Lucas Till Interview & Spy Pack Giveaway

1

-We had the chance to talk with Lucas Till this week about his role in the new family action-comedy, The Spy Next Door. Lucas talked about perfecting his Russian accent, doing his own stunts, who he’d like to work with and lots more. Check out a few highlights and listen to the audio below. The Spy Next Door is in theaters TODAY.

Shine On Media is also doing a great giveaway to go along with The Spy Next Door, which is in theaters TODAY, January 15. We are giving away 2 prize packs which include a Laser Key Chain, Binoculars and an ID Wallet. All you have to do to enter is to leave a comment here with your first name and a valid e-mail address in the proper field. (E-mail address is not published) Then leave a comment and let us know who you would spy on if you were a spy. Ends on January 22 and open to US residents only. Winners will be contacted via e-mail.

On perfecting his Russian accent: I played a lot of Grand Theft Auto 4. I play a lot of video games. Actually, I showed up on set. I kind of thought that maybe I’ll have an accent, but that had never been addressed until I showed up, asked Brian Levant if I was going to be using an accent, and he goes, “Huh. You know what? Sure. Why not?” So, I’m glad I had all that preparation in there since I didn’t even know that was going to happen.

On playing a bad guy: It was a dream come true in many ways. First of all, I got to play a bad guy. And although it’s not Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight, it’s still a change. It’s still in the direction I would love to go. I always wanted to play characters and that was definitely one — a Russian spy. So, it was awesome. It was fun. It’s actually kind of liberating not caring and getting to play something cool like that.

Any advice from Jackie Chan? Not to punch like a girl [laughs]. He’s such a hard worker. By example, he taught me not to be a diva. People respect him because he has that work drive.

On learning the choreography for the fight scenes: It was pretty nuts. The first day of rehearsal, I’m learning from the American stunt guys. And the American stunt guys, they’re a team and they tell you how it’s going to be. Then I go to Jackie’s stunt team and even though it’s probably the same amount of guys, I have to go through each one of his stunt guys individually and they, I don’t know. They are all from East Asia and let’s just say their manners are lost in translation. You have to throw your pride out the window when you’re listening to these guys because they are telling me seven times over what I’m doing wrong. And then the next guy will tell me something I’m doing different than the first guy that I should have been doing the whole time. Then I would start over with the next guy. It was a long process. A long demoralizing process where they told me how weak and pathetic I was. Finally, I got to Jackie and he would tell me what I was doing wrong too. I’d have to go cry and come back, look at the footage and be happy. It was pretty nuts. There was no martial art training before. It was just rehearsal. I had a great time though.

If you could spy on anyone who would it be? I’ve always been that person that doesn’t want to spy on people because I don’t want to know what they’re actually doing or thinking because I think it would hurt me too bad. Let’s see…If I could spy on the President to see what goes on…I’d have no career after that but…[laughs]

Any embarrassing moments or bloopers? Yeah, actually in the bloopers at the end of the movie, you can see me making some weird noise and spitting my tongue out. It’s because I was actually in a lot of pain. Jackie said messed up a line and I’m acting all intense. He’s pinning me down on the chair and I was actually in pain. You could actually see that at the end of the movie if you watch it. There were a couple of times… I would love to do my own stunts, but stunts are not something I have a lot of experience with. There were a lot of times I tried to do stuff and I was just not confident enough to pull it off. A couple of times I was told I punch like a girl by Jackie’s stunt team.

You’ve worked with stars like Miley Cyrus & Taylor Swift. Who else would you like to work with? I think Selena Gomez is extremely talented. I don’t say that all that often. I have a lot of respect for people with a lot of talent and usually it’s people with a lot of experience and older. But I think Selena Gomez not only is extremely pretty, but a really good actress.

What else can we expect from you in 2010? I just wrapped up this movie, Battle: Los Angeles. Wait, it actually doesn’t come out until 2011, but we’ll be doing press for it this year. It stars Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez & Ne-Yo…I did an episode of the TV show “Blue Mountain State” on Spike TV, a college humor type of show about football players and what they do outside of football. That will be airing soon.

Full transcript coming soon.