Exclusive Interview: Jen and Sylvia Soska on Action Cinema, Being the Underdogs and More for VENDETTA

On Friday, June 12th, Jen and Sylvia Soska are taking on the action genre with their latest film, Vendetta, which will be arriving on VOD and hitting select theaters nationwide. The film co-stars Dean Cain and Paul Wight (aka The Big Show) as adversaries who end up in the same prison together and will stop at nothing to try and destroy each other. Vendetta also co-stars Michael Eklund and Ben Hollingsworth and was produced by WWE Studios (who was also behind the Soska’s previous film, See No Evil 2).

Daily Dead recently had the opportunity to sit down and chat with both Jen and Sylvia about Vendetta and their experiences collaborating with both Cain and Wight for the gritty actioner. The Soskas also chatted about being underdogs going into the project, the importance of keeping the fight sequences grounded in reality and what we can expect from their newly announced project, Plastic.

Let’s start off talking about Dean Cain—I know he’s been Superman before, but he’s not necessarily a name you associate with action movies. That being said, I thought casting him in Vendetta was really cool as he did a fantastic job and seemed to really dig into this character.

Jen Soska: Oh, he did. Dean came to play that character because he doesn’t often get opportunities like this. I think that happens a lot with the Supermen out there because they don’t generally get offered the Batman-type characters.

Sylvia Soska: I think it’s because people can’t ever see them as anything but wholesome; when you do such a great job playing around in one spectrum, most people don’t think you could ever do something outside of that.

Jen Soska: Except Bob Saget—he walks the line (laughs).

Sylvia Soska: Dean was unlike any actor I ever worked with before because as soon as he came on the project, I had to call him and he was just beyond excited—excited about the character, about working with us, doing all the action stuff. There were times where I had to stop and say, “Wow—you actually give a shit!” (laughs) because guys at that level can be generally jaded. Dean was such a workhorse though.

When Vendetta started to come together, was this a project that WWE came to you guys with or was it vice versa?

Jen Soska: This was something that was brought to us by WWE Studios. Michael Luisi is the head of WWE Studios and we were having so many discussions after we did See No Evil 2 where we saw they had a comedy coming up or they had a Christmas movie coming up and I told him we wanted to take on one of those but he said, “You girls wouldn’t want to do any of those movies.” But I did because I don’t want to be labeled as just a horror director because I am a director and I feel like we both can do anything. We can work for Disney someday—that would be awesome.

Sylvia Soska: It’s exactly like Dean Cain; we’re completely on the other end of the spectrum where we say, “Christmas Movie” and they say “Nah!” (laughs).

Jen Soska: To even get an opportunity to direct an action movie is incredible. I can’t even get into a room to pitch an action movie so this was a really rare opportunity for us. And even after Michael said that the Soska Sisters were going to direct Vendetta, everyone was like, “these girls are going to direct this men’s prison movie? Really?”

Sylvia Soska: It’s funny, though, because the people who are unfamiliar with our work just see that we’re a sisters directing team and assume that we do this flowery, feminine work. I mean, there are definitely feminine tones and there are feminist themes in my work, but you can’t just say that’s all there is to our films or that’s all I’m capable of. What we do is very much like watching testicles swinging in the wind—some of them are very manly and very violent. Or at least that’s what my mom tells me and she’s my barometer for this stuff (laughs).

Because See No Evil 2 does have a few action set pieces, did that experience at all help you prepare for coming onto something like Vendetta?

Jen Soska: Oh, definitely. We are so excited about action movies in general and because of that, we’ve put stunt work into every single film that we’ve done. So with this one, it was almost like getting carte blanche because we got to kill so many people. There are 47 fatalities and Dean Cain does them all with a smile.

Sylvia Soska: Jen likes to say that (laughs). But yeah, we brought in our same stunt coordinator that we had on See No Evil 2 for Vendetta, Kimani Smith, and there were a lot of times on previous projects where we wanted to have more action sequences but we only had so much time. For Vendetta, though, it was all about the action so Kimani brought out his fight coordinator, Dan Rizzuto, so that we could make the action feel bigger than it was.

And because this was a film starring Dean Cain and The Big Show and directed by Jen and I, all three of our groups are pretty much underdogs as it is, so no one expects this to work. They all know the kind of work we generally do, so we all had to work even harder to beat those expectations. We had to start things at a nine and then take it to 50 (laughs).

Right now, it seems like action cinema is in this very slick movement where almost everything is choreographed like a ballet and people are doing these amazingly impossible things with their bodies. Kind of like everyone has become a superhero now and so what I appreciated about Vendetta was that the action and the fights all felt very real and very grounded—was that something you both were conscientious of while working on it?

Jen Soska: Absolutely. We wanted to make it all feel real because there are movies like Vendetta and there are movies like The Raid 2 where you know it’s just all martial artists doing these crazy things. Gareth Evans is the master of that, but we weren’t making Ninja Cop 2. And for us, it was like creating our own Punisher story.

Let’s talk about working with The Big Show (Paul Wight) on Vendetta just because again, he’s not necessarily the first wrestler that comes to mind when I’m thinking of action movie stars and he does a really nice job in the film.

Jen Soska: Aww, Paul is going to hear that and it’s really going to make his day. He is a very accomplished actor which is something I don’t think a lot of people realize.

Sylvia Soska: Yeah, and he’s also incredibly hard on himself too. As soon as he knew he was doing this movie—if you look at him, he’s in the best shape of his life right now—he started hitting the gym like crazy. He got an acting coach for Vendetta, too, so he could learn more about the craft and find ways to keep the power in his character just in his mere presence. And through this, he learned that so much of what he does isn’t something he has to try and overdo because he already has that intensity, this strong presence. I mean, when we were working on the film, we all said how it’s nice that Show is such a nice guy in real life because he could literally kill anyone around if he really wanted to—he’s just that strong.

Jen Soska: We were all on the same page coming onto Vendetta when it came to him controlling his power. When you have power, you don’t raise your voice, you don’t scream. Like Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada—she never once raises her voice because she doesn’t have to—she’s that powerful.

Sylvia Soska: I remember when we were shooting the cafeteria scene—what Jen and I call the Mean Girls scene—and it’s Dean Cain’s first meal inside the prison. And when he comes over and messes with Dean’s tray and his food, that was all Show. It was so gross, but it was genius too because it’s such a dick thing to do—cram someone else’s food in your mouth carelessly as you talk about killing their wife. That’s how you mess with someone.

He also channeled Vince McMahon a bit, too, because Vince has this powerful, patient way of talking to people where you don’t know exactly when you should or shouldn’t be talking. He makes you that nervous. It was so much fun watching Show do that kind of acting and I think his character is a lot more likeable than we intended (laughs). You end up liking him in spite of his actions.

One last thing before I go—I noticed you have a new project that got announced this week. Is there anything you can share about that?

Sylvia Soska: Yes, I was trying to be so subtle with our new movie because we’re here casting and crewing up right now. We’re shooting it here in Los Angeles which is our very first US production, which is cool. It’s called Plastic and was written by Frank Strausser and it’s being produced by Scott Stone who is just awesome. They’re both awesome, really. The story is about a Los Angeles plastic surgeon who gets himself into a hell of a lot of trouble with the Hollywood elite.

Jen Soska: It’s a crime thriller, too, and it’s just this beautiful and artful dramatic piece that’s filled with social commentary, especially in regards to the Beverly Hills lifestyle and the pursuit of perfection versus what is actually beautiful.

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