: Well, fundamentally, AJ, it’s more than that by far and away. It’ not a sort of you know, it’s personally thrilling in the sense that the story that you, you know, we started to tell whatever it was two and a half years ago is gonna go into the theaters. And we know obviously the way that people consume movies now range so dramatically, not least because of the arrival of streamers, but also, you know, the arrival of the COVID pandemic, which has changed the game so phenomenally. So in a way for an actor to do a movie that, that gets such a wide and wonderful release and huge kudos for LD entertainment for pursuing the notion of wanting to have this story told in theaters, cause that’s a heck of a gamble, given where we are in the world. And so that, that I see that and feel that as an enormous privilege and the fact that we shot this film on film, not digitally. So visually an audience will get to see this film in all its kind of glorious slender. And, and that, you know, that is the most exciting thing about the theatrical release. It’s not a personal thing. It’s very much that people will get to see something that is so beautifully made. I think that is really exciting.
