Christian Pitre plays the role of Mary Death in the upcoming action film “Bounty Killer”. The film written by Jason Dobson tells the tale of Mary Death a bounty killer living in a world of chaos and greed who will stop at nothing to get her man. Media Mikes had the chance to talk with Christian recently about the film and what it was preparing for such a physical role.
Adam Lawton: Can you tell us a little bit about the film?
Christian Pitre: “Bounty Killer” is post apocalyptic like a lot of things these days but this film takes place 20 years after these things called “The Corporate Wars” take place. Once the stock market crashed all of the major corporations start fighting for control of the earth. The earth ends up destroyed and a special council is put in place to serve death warrants on the remaining corporation leaders. The bounty killers are the people who go out and hunt these people down.
AL: What was it that interested you in the role of Mary Death?
CP: I read the sides for this character and instantly fell in love with her. I loved her strength, confidence and sexiness. At the time I didn’t know the vulnerability she had as I was just reading the sides but you could just see the depth that the character had. The creators of the film have been working on it for so long that when you are around them you know there’s a lot you have to catch up on. There is year’s worth of back story there. This role was definitely a challenge I had never done anything like this before.
AL: What was your audition process like?
CP: I wasn’t represented at the time so I was just doing what every actor does when they are not represented in that you submit yourself for roles. I was doing that every day and I got a call to come in for “Bounty Killer”. That was the one audition I got called for so I figured I better book it. (Laughs) Also it was a really great project. My husband helped me prepare for everything. We practiced with a real knife and that was something I brought to the audition. At one point I whipped out this real knife and they loved it! I also told them I was Mary Death and not just reading for the character.
AL: Being that the role was very physical what type of preparation did you do?
CP: I did a lot. My co-star Mathew Marsden is a black belt in Tai Kwan Do. I on the other hand am a nothing belt. (Laughs) I knew I had a lot of preparation to do. I found a guy here in Los Angeles and we trained quite a bit. I then worked with the stunt coordinator as fighting for real and fighting on film are very different. Everyone around me had a lot of patience.
AL: How much of your stunt work were you allowed to do on your own?
CP: I was able to do almost all of it. I fought pretty hard to make that happen. They wanted to make everything safe and look good so we had to be careful. A lot of times I would show up to do a scene and my stunt double would be there. I would then ask why I couldn’t do the scene. There were only just a couple scenes where it wasn’t me. I figured out that I have a horrible fear of heights. (Laughs)
AL: Was there any footage that was shot but didn’t end up being used for one reason or another?
CP: Not a lot. We had 18 days to shoot the movie and we just worked like mad to get everything done. There was a scene that involved my character that was shot but it didn’t end up being used as it was thought to be a little confusing to the viewers. The film is really fast paced as it is so they didn’t want to add any more possible confusion so it was decided to leave that part out.
AL: Have there been any talks of doing a sequel?
CP: We have all been talking about doing a sequel since even before the first film was done shooting. None of us wanted to stop shooting. It was so much fun and the characters are so colorful. I know things were written with sequels in mind as there is so much more background and stories to be told. The guys had been working on this project for 10 years prior to it even being shot. I hope that we get to tell the rest of these stories someday.
AL: Do you have any other projects in the works that you can tell us about?
CP: Right now all of my time is devoted to promoting “Bounty Killer”. I have had some other scripts come and I am currently looking at those.