We spoke with filmmakerSK Daleleading up to the release ofSubservience, his eerie new sci-fi thriller starringMegan Foxas a femme fatale-type android. It marks the second time Dale and Fox have worked together, following their critically acclaimed collaborationTill Death(2021). Now that Dale has directed two Fox starrers, he was able to share some intel about theTransformersalum that the common moviegoer might not know.
“What really shocks me,she has the greatest photographic memory I’ve ever seen, her ability to learn some of the exposition that we have,” Dale told MovieWeb. “On the day of, she walked up on set, and I’m like, ‘I’m really sorry, but I’ve just kind of rewrote this monologue, or a few of these lines for you. Can you quickly learn these as quickly as possible?’ Andshe would just look at them, and then she’d be like, ‘Great, got it.‘And then she would just nail it. And I wish I had that kind of photographic memory, that’s for sure. It’s almost robotic, her memory.”
Dale also shared why he envisioned Fox for the unique lead role ofSubservienceand the perks of having a seasoned pro lead for his film for the second time, following their success withTill Death:
“Having done the first movie with her, when we were developing this, I kind of felt like, ‘Oh, this would be really interesting, seeing her approach this role.’ I definitely had this feeling ofJennifer’s Body…In recent years people have really that love for that film, has a kind of resurgence, and so the more I kept thinking about her for this role, the more I kept thinking of all these different elements.And yeah, having worked with her before. I think for a film like this, you know, where we have intimate scenes and stuff like that, I think you really need to have that trust between the director and the performer.”
Playing a Robot: ‘Try Not to Blink’
Subservience
Asa mischievous androidnamed Alice, Fox utterly becomes the android persona inSubservience— and as Dale revealed to us, they had a grand ol’ time putting together her uniquely robotic performance. “Even the idea of not blinking — I remember a few times, you know, I would say, ‘Let’s try it again, but try not to blink as much as possible in this take.’ And even within the editing process, we were cutting out certain things and certain blinks here and there, just to really continuously remind you of that.”
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Dale continued, discussing the fun they had with the genre, “But it was so much fun… It’s a sci-fi film, you know? You want to play around with that genre a bit more, and you’ve got a robot and all that. So it was actually kind of even more exciting towards the end when there’s more damage, there’s more glitching and stuff like that to play with. That’s where we were like, ‘Let’s go a little bit crazy here.’ And we did try, you know, certain takes where we kind of have her kind of really glitching out.”
From XYZ Films,Subservienceis now available on demand and digital.
