'Doom' Interviews: The Rock and Rosamund Pike
By Lindzi Scharf, Hollywood.com Staff
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Sunday, October 16, 2005
Rosamund Pike
Emerging from Doom is Rosamund Pike. Known to most American audiences as the bad Bond girl in Die Another Day, Pike will be seen in the upcoming Pride & Prejudice, co-starring Keira Knightley. As Doom’s leading (and only) lady, Pike gave us the scoop on working with The Rock. Just as quickly as she entered the room, she announced, British accent in tact, “I’ve got to pay The Rock back because he’s been telling journalists all morning that I couldn’t keep my hands off him when we filmed. So I’ll try and get him back.”
What was it like working with a bunch of guys?
Rosamund Pike: “It was great because I’d also come off a film that was all female--Pride & Prejudice. The chance is be holed up with a bunch of marines was quite attractive.”
What attracted you to this film?
Pike: "The script, strangely enough. Horrible confession: I didn’t know it was made from a video game. When I got the script, it reminded me of the Alien franchise. It also had an interesting female character who seemed reminiscent of Sigourney Weaver’s character in Alien. When I met the director, he said, 'We going to go all out of violence and we’re going to make a movie that’s unpalatable. And it’s definitely going to be R rated and I’m not going to scrimp on that.' I thought, 'Yeah, alright. That’s the last thing in the world I’d think of myself doing.' The look on people’s faces! When I tell them I’m in Pride and Prejudice, they smile and shut off. Then, I tell them I’m in a movie called Doom and they do a double take. They try to put the two things together and never quite manage to."
What preconceived notions did you have of The Rock before filming?
Pike: "I saw this guy and I thought he was going to take himself incredibly seriously. I thought he was going to be just the kind of man I wouldn’t like. Then he turned out to be someone who doesn’t take himself seriously at all. He’s funny and self-ironizing. He takes a piss at everyone and himself. I like that a lot. Except questionably today for telling everyone..."
What did you do, each day, to rev yourself up for filming?
Pike: "You try, during the time you have off, to forget about the film. You’ve got those nine hours to put your head in another world for a bit. It was such a total world. The sets were claustrophobic. As soon as you were on there, you were right back into it. It was all very dark and depressive. It gave me nightmares. I’m a calm sleeper, but I’d wake up during this film in a literal cold sweat. It’s strange. Even if you know it’s not real, on a subconscious level it gets inside you. Witnessing that amount of gun fire? And that blood? The blood was everywhere. I dreamt about the blood. They wanted to make creative blood about as disgusting as they could so they filled it with black pellets. You know that scene when they get cocooned in that stuff against the wall? I used to have nightmares I was cocooned in the creature blood."
What was the mood on-set like?
Pike: "It was a lighthearted set. It was all the men competing over the size of their guns. Feeling insecure about having a smaller gun then The Rock. It was a process of endless ego-massaging on my part, really. Trying to tell them their gun was hard enough and big enough. A woman’s luck really."
What was your favorite creature in the movie?
Pike: "We had this game. If you had to shag one of them, which one would it be? I think eventually I went for the Imp. I didn’t think I could cope with the sixteen eyes of the other ones. To intimate. Sorry. You had to kind of laugh always."
Which one do you think would be The Rock’s favorite?
Pike: "I’m not sure. He probably would’ve had them all at once."
What was the craziest thing that went on on-set?
Pike: "Crazy funny? Or crazy distress? There’s a day that was absolutely horrific, but I don’t really want to talk about it. It’s so… It’s a bit distressing. It’s when we had… No, actually, I’m not going to talk about it."
How do you feel about the violence in the film?
Pike: "I thought about it all the time actually. I thought, “What am I saying by being in a film like this?” and whether that does impart a message. At that point, I thought, “Ahh. Very good idea on the producers’ part to make me the only unarmed character in the movie.” It’s something I am going over in my head about the whole video game thing. Like, 'Do you support violence by being in a film like this?' To me, it’s incredibly unreal. It’s about action and explosions. I have friends who are pyrotechnics and do fire shows. They play with fire and I’m fascinated by that. When I see Doom, it’s more about the action. If people start to take it as real and as violence, I’m against that so… I find it easy not to take it too seriously, but if others do, I worry."
If there were a Doom 2, would you do it?
Pike: "I would do it. I want Sam to lighten up a bit. I think we’ve got an interesting character journey to go on. She starts off as being uptight and then she turns out to be an emotional part of it. I know most people won’t give a shit if she’s an emotional part of it. That’s not why they’re going to see the film, but if there’s a girlfriend brought to see the film with her bloke, there should at least be someone she would identify with."
You’d mentioned, before shooting, you didn’t know Doom was a video game. Have you played it since?
Pike: "Yes, they chained me into a room for sixteen hour sessions. That’s something they would do in a futuristic world of filmmaking where it’s all about video games. Chain the actors down and make them compete. That’ll be the audition process. Let’s see how long they can endure a gaming session… No, I still haven’t played it."
Doom opens in theaters Oct. 21.