He won our hearts as Travis in Hannah Montana: The Movie, but now Lucas Till is kicking butt in the new Jackie Chan flick, The Spy Next Door. Check out our Q&A with the cutie:
J-14: So what was it like to play a bad guy for a change?
Lucas Till: It was a dream come true in many ways. First of all, I got to play a bad guy. And although it's not Heath Ledger in the Dark Knight, it's still a change. It's still in the direction I would love to go. I always wanted to play characters and that was definitely one -- a Russian spy. So, it was awesome. It was fun. It's actually kind of liberating not caring and getting to play something cool like that.
J-14: What was it like learning the choreography for your intense fight scene with Jackie Chan?
Lucas: It was pretty nuts. The first day of rehearsal, I'm learning from the American stunt guys. And the American stunt guys, they're a team and they tell you how it's going to be. Then I go to Jackie's stunt team and even though it's probably the same amount of guys, I have to go through each one of his stunt guys individually and they, I don't know. They are all from East Asia and let's just say their manners are lost in translation. You have to throw your pride out the window when you're listening to these guys because they are telling me seven times over what I'm doing wrong. And then the next guy will tell me something I'm doing different than the first guy that I should have been doing the whole time. Then I would start over with the next guy. It was a long process. A long demoralizing process where they told me how weak and pathetic I was. Finally, I got to Jackie and he would tell me what I was doing wrong too. I'd have to go cry and come back, look at the footage and be happy. It was pretty nuts. There was no martial art training before. It was just rehearsal. I had a great time though.
J-14: What did you do to perfect your Russian accent?
Lucas: I played a lot of Grand Theft Auto 4 right before. It's a bunch of Russians all throughout that videogame and I play a lot of videogames. Actually, I showed up on set. I kind of thought that maybe I'll have an accent, but that had never been addressed until I showed up, asked Brian Levant if I was going to be using an accent, and he goes, "Huh. You know what? Sure. Why not?" So, I'm glad I had all that preparation in there since I didn't even know that was going to happen.
J-14: Were there any on-set bloopers or embarrassing moments during filming?
Lucas: Yeah, actually in the bloopers at the end of the movie, you can see me making some weird noise and spitting my tongue out. It's because I was actually in a lot of pain. Jackie said messed up a line and I'm acting all intense. He's pinning me down on the chair and I was actually in pain. You could actually see that at the end of the movie if you watch it. There were a couple of times... I would love to do my own stunts, but stunts are not something I have a lot of experience with. There were a lot of times I tried to do stuff and I was just not confident enough to pull it off. A couple of times I was told I punch like a girl by Jackie's stunt team.
J-14: You've worked with a lot of teen stars like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, who else are you dying to work with?
Lucas: I think Selena Gomez is extremely talented. I wouldn't say that I don't say that often, but I have a lot of respect for people with a lot of talent. In experience, usually that's older people. But, I just think that Selena Gomez is not only extremely pretty but she's a really good actress. I'd like to work with her.
Photo: Courtesy of Lionsgate
