Feature: Resident Evil: Extinction

Lead actress Milla Jovovich chats about returning to the role of Alice and the making of Resident Evil: Extinction

Most Milla Jovovich fans know her as a kick-ass chick who fights monsters, zombies, aliens and sometimes Humans. Few know her other side, as a stand-up comedian. Only those who work on set with Jovovich, or are invited to spend the day observing, would have any opportunity to know how much fun she creates on otherwise dull work sites.

One of Resident Evil: Extinction’s less action-packed scenes had Alice (Jovovich) rejoined with Carlos (Oded Fehr) after years apart. Carlos has led a caravan of survivors while Alice tracked them from afar. The evil Umbrella Corps has its hooks into Alice so she could not get too close. When Alice saves the caravan from a nasty crow attack, they join up again to seek out uninfected lands in Alaska.

The duo sat in the cab of a green camouflage Hummer in front of a blue screen so post-production artists could add any necessary driving backgrounds later. New cast member Spencer Locke pretended to sleep between them. In between takes, Jovovich would joke, “Don’t stare at me, okay? It’s in my contract” or “This would make a great musical”. Preparing for a take, she would egg her co-stars on, “In the moment, man. Get serious. Serious movie!”

In a break from delivering exposition about the caravan’s journey, Jovovich explained her work ethic. “I think that when I’m happy, definitely the rest of the crew’s happy so I like to try to be up and motivating,” she said. “Kind of keeps the morale up. It’s been a hard move from Mexicali to here [Mexico City] so everyone’s kind of exhausted. Just trying to keep it light and nice on set.”

Mexicali featured much of the desert action sequences. The caravan discovers the remains of Las Vegas, buried in the sand, and encounters its fair share of desert zombies.

“We just did a great shot last week in Mexicali that was really cool. I get to jump off this bridge off this container. It’s a rad shot. I had a wire of course but it wasn’t like a Peter Pan thing. It was just making sure that, if anything happened, he could raise me up, but I pretty much did the jump and had this really hard landing so it looked real. I like to make it as realistic as possible because then I don’t have to act so much. I can just react and just be natural because you jump down that hard, all you can do is go, ‘Ugh’ or whatever. You don’t have to kind of try so hard, so I like to keep it real.”

Actors like Jovovich had it relatively easy in the desert. For others, it was as horrific a time as the survivors in Raccoon City had. “I think the Mexicali part was probably some of the easiest stuff for the actors because we get a chance to go in the trailer and air conditioning but the crews had it rough over there. I mean, Mark [Egerton], our first AD was out there all day long. Most of the crew is out there just all day in that sun. It’s like, wow, they’re really working hard on this one.”

by Fred Topel

Read the whole interview and even more on the movie in
Shivers #134

Photo © Screen Gems
Feature © Visual Imagination 2007. Not for reproduction

Taken from

Shivers #134
September 2007
ships from Sep 7 2007
News-stand Price
UK £3.99 / US $8.99

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