Chuck star heads into the wild
During her lunch break on the NBC series Chuck, actress Yvonne Strahovski offered a brief call to us this week to talk about her time on The Canyon, a new entry in the survival-thriller cannon directed by Richard Harrah.
Strahovski plays opposite Eion Bailey and together they Lori and Nick, a recently wed couple who take a trip to the Grand Canyon on their honeymoon. When their guide (a salt of the Earth fella embodied by Will Patton) is attacked by a rattlesnake, Nick and Lori are forced to find their way back to town, but that proves to be easier said than done when Nick becomes injured and the two are hunted by a pack of wolves.
The actress tells us she shot the film shortly after doing the pilot episode of Chuck. “I was just excited to keep working and I had just arrived here [from Australia]. ‘Chuck’ came along then I had The Canyon straight after that. I was thrilled to shoot this thing in Utah and Arizona. It was beautiful, we shot in some amazing places.”
As for her hirsute co-stars, Strahovski says she needed to be specially introduced to the film’s wolves one by one. “You couldn’t just go up to them and pet them even though they’re well trained. I had to have them come up to me and sniff me. Then I could pet them and get to know them a bit. They were timid, I have to say. The scenes where I had to wave around the flaming stick and shoo them away, they were a bit scared of that. That was the hardest part of the film was working with them and making it as real as possible. They were more frightened of me than I was of them.”
She’s well aware the film is drawing parallels to thrillers like Open Water and reveals if she was placed in a survival scenario, being lost at sea would be far more terrifying. “I’d be more scared of the water. I don’t like not knowing what’s underneath me in the water.”
The Canyon opens in limited release on October 23 and will play to Screamfest audiences next week.
Source: Ryan Rotten, Managing Editor
