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Your new movie Dark
Night of the Soul - in a few words, what's it about, and what can
you tell us about your character in it?
Dark
Night of the Soul
was inspired by an old poem. I'm going to read you
an excerpt from the meaning of the poem: "The dark night of the soul is a breaking away from the illusions of fear
and ego to shift our alignment and values to what is real and true, the
connection to the divine, and ultimately pave the way for your life
purpose and mission here on earth." Well, this was the inspiration
behind Dark
Night of the Soul, the film that, S.J. Crazzo wrote and directed. It's a
survival story of a woman, my character, Alex, who is staring death in the
face. And she's recapping her life and looking at whether she has done everything
that she's needed to in this life journey in order to move on to the
afterlife, or does she still have work that needs to be done?
Now, Alex, my character is a brilliant scientist, that has a very high position at
the center of disease control. And she gets into this car accident, gets pinned under her car, and
through a series of hallucinations, because she's experiencing so much
blood loss, with connecting with her father about support and
conversations she wished she'd had while he was living and remembrances of
conversations she's had with her sister. She connects with God in the form
of a dog. And she also reaches out to her daughter in a way through an
imagined form of a superhero, Amazonia, that her daughter looked up to. So
it's Alex's deep emotional journey while fighting for survival and also
dealing with a pandemic that is absolutely ravaging the world. And, her
husband and daughter happened to be patient 1 and 2. So there is a huge emotional weight that Alex is carrying with her, and
this ultimate need for a vaccine which she has yet to find. What did you
draw upon to bring your character to life, and how much Kristanna Loken
can we find in Alex?
In any character I really go
back to the specificity of their life story. I have this amazing acting
coach who once said to me, "What would someone need to know in life in
order to play you?" So since we are all so uniquely different, you really
have to build the internal world of the character, from where you what I
see on the page, and then I have to work backwards. How did she get to this place in her life? What are her fears? What are
her phobias? What are her strengths? What are her weaknesses? So I do a deep dive on the backstory, and really getting specific on the
timeline of her life, her family life, etcetera, in order to get to where
she is now. And really just the the emotional pain of also being a mother
and having a young child. We always want the best for our children in
life. And if we feel like we've fallen short, it really can eat away at
us. And truly I feel like being a parent inspires me every day to be a
better person, be the best version of myself that I can be. And Alex is carrying around this deep burden and weight and sense of guilt
that she didn't live up to that. So there are
aspects certainly as a parent and the pain in which we feel in being a
parent, and how that pain is really mixed with the depth of the joy.
How much pain you feel is how much you know you love. So she also deals
with a lot of control. Alex is a very controlled person. She has pursued, as I mentioned, and
really excelled in a career of science, where there's a formula to it.
There's a cause and effect basis analysis, and that's the world in which
she lives. So she's really fighting to come to terms with the fact that
that's not how life works on an emotional level.
So that's something for
me that was new to explore: I'm not a controlled person. I think I really live in a world of accepting
all of the variables, especially working in a world of the arts, where
there is no control whatsoever, and really the acceptance of what is.
So, I know that was a trait that was important to the character creation
for S.J., and he and I worked closely together in developing that out and
and me probing his mind of the hows and whys and the need of perceived
control. You spend most of your screentime
in Dark Night of the
Soul on your own in what I imagine was a rather uncomfortable
position - so was this any kind of a special strain for you as an actress,
and/or maybe also a welcome challenge?
Yes. It was it was both, but I love challenges. I love to
stretch and grow as an artist and as I grow as a person and as it relates
to my art and my craft. I personally really like survival movies. So when this one came around, I
thought this is really an awesome opportunity to showcase certain
abilities of me primarily working with myself and creating a vast array
of different things in an interesting fashion, working with the
surroundings and putting myself in that great sense of despair and
circumstance. So, yeah, I really jumped at the opportunity to portray
this character.
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But yes, it was also physically uncomfortable, which I
wanted it to be, because for the believability factor, you really want to
have it be awkward, not have it be too comfortable because that shows. So
I wanted to put myself in the situation, in a position physically, that
was going to be straining. So, yeah, I mean, it was cold on the ground and the dirt,
sometimes with rain, what have you. But all part of the acting journey for
this character and maybe that's why they hire me for these roles because
they know I like the challenge. How did you get
involved in the project in the first place, what drew you to it? My friend,
producer/actor Tom Malloy came to me with this project and
he said, "I think I have a project you're gonna like." You know, he really
enjoyed the script. Also, Charlie Schramm, the other producer really
enjoyed the script as well. They pitched it to me, and I read it. And I
said, "Yeah, this is a great script, and, I'd be happy to come on board. So that's
how the project came to me. And, you know I think I've I've covered the
second half of that question already. Well, maybe not in
in total specifics have I covered it, but I really liked the emotional
journey, the depth of the emotional journey of Alex. It's a great character to sink my teeth into and and explore. In
creating characters, you want something, or at least I do, that really
has a lot of depth - just like in life. I mean, that's humanity, right?
We're in a body, so therefore, we have the ability to feel. So the emotional
journey is always very important to my characters that I create. What
can you tell us about Dark
Night of the Soul's director S. J. Crazzo, and what was your
collaboration like?
I'm in LA and he's in New York, and we shot the film in upstate
New York - that was another, part that was enticing for me, actually, very
near where I grew up, and very near a town where I used to ski in the
winter. And so we met a lot on Zoom beforehand. We did rehearsals with
some of the other actors and really tried to flesh out the character, the
emotional journey, the timeline of the character because, of course,
there's her reality in the car, there are the hallucinations with Martin Cove, the father. There are the
flashbacks with her sister, Lori, and then the hallucinations with the
daughter's alter ego, Amazonia, and also with God the dog. So really
just trying to get clear on these through-lines of action. And then of
course, like I said, working with him to really flesh out as well Alex's
perceived need of control and how that can take over a person's life.
Do talk about the shoot as such, and
the on-set atmosphere!
The shoot was quite something because I have never shot a movie this
quickly in my life. I believe it was 8 days that we shot this film. And
essentially it's me talking throughout the movie. So I knew going into it
that we were not gonna have the luxury of time on our side and there was
no margin of error. I mean, I'm always very prepared, but this time I
made sure that I had the entire script fully memorized like a play
beforehand so that when we got there, I
knew I wouldn't have time, other than what we were shooting, you know,
that day to have any error other than making sure
that it was exactly how it needed to be. So that was very different, but the one thing that I really liked
about it is we broke it up into 3 sections: We shot the
part of me in the car. We shot the scenes with my father and I. We shot
the scenes with my sister and I, and we were able to do them sequentially, which was great.
And again, not a luxury you always have, but we got to have more of an
emotional through-line, an arc during those scenes like you would in
a play. So I was grateful for that. Any future projects you'd like to
share?
I have 2 other upcoming films. The first of which is called No Address,
a film that is gonna be coming out nationwide here in theaters
February 28th, and stars myself, Billy Baldwin, Beverly D'Angelo and
a host of others. It's a big ensemble cast. It's written and directed by my dear
friend Julia Verdin, and it
underscores the plight of the homeless crisis that we are currently
experiencing here in the United States. So that's a very important film
that we're trying to raise awareness with. And then I have a film called
Vice and Virtue, that I'm in. Another great ensemble piece that my company
Trio Entertainment also produced. And this is a story about Vice and Virtue, 2 celestial beings that take human form.
They come down to planet Earth and they invoke this judgment day on about
half a dozen people that find themselves in an undisclosed location. So
over the course of this evening we find out why they're there and how
certain choices take us in one direction and other choices take us down a
different path. So this is a film that hopefully you'll walk away from
giving yourself a little bit more pause for thought as to why you choose
what you choose and how our choices are a compilation of who we become.
Before you broke into acting, you had a career as
model - so what can you tell us about your modelling days, and how have
they prepared you for being an actress?
This is something that a lot of people
get a little bit confused but I actually started acting first. And as you
have another question in there, yes, my very first job was on As the World
Turns, the soap opera, when I was 13 years old. And I did various
different acting jobs in New York, and then was approached for modeling. My mother had been a very successful model for 20 years, and I thought I'd
give it a try, and I had some success with it, traveled all over the
world. But I always wanted to pursue acting, that was really
my passion. And I think what I can say, the best takeaway for me from
modeling for acting was camera positioning. Your body positioning in front of a camera and being aware of certain
angles and things like that. So yeah, that was that was helpful certainly
for that. What made you go
into acting, and did you receive any formal training on the
subject? From the time I was a little tiny girl, probably the age of 3, I
wanted to be an actress. It was very clear to me that that was my life's
path, and I had the privilege of having various different types of
lessons growing up, various types of dance lessons, acting, I was part of
a summer stock theater, voice lessons. And it was when I was 13 and I was
watching that movie Beethoven with the big Saint Bernard, and there was a
girl in it, an actress, who was about my age, Nicholle Tom, and I identified with her, and I said to my parents,
"How do I get to do that? I wanna be up there doing that." And so that was when my
dad, who had done some acting, said, "Well, let's take
you into New York and you can meet my old agent and go from there." And
I did, and I started working with him. And, he said the next day happened
to be that audition for As the World Turns, and I ended up getting the
job, and here I am all these years later.
From what I know, your first screen role was on
the daily soap As the World Turns - so could you talk about that
experience for a bit?
As the World Turns was an amazing starting place for me as an actor
because they do one show per day, which is incredibly fast. And it's a
soap opera. It's pretty much all dialogue. So you get to learn
your lines very quickly and memorization. Also, again, really working on
body positioning, in front of a camera. It was 4 cameras on a sound stage, so hitting your mark, that
type of thing. It was just a really great learning curve, and I had a
wonderful time on that soap. And my boyfriend, on the show was Jason Biggs
of American Pie fame years later. So we had a lot of fun working
together. Your breakthrough as an actress
was quite probably Terminator 3: Rise of the Machine - so you just
have to talk about working on that movie! It came to me through my agent and I thought
this is the role for me. At that time, going through as a young teen, almost child actor sometime.
and I was always been very tall, had a deeper voice, sometimes I'd be taller than the guy playing my dad. You know?
So I think people weren't quite sure yet how to cast me. And I thought
this is a role that has no limitations. I can be and look how I am and it
could work to my advantage. I had also been a major fan of Robert Patrick in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day. I'm not generally a
an action movie fan per se, but his performance was just mesmerizing. I
mean, I just couldn't see any human behind his facade and his character.
And so he was a real inspiration to me. And years later, we
worked together, and I met him at an event while I was filming Terminator 3: Rise of the Machine, and I introduced
myself, and we've actually become good friends, and ironically, he happened to
be in the hospital right after my son was born, and he came and
visited him and said a prayer for him. So, Robert Patrick and the
Terminator family actually has has been a big part of my life. And I
should just add to that, it was a series of auditions, probably about 8
auditions and they were very physical. I remember at that time it was the
Summer Olympics, and I felt like I was doing my own personal Olympics to
get that role. And I'm an equestrian, and I was out on a ride with a
girlfriend of mine, and I got the call from Jonathan Mostow, the director,
and he said, "Are you ready for your life to change forever as you know it?
You've got the job. You're not gonna be able to pump your gas
anymore in anonymity." And so, anyway, it's been a it's been a wild ride
ever since.
You've also worked with notorious genre director Uwe Boll on a trio of movies - so
what was working with him like?
Uwe is a character and as I like to say, he is crazy brilliant. I think he's got a real vision of
what he wants and what he likes. And he's he's an offbeat
person that thinks outside the box, and and I can respect that. I think a lot of creatives are that way in their own way, and
it's unique and and special. And everybody's got their their
talents and their gifts. So yeah, we did, as you mentioned, 3 movies
together, the last of which was Attack on Darfur, which was very creative.
I was also a producer on it. It's a bold choice. We shot a film about the genocide in
Sudan based on a 30 page treatment. Each of the air the characters boned
up on the backstory of what was going on during the conflict. And then we
recreated in South Africa a Darfuri village. An, most of the people that
you see in the film, in the village, are actual Darfuri refugees. So the stories that you hear are their own. So it made for a very
moving aspect. So, things like that that he comes up with that are just
really out there and creative, and I give Uwe credit for that. Any other films/TV shows
prior to Dark Night
of the Soul you'd like to talk about? There was a
film that I collaborated with my father on called Fighting for Freedom. My
father Chris Logan wrote the script and we produced it with 2 time Academy
Award nominee Bruce Dern playing my father. And it underscores the immigration crisis that is continuing in this
country, and it's inspired by true events. We shot it on my parents' farm and in the surrounding town where
I grew up, so that was all really special. A family of migrant workers'
youngest daughter faces deportation at the age of 3. Where is she gonna
go? So it's a it's an in-depth study of what we are doing, or lack thereof
of, with our immigrants and how broken our system is and how we really
need to rectify it in the face of humanity alone.
Having done big budget as well as indie films, how do these
sets compare, and what do you prefer, actually?
I mean, obviously, it's really about the money in the end and the budget.
The big budget films, you have more more time and you have more
ability to do various different things that you can't do when you don't
have the money. But in essence, for me, it really boils down to very much
the same thing, which is always bringing my best, always bringing my best
performance in mind, no matter what. And so there's sometimes positives and negatives to them both. I think
sometimes smaller films can take more risks as far as story goes, and that
I appreciate. Bg budget tends to be a little bit more tried and
true formulaic. But either way, like I said, it's really performance based for
me. And you just hope big budget, of course, you're gonna
guaranteed to get more of a wide distribution. And you really hope, with
independent filmmaking as well that it will reach the masses too. How
would you describe yourself as an actress, and some of your techniques to
bring your character to life?
I think thorough in my preparation, as I discussed a bit earlier. I think
you really have to be to create that level of depth, and I like to take
risks. I like jobs, as I mentioned too, that really have
range and depth and experience and human stories. I mean, we we watch films and television to be moved, so you want to
portray characters that are evocative, that you can relate to in some way.
I mean even though perhaps the content of your life may differ from
theirs, but you can relate, you can champion them, you can cry with them,
you can laugh with them, and hopefully you walk away with
something in your heart that inspires you - and that to me is really the
essence of of why I do what I do, and I am extremely passionate about it.
Some of the techniques,to bring my characters to life - I think it's a combination of life experience, keeping your eyes open,
humanity, humility. I mean, there's no CEO of acting. I feel like I have I have a
lot that I can bring in of what I've gleaned in my lifetime and I have a
lot left to learn. I'm really open to continue to grow as a
person and as an artist for the rest of my days. And I think as long as
you come from that place, you can continue to build and hone your craft
and stay humble. Actresses (and indeed actors) who inspire you?
Well, number 1 is Helen Mirren. I am a huge, huge fan of her body of work
that continues to grow. I've followed her since her early days on the BBC.
I love that she is always seemingly taking risks and pushing herself. I
loved her character in Prime Suspect, the TV series she had.
She does movies. She does stage. She does TV. And it seems like she's
always reinventing herself, and it's just she's beautiful to watch, and
I've loved to see her grow too on camera, throughout her career. So
definitely Helen Mirren is at the top of my list. Your favourite movies? Well, I've got a few, and I would
say I really like really good war movies, because it's life and death
situations, it's very heightened reality, it's deeply
emotional. So Apocalypse Now Redux, the full version, is one of my
favorites. The English Patient has always been a favorite, and I love good dramas as well.
I recently saw Kate Winslet in the movie Lee about Lee Miller, and that
was a great film. That was a very important film, and I also love Kate
Winslet. She's also been inspiring to me. Cate Blanchett is another one.
I guess they're all Brits for some reason. And then I love, other types of movies on a lighter note, like
Dirty Dancing, it's just great story, fun, uplifting, inspirational.
The movie Sideways is one that seems like I can continue to watch
and never get tired of. Also coming of age stories like Et Tu Mama Tambien is
a beautiful story. There's a lot of foreign films I like as well. So I have a wide wide range of movies. Watched a movie recently too called
The 1st Grader that I love, which is a beautiful, beautiful human story,
based on a real story, about a gentleman in Kenya who learns to read when a new law passes when he's 86 years old. So, again, great harrowing
life stories. Biopics I love. Yeah. ...
and of course, films you really deplore? You know, I'm not into horror
films. I gotta say I was young and the classic "at a friend's house" with
the older but not too much older sister babysitting", and we watched A
Nightmare on Elm Street. I was probably about 9 years
old, clearly too young to watch that film. And I had nightmares for well over a year after that.
So horror movies are not my
thing, although the irony is that I was at a convention, and I saw Robert
Englund [Robert Englund bio
- click here] who portrayed that Freddy Krueger
character, I actually had lunch with him, and I I said to him, you know you really
scared the crap out of me as as a kid - and then he was doing his job, right? And I've even had people tell
me that I they found me really scary in in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machine. So from an artistic perspective, I have a new
perception right now, but those types of films are are not the ones that I
that I go to see. Your website,
social media, whatever else?
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Instagram is ksloken,
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and greatest updates. Anything else you're dying
to mention and I have merely forgotten to ask?
I think this was very thorough. Thanks
for the interview! Thanks for your support, and wishing you
all the best.
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