Rather disappointingly considering the monsoon that hit this year’s BAFTAs, Leicester Square was hot and dry for the European premiere of Titanic-with-more-cool-bits, Poseidon.
Kurt Russell arrived with Goldie Hawn who left him to the press. Did his impressive action record prepare him for five months of doggy-paddle? “Everyone got sick!” he says. “(That much water) is like a Petri dish, you got pneumonia, sinusitis, bronchitis and H Influenza and I was sort of in the middle of that. But any time you do these kinds of pictures you’re going to have physical bang-ups and stuff. People got injuries, Josh (Lucas) got hit by me, my flashlight and that cut him open pretty bad.”
While totally enthusiastic about the cast and Wolfgang Petersen, the film’s ladies, Jacinda Barrett, Emmy Rossum and Mia Maestro, were glad to be back on dry land, “I’ve had enough of cruise ships put it that way,” says Jacinda, who plays the mother of Poseidon's token moppet. “I’m not going on another cruise ship as long as I live! I lived on one for five months doing this and I’ve seen it in the worst possible light.“
Having previously received a thorough drenching in The Day After Tomorrow, Kurt Russell’s on-screen daughter Emmy Rossum says she’s hanging up her water wings: ”I’d just like to do a comedy, something fun where I don’t have to be 30 feet under water!”
It was newcomer Mia Maestro who lifted the veil on the Poseidon set though: in a set that’s basically a giant swimming pool, c’mon, did you pee in the water? “Yeah we had to – there was no time to go to the bathroom. There was plenty of chlorine though!” Good thing there wasn’t any of that purple dye then.
Unusually for a big-budget film with high risks (all the actors got severe bumps and some ended up in hospital), all the stunts were done by the actors themselves. “When they come to you and say ‘Today you’re hanging 50 feet in the air on a wire, are you alright with that?’, sign me up!” says Mike Vogel, who plays Emmy Rossum’s fiancé. “Where else do you get paid to do that kind of thing? There was no room for anyone to be a diva because someone would hit them upside their head. I would have loved to do a zipwire scene on Kurt’s back. I asked them but they wouldn’t let me. Instead he knocked me out,” (by accident we must add). “But no better a guy to be knocked out by than Kurt Russell!”
It’s up to Josh Lucas, who plays the mysterious leader Dylan, to explain why they didn’t all go on strike. “How can you make a film about a horrible story of survival and death if it’s the easiest, safest fun to shoot?” he says, showing a trembling Empire the scars and lumps adorning his (lovely) face and (lovely) hands. “There’s a sense of extraordinary accomplishment having done it, it’s a very difficult film to make which is what we were all gritting our teeth through.”
And what about the coordinator of all this strife? Wolfgang Petersen, explain yourself. “I was preparing myself that they might get so angry at the end of the shoot that they might pull me off the stage into the water and under for a minute or so,” giggles the thoroughly unrepentant-looking director. “I was really nervous, but they didn’t, they’re nice people! I’m fine – they had everything, I had nothing!”
Petersen was looking for a way to reflect the fear and paranoia caused by disasters such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami. “I thought Poseidon was a great basic idea, almost like this metaphor that the world is upside down and all of a sudden your world is not what it was,” he says. “That’s what I thought was exciting, you’re not going with movie star concepts, like Tom Cruise will save the day. It’s you, it’s me – let’s see how we deal with it.”
Poseidon opens on June 2.