Andrey Ivchenko is known for roles like the Russian Terminator, Grigori, on season 3 of the Netflix series “Stranger Things” as well as from his supporting role, opposite Vin Diesel, in the box office hit “xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage” as the Russian villain ‘Red Erik.’ Andrey has also been seen recurring on the TV show “Counterpart” on Starz! and a Guest Star appearance on the hit Netflix show “Lucifer.” He’s also very recognized as Perseus, the leading villain character in “Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War.” Most recently, he completed a feature film called “Darkness Of Man” where he stars opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme; he stopped by to discuss the film with us.
What appealed about Darkness of Man to you?
Oh, I think James nailed it; it reminds me of movies from the 90s; the way it was filmed, the way it shows on the screen. The movie was shot on film, not on digital cameras. I like film noir; I think it was a very interesting choice because in the movie it doesn’t matter if it’s day or night; it’s always dark. The concept of the movie was really cool as well; nothing is new anymore; we’ve seen similar stories and we’re familiar with this type of revenge movie, but I think it was pretty cool and the way the way he executed it, I liked it.
It also had heart…
Yes! It also shows in my humble opinion, more acting skills of JC than just the martial arts side of him.
You play a character of Lazar; how did you prepare for that?
I grew up back in the Soviet Union and when all the Soviet Union collapsed in 1992 a lot of characters like this surfaced. They became businessmen, but they still were mafia guys. They still had the same type of language and mannerisms. Coming from a crime world they knew how to talk to the people, but they were at the same time legit businessman. They were wearing suits; they had nice haircuts and jewelry like watches and stuff like that. So, with Lazar I don’t think I really needed to prepare for that once I got the script and I read it. I actually liked the script; I like the dialogue.
Some movies you read in the script and you’re reading your part and the dialogue is choppy and awkward; sometimes it’s not written in the way you would do that. But this one I actually liked and when I read Lazar, I thought this character is pretty clear to me. So, there wasn’t much preparation to play him.
Following on from that were there any backstory elements that you tried to add that weren’t in the script?
I would say that Lazar came from a criminal background. When crime was illegal, then in the 90s, after the Soviet Union collapsed, crime got legalized in some way. As I said, just people surfaced from the underground; they opened the businesses, they had a lot of money, they could buy the cops, they could do whatever they want. I think that Lazar was a hard criminal back in the days. And once the communist era vaporized, he became this businessman. He moved to the States with lots of money, and he was doing the same thing. The place he lives has changed, but the way he dealt with businesses and with the environment around him, achieving his goals remain the same. He’s changed the country, he moved to the States, but he was doing things the same way. He would just be bribing people, kidnapping or killing people; basically doing all the regular stuff that the criminals do.
How did you find working with JCVD? Then following on from that, can you talk about the big final showdown you have with him?
You’re obviously a big fan of JCVD and you sort of studied him and watched a lot of stuff about him, right?
Agreed.
There are still a lot of controversial things still floating around like different videos and different actors talking about him. I can speak from my personal experience in that he’s a great guy when I worked with him. He was a great dude. We hit it off and he’s very hard working; he worked through all the shoot practically every day, doing physical stuff, doing acting, moving from location to location. To me it’s dedication; it’s hard work and that’s how I saw him. Plus, at his age still doing fight scenes and stuff like that. It’s pretty impressive. He told me different stories about Stallone and Steven Seagal and all their feuds and he’s really funny. He was telling me all those stories and we were laughing a lot on set.
Going into that fight, as I said, at that age, I obviously tried to be more careful with him, but he was really sharp. He still knew how to do everything and he was like classic JCVD. I was watching him back in the Soviet Union when it collapsed; we were watching all his VHS tapes with really bad quality. That’s how I remember him from then and he’s still that way now. All his moves, how he does his hits and kicks and stuff like that. There was a cold day and it was raining a little bit, so everything was wet and cold. We shot overnight as well. The scene took probably, I want to say at least seven hours to shoot and he was right there. We were shooting on location so there wasn’t much luxury around us, like tents and all that stuff because we drove from the campsite to the location. It was basically all that physical stuff. He said he only had an apple box to sit on between takes. He took it as a champ and the fight was great. He’s been doing it for forever, so he understands all the movements; he understands all the trajectory, how he’s gonna go and what has to be done. He even gave suggestions about where to put the camera, and which angle to shoot, but it was really cool. Back in the days if somebody told me I will be working with JCVD I would be laughing in the face of that person. It’s so cool watching him doing all these things. Not just watching but participating in it; he’s a gentleman as well. Always trying to make sure you’re okay; even just the choreography with all these little details, they draw the picture of what kind of person he is.
How did you find working with James Cullen Bressack? What kind of director is he?
He’s a good one. He knows what he wants and I don’t want to offend anybody, but some directors you work with and they’re not sure what they would like or how they would shoot that scene. He was pretty precise about everything so he I thought he had a plan in his head. How it’s going to go and how he’s going to shoot all the segments in the particular scenes. He’s a great guy and we worked well. It was a very smooth ride.
Is there anything that you’ve taken away from playing this character?
I like that this character is portrayed more like a human being in terms of he’s not just going and killing everybody with shoot-outs and slashing their heads and all that stuff. I liked that dialogue with JCVD and as I said, I also liked that film noir style and the way James shot on film. I am not a big fan of nowadays with digital 4k movies, because to be honest, even huge budget movies or TV shows, which are done that way, they look amateurish.
Yeah, just on that point. This is something I say all the time with people is that the reason why we still love movies from the 70s, 80s and 90s is that they look like they take place in the real world. So many movies look like cartoons with all the filters and things like that, but this looks like it takes place on planet Earth.
Right! Because shooting a movie on film and digitally it’s obviously two different worlds. On film, it’s maybe losing a little bit in sharpness compared to digital, but I think that’s the beauty about film when you watch it on screen. You see, it’s a movie. Now, when you’re watching it’s filmed digitally, it seems like it’s somebody filmed material for YouTube. That’s how it looks to me.
What are you working on next?
It isn’t 100% yet, but there might be a horror movie. I’m going to shoot probably September. You know how it is. They have to find money, so I just don’t want to mislead anybody.
There is another thing we filmed. We filmed a short film for JJ Abrams, and JJ Abrams was watching Quentin Tarantino and Cameron. It was a live stream from set when we were filming about two years ago. It’s a short movie; it has potential for a feature but is not out yet. I already watched the trailer and it’s directed by Neville Page. He’s one of the leading creature creators in Hollywood. So, he’s a big, big guy in that department. He wrote and directed it and it looks fantastic. We shot with a new technology which is a massive digital screen. Huge. You can project on that screen, whatever you want. And if you want 3D or 4D, you just build a set in front of the screen. Then in post-production, it looks like you filmed them somewhere on location but it’s in the studio. It’s a very good concept. I can tell you it’s set in the First World War and has aliens. It’s very cool. It’s going to be action and it’s going to be a great, great story. I hope at some point it will go to production; we’re going to probably make a feature out of it. I talked to him recently a few weeks ago, and he said that one of the production companies is very interested in that particular movie. They watched the trailer and they’re like, wow, and they want that concept. They want that movie to be made. So fingers crossed, it’s going to happen at some point.
How would you like Darkness of Man to resonate with audiences?
I think people will like that movie again, for the reasons we just talked about. Van Damme is completely different from Van Damme before. It’s not just karate and fighting and killing people. It’s also about his relationship. He’s got some sense of humor there and he gets to be sarcastic in some parts. He is showing some feelings; I think people will see different angles of him here in this movie. I hope it brings the older generation in and they will be brought back to the 80s/90s when they watched their movies on the big screen. The younger generation probably will experience it may be the first time where they watched a movie like this before, and they like it. Also having Kristanna Loken playing his love interest and Cynthia Rothrock’s cameo too. I definitely think this movie will be interesting to watch for all sorts of audience.
Thanks as always for taking the time to chat with me.
Always a pleasure; thank you so much.
Darkness of Man is available on Digital now.