Also, video interviews with the star and David Goyer
Sitting alone in a hotel bedroom with Odette Yustman isn’t easy. Okay, not alone per se, her friend is in the next room. Still, the stunningly beautiful and gregarious actress is sitting before me, curled up in a chair and beneath a blanket while I’m across from her sitting on the bed. The bed. Now, how does one make that not look awkward? Through focus.
We’re each here at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills to talk about her latest foray in the horror genre, David Goyer’s The Unborn (opening January 9th). And the threat she’s up against this time is not a towering beast of unknown origin (Cloverfield), an alien robot steering wheel (Transformers, in which she had a “blink and you’ll miss it” role) or a drooling, Google image searching, obsessed fan. Instead, Yustman’s being stalked by a demonic presence vexed that she was born and her twin died in utero. Because of this, she is plagued by possession and outlandish, dreadful visions, from eyeless creatures with gaping maws that look inspired by Dick Smith’s work on Ghost Story to dogs with wonky heads.
“I definitely wanted to stay away from the horror-thriller thing,” Yustman says explaining her initial post-Cloverfield plans. “I couldn’t pass this up because of David Goyer and his script was so good. I loved the character and the story was original, it wasn’t a remake. I got to tap into things I haven’t been able to do yet. I think it’s essential to take baby steps and to prove yourself.”
The actress endured a frigid two and a half months in Chicago lensing the Platinum Dunes/Rogue production facing lengthy night shoots, contact lenses that impaired her vision and voracious potato bugs. “They were huge and that big,” she exclaims measuring their length for me with her fingers. Yeah, they’re apparently pretty big. “Horrible creatures with no purpose in this world. They bite, they eat each other. They eat potatoes? Wow, great,” Yustman laughs followed by a painfully cute, “Assholes.”
With that our conversation stays on track yet turns to some of her other projects including a possible sequel to The Unborn, should the film hit the big time, to a picture called Rogue’s Gallery in which she gets to exercise her action and comedic chops. A Cloverfield sequel? Tough call. She doesn’t sound rather optimistic about her character’s fate.
I had the chance to speak to both Yustman and writer-director David Goyer earlier in the day on camera about The Unborn. Below Yustman offers her take on the scariest canines in the film and Goyer dishes the dirt on some of his inspirations and explains how the Dark Knight helped him shoot in Chicago.
Source: Ryan Rotten, Managing Editor
