The action genre and Kellan Lutz go hand-in-hand at this point.
Whilst the actor started out his career across a variety of comedy features ('Stick It'), horror efforts (the remake of 'A Nightmare on Elm Street') and teen-aimed television ('90210'), and he may best be known as Emmett Cullen from the 'Twilight' film series, it's his action work that he's most comfortable in and eager to continue exploring.
His latest genre piece is DESERT DAWN, a gritty crime telling of a newly appointed small-town sheriff (Lutz) and his reluctant deputy (Cam Gigandet), who find themselves in a web of lies and corruption when the murder of a mysterious woman leads them to a dangerous conspiracy involving shady businessmen and the cartel.
As the film arrives in select US theatres and across Digital platforms this week, we spoke with Lutz about his action career aspirations, reuniting with his 'Twilight' co-star Gigandet, and how practical, on-set locations help infuse his performances.
Whilst the actor started out his career across a variety of comedy features ('Stick It'), horror efforts (the remake of 'A Nightmare on Elm Street') and teen-aimed television ('90210'), and he may best be known as Emmett Cullen from the 'Twilight' film series, it's his action work that he's most comfortable in and eager to continue exploring.
His latest genre piece is DESERT DAWN, a gritty crime telling of a newly appointed small-town sheriff (Lutz) and his reluctant deputy (Cam Gigandet), who find themselves in a web of lies and corruption when the murder of a mysterious woman leads them to a dangerous conspiracy involving shady businessmen and the cartel.
As the film arrives in select US theatres and across Digital platforms this week, we spoke with Lutz about his action career aspirations, reuniting with his 'Twilight' co-star Gigandet, and how practical, on-set locations help infuse his performances.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00I, Luke Easton, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the
00:09United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Let me introduce you to
00:19our new sheriff. It's gonna be a fun adventure working with you. Luke, good to have you back, son.
00:25Did you get a chance to see Cheyenne yet? I never should have left. Didn't wait to get you. What do we got? We have a suicide, we have a murder, and a bag full of money.
00:46What are you gonna do?
00:52You hurt her.
00:55I will kill you.
01:07Don't play games with me.
01:14What's up, Peter? How you doing?
01:15Very well, thank you. How are you?
01:17I'm great. I'm great.
01:19Congratulations on the film, first of all. I always like basically avoiding trailers, walking into films, knowing nothing. So this one was a nice surprise. And I was gonna say, like, there's this whole, like, undercurrent of, you know, who you can really trust running through the film. And I wanted to know, as an actor, like, do you like knowing the truth ahead of time? Or do you prefer to sort of discover the story as your character would?
01:47What a great question.
01:49What a great question, Peter. That's really, a really great question. For me, in my approach to things, especially independent movies, and something like this from the get go, working with Al Bravo, and the guys, the producers again, because I just previously worked with them on Do Justice.
02:10So knowing that we have a very collaborative work relationship, they're great guys, and they care about the story. It allowed me to help them take the first draft of Desert Dawn and layer it a lot more.
02:30So I was really active in the process of making Desert Dawn from the beginning. So story beats that needed to be fleshed out more, holes that needed to be filled, having, you know, the ending be what it was and the reveals to be what it was, you know.
02:54And Chad Law wrote the original script, and he's a great, fantastic writer. But for me, I am a problem solver, and I like knowing. I don't need the mystery, because I want to do the best that I can. And that's why it's called acting, right?
03:10You can, you can still act surprised, even though you know who the bad guy is. And if you can't do that, then yeah, you probably shouldn't read the script. But then you should probably be on a reality show, I guess, you know, because that's where they throw you in. But even that's scripted. So yeah, I like that question.
03:29I think also, I find if you can't be surprised or have that knowledge already, and you shoot a movie, and you take six takes for a scene that is a big reveal, that first deal, you're going to get a really authentic expression and reaction.
03:50Take five and six, you're going to bone it in or be too big because you didn't take the time prior to feel what that would be and sort of have that, that memory and like what you want to do in that situation, right?
04:11So it's a little bit of both, but it's more I like knowing everything about every character. There's some actors who even even Cam on this one, who's really, he's a fantastic actor. It's really great to work on the same team as him because in Twilight, we were enemies, right? Like he was the bad vampire. I was the good vampire or, you know, I'm sure the bad guy thinks he's the good guy.
04:37But we didn't have any scenes really together besides the face off and the fight where we kill him. So working on this and seeing his approach to the character and then also being like, hey, man, this is how I'm changing my character.
04:58And I want to know, I'd like to know, and you can tell me as much as you want or not, but because we are on the same side.
05:08And how do you see this situation, you know? And so what I think happened was within that process, because there's some projects that the actors don't even talk to each other.
05:22It's just you show up on set, you be a professional, you be a professional, and you do what you're supposed to do and you get these reactions.
05:31But I feel, and there's a lot of gold that comes out of that, right? And it's not like we're acting the scene, but being able to at the end of the movie where, not to spoil anything, but, you know, I give him the badge.
05:46There's this really great come full circle. We knew each other growing up. He is the better sheriff.
05:54I somehow got this, or maybe not the better, but he is this town sheriff. He's paid his dues and I didn't.
06:01And being able to have that brother-to-brother moment, like, hey, take care of the goldfish, too.
06:07You know, it's these fun little things that, you know, Cam and I got to add to the onion that is our characters and the character relationship.
06:20So, yeah, it was great. I mean, really great working with him again.
06:24Because I was like, it was funny, mentioning him, like, I was watching the film being like, I don't know if I, I was watching him being like, I don't know if I can trust you entirely.
06:32So, I did like that, you know, he sort of proved himself to be, you know, the, like, the sheriff that we see that he wants to be.
06:41But, you know, there was a lot of tension in the film and I was, yeah, I was sort of watching each character because I was just like, some, like, one of you is doing, like, you know,
06:53doing things that you're not supposed to.
06:54So, it was kind of nice that the film never easily telegraphed everything.
06:58Like, you're actually watching it being like, okay, I'm actually surprised at who reveals themselves, obviously, without saying anything.
07:04But, like, when you're working on a film like this, like, it's got that, you know, that moody energy.
07:10It's like, you know, more of a remote environment.
07:13Does that bring anything to your performance as well compared to sort of, you know, like blockbusters when you're working on green screens or it's not an entirely organic set?
07:24Like, does having something physical on set, does that, you know, bring more to your character as well?
07:31One million percent.
07:32Yeah.
07:32It's practical versus VFX, right?
07:35So, even with this being an action movie, when you get to shoot a gun and your question of, like, having the moodiness of the sets and shooting night shots and being in different set locations versus just being in green screen.
07:49Green screen, you really have to use your imagination, which is a lot of fun.
07:54But it's usually bright in there.
07:55It's usually just green screens.
07:59Doing Desert Dawn and having the grittiness that Marty Murray, our director, created and the night shoots, it just adds to the different layers of the feel and the type of movie of the film.
08:14And so much for any action movie, there's the difference between having recoil in a gun that is a practical gun.
08:21You're shooting a blank.
08:23You're shooting something that has some dust flying off versus I find at times when I just have rubber guns.
08:30I'm saying bang, bang, bang, bang, because I need some sort of incorporation that this is firing.
08:41So, having guns to play with, and we did have rubbers, you practiced with that.
08:48We had an extremely safe set.
08:50Having just the mood that you can play with, having characters that look menacing in the film, it all plays to how you just dive into a role and how you act.
09:05And going off that, like, because obviously that set, that environment changes the way that you act, like, when you, like, you take a project like this, I guess, like, stretches you.
09:17Like, do you seek out kind of roles that are going to be discomforting for you?
09:22Or do you sort of wait for them to find you?
09:24Or is it a case of, yeah, I'm seeking this out.
09:26I want this.
09:27Or did this kind of just one of those things that came to you organically?
09:30So, yeah, this was more of an easier film for me because it's just, I've done these action hero, leave the girl movies.
09:41I like them.
09:42I like playing the hero.
09:45Would I love to do them on the level of Jason Statham or Liam Neeson?
09:48And I pray one day, you know, I got to get there where I'm leading a, you know, 10, 20, 30 million dollar movie like The Beekeeper or, you know, what's, I mean, all the ones that Liam Neeson does.
10:03Taken, right?
10:06It's something for me that I enjoyed it.
10:10I loved.
10:10Life's too short to not enjoy what you do.
10:15And there's been some productions that I probably would never work with them again just because of how it was ran or where corners were cut or the toxicity of the shoot itself or just the lack of, like, people just don't care.
10:32This was different working with these producers again because I did work with them on Do Justice.
10:38I love the family mentality.
10:41I was really impressed by this trailer and the movie when I saw it.
10:45The trailer was just like, wow, this is really cool.
10:47They have a really great team.
10:49And, you know, that's mainly Al Bravo and Saban's awesome.
10:53They pick it up.
10:55But Al's team, it's just cool.
11:00And I still call out all the time because, you know, we're friends.
11:05And if he had another movie that worked, I'd be like, shoot, let's work on it together because he had great ideas.
11:10He let me turn it into more, you know, like, Kellen, what do you think about this?
11:16And it was just I like a collaborative experience.
11:18So really enjoyable working with them.
11:21And it kind of just came.
11:22He had that script.
11:23Al produces 10 movies a year.
11:26And he had one.
11:27I'm like, hey, if there's ever anything you think is right for me, I'd love to work with you again.
11:31And he's like, I got this one, Desert Dawn.
11:33And that's how I read it.
11:35And, yeah, we went from there.
11:37And as you said, like, you know the kind of roles that you're going to take, the kind of, you know, producers or the kind of people that you don't want to work with.
11:46And like, that's obviously, you know, a strength of yours.
11:49And I guess, has your definition of strength changed from the way you looked at it, how you defined it 10 years ago to the actor that you were back then?
11:59Like, have you seen just how much you, I guess, yeah, how much you've changed as a person, realize that strength now is defined by different characteristics?
12:08Yeah, 1 million percent again.
12:10And there's a lot of roles.
12:11Like the other movie I did, What Remains, that really challenged me.
12:14SFE 1 challenged my faith aspect of playing a character that's hopeless.
12:19So I really do love playing the ones that stretch me as an actor and to step outside of my comfort zone.
12:26As far as the confidence and maturity of 10 years ago, Kellen, I learned so much.
12:35And to your question, what was the question again?
12:40I mean, how different did you sort of define strength 10 years ago to how you define it now in terms of like who you are as a person and as an actor?
12:49Yeah, I mean, who were we all in our 20s, right?
12:53And then you take your 30s to really like learn them.
12:55I got married when I was 30.
12:57I learned a lot and I had to die to a lot of Kellen, right?
13:00You get married to a spouse.
13:02You're like, oh, shoot, can't be as selfish.
13:04And I wouldn't consider myself selfish.
13:05But anyone who's single, you have your whole life that you've been selfish and doing stuff your own way and thinking that you know all the right answers.
13:13And thank God I have a great team, managers and agents who have really walked alongside me that we get to learn together and just gather wisdom from other people and try and do the best that you can.
13:27But I've learned so much and it's eye-opening.
13:31I really wish there was a book on it.
13:35For example, like going back in the beginning of my career, I wish I knew that you were supposed to memorize your lines when you have an audition.
13:42I didn't learn that for a good couple of years.
13:45And now I'm like smacking myself across the face being like, I would have booked a lot more and wouldn't have looked as green if someone, if I just read a book or someone's like, here, here's a workbook, you know, do this.
13:59Same with athletes, right?
14:00Like if someone gave them a workbook, you know, it's up to you to listen.
14:03But hey, don't spend all your money.
14:05You're only going to have five years in the NFL.
14:07You know, it's like, but no one, there's nothing like that.
14:11And that's why it's really important to surround yourself by people who have been there, just gain wisdom, biblically speaking, you know, just surround yourself by people who you admire and look up to and are in that or the above season of life.
14:26And I've always taken that with me as far as, you know, when I got married, I need to surround myself with people who are married and have great marriages.
14:34When I had children, I didn't know what I was doing.
14:36I knew what I didn't want to do.
14:38And so I had, I, I, I naturally, you leave some of your single friends and you gain these married couples that have children and, and same with the career.
14:49Like, who do I want to be?
14:51You know, do I want to be the Jason Statham, the Liam Neesons?
14:54Okay, well, let's, let's get on that same page with the team and find some of those actors.
14:59I remember Jon Hamm, I was at a tennis match with him and I was able to just to sit down with Mr. Hamm, right?
15:07And ask him questions.
15:08Such a stud.
15:09But I really do appreciate how cool people are and how grateful they are.
15:15And there's, there's the, the spectrum, right?
15:17There's people who are super insecure and dicks, right?
15:20And they just like, they act like they're, but they're really scared inside.
15:23Or there's people who are like, this is a job and we get to do it and we love it.
15:28Yeah.
15:28And I want to do this for the rest of my life for free.
15:31And there's hard things there's, you know, and it's like, cool.
15:34Everyone's struggling with something.
15:36So, yeah.
15:38Yeah.
15:38No, that's how I look at like what I'm able, like I've always loved films and the fact that I can now talk to people that make films and star in films.
15:46And it's like, yeah, I look at it as I've like, yeah, 30s were absolutely terrible for me.
15:53I'm like, I'm now early 40s.
15:56I'm like, let's, this is where you just like embrace everything.
15:59And it's awesome.
15:59And yeah, so you've, you're going to be, you're going to be fine.
16:03We'll say that much.
16:04Are those all DVDs behind you?
16:07Yes, they are.
16:07I'm a physical musician.
16:08Oh my man.
16:09Got a DVD wall on both sides.
16:13Probably all the way.
16:13And some of your movies are in there.
16:15I can tell you that much.
16:16There's, there's a few in there, but like, as you're talking about, um, you know, like taken and beekeeper and those sort of movies, like, is there, and we've seen you in, you know, comedies and horrors and things like that.
16:29Is there a role or a genre that I guess scares you in any way, but like you secretly want to actually tackle?
16:39No, it doesn't scare me.
16:41It like, I have a, uh, you know, I love comedy.
16:45I love doing comedy.
16:46I just heard that the comeback is coming back.
16:49I think it's called, uh, please come back with Lisa Kudrow.
16:52I would love to have another guest star on that.
16:55Um, I started my career doing comedy.
16:57Uh, I grew up with a lot of, a lot of brothers.
16:59That's why I naturally went into the action and I love action movies.
17:02So working on X3 was just a dream job.
17:06Uh, but I don't, I'm not one.
17:08Nothing really scares me because I view my industry as like such a fun.
17:12I get to dive deep and I'm very professional with it all, but there's ones that I just have no place in being in like horror, slasher, murderous, exorcism, demonic sort of.
17:25I'm just like, eh, that doesn't interest me.
17:27And I just, that's just my line in the sand.
17:30Right.
17:30Or, or, but there are some cool ones.
17:33I just saw, was it Mickey 17 with Rob where you got to play twin?
17:37Like, I would love to play Kel, like a role and then his twin.
17:43Right.
17:44And you get to play different.
17:45And Rob did such a great job on that.
17:47I know Tom Hardy's done that a few times and it's, uh, that would be fun.
17:53It's that like exciting challenge.
17:57Yeah.
17:57No.
17:58Well, I mean, I, you're, as I said, absolutely killing it in the, the genre films.
18:02Like, uh, action is like you, it, you look at it and just go, of course, Kellen Lutz, action star makes perfect sense.
18:10So I'm, yeah, I'm keen for everybody to, to get behind this one.
18:13I still love that we're getting these kinds of films in, in, in cinemas as well.
18:18It's just, it's awesome to see.
18:20So just thank you so much for taking the time out.
18:24Um, yeah, just incredible.
18:25Awesome talking to you.
18:26Thank you, buddy.