Julian McMahan starring opposite Sandra Bullock in the suspense thriller
We all know Julian McMahan from the FX drama, Nip/Tuck and as Dr. Doom in Fantastic Four. In his new film, Premonition, he plays opposite Sandra Bullock as her dead husband - but he's not really dead.
Sandra relives the days leading up to the events that possibly killed him. If you're a bit confused, so is Julian - still. "I don't think to be honest I got it at any point and time; I still don't think I get it, really. But I like the concept of it and I liked, more than anything else, I was kind of touched by the story of the family. The story of the family was kind of the integral part of the movie to me because without that you didn't have kind of the body of the movie. You can do the psychological drama thing, you can do all that kind of stuff, you can make it look fancy and all that kind of stuff but, if you don't have some kind of basis, some kind of reality behind it, I think you're missing something. And so for me it was really more kind of about this couple, this husband and wife that you know hadn't communicated for a very long period of time and really didn't know how to communicate any more."
Working with Sandra really helped set the mood for Julian to prepare for the role. "The mood was very variable; it depended on what was kind of going on. I had a lighter schedule than her, obviously, because she's in kind of every frame of the movie. She was there everyday, all day, so, I had to be a little kind of careful, just because I'd be out playing golf, sampling the local cuisine or whatever; I'd come in and go, 'Hey, there's this fantastic restaurant down here!' They'd be like, 'Get out of here.' But you got to be a little sensitive to the fact that she's going through what she's going through; sometimes it would be a little tense, sometimes it was tense when the two of us were on set - we had pretty intense scenes."
With the upcoming season of Nip/Tuck in LA, Julian says Christian will rule the city the same way he took Miami by storm. "He's evolved a lot over the series you know the four years, but I don't think he's ever had any resistance. I don't think that's going to stop; that's the fun of the character. Did you see the last episode of us under the Hollywood sign, wasn't that hysterical? They set up their practice right on Rodeo Drive, which is obviously pretty central to where you think it should be and then it's funded by Rosie O'Donnell's character; it's going to be a lot of fun, a lot of great characters.
Julian noted the preparation for Premonition was unlike a lot of other films he's worked on in the past. "This was a great movie for me because it's a little different; I've been working on television for a long time. We went down there three weeks early and we just hashed out everything - me, the director, Sandy, the writer; all just sat around the table and talked for three weeks about what we thought was the way to deal with this movie. What were our thoughts and feelings about it, what we thought about our characters, each others characters and so everything just got laid out on the table and so I really got to work with her in a very kind of deep and thoughtful way. We would go in and do scenes and me and Mennan and Sandy would sit around and talk for an hour and a half, the crew would go off and eat and do whatever they wanted to, and we would talk for an hour and half or two hours about what we thought the scene was about, we got that luxury. Mennan gave us that luxury, and then Sandy and I would consistently talk about things. Whenever we thought about something, call each other or just talk about it; we both do what we do because we love it. It's kind of one of the most important things in your life, aside from your children, your family and your really good friends; to work with somebody like that in that kind of capacity is really kind of getting to know them in a very significant way. And then on top of that she's just an absolutely extraordinary person."
You can see Julian and Sandra in Premonition in theaters March 16th; it's rated PG-13.
Top Stories
12 Comments
