Australian actor Bren Foster will probably be best known to SFB readers as Wolf on the TNT show The Last Ship. His latest role, as Lucas in Deep Blue Sea 3, calls on some of the same aquatic skills that he demonstrated on the Nathan James, although this time he’s part of the team, led by Dr Richard Lowell, who’s come to investigate the scientific research on sharks being carried out on the remote island of Little Happy. Paul Simpson caught up with Foster while he was in lockdown in Los Angeles with his family…

NB There are spoilers in this interview for Deep Blue Sea 3

 

How did you get involved with Deep Blue Sea 3? Did they just come to you with a script?

No, I just went through the protocol. My manager said, “The casting director would like to see you over at Warner Bros; here’s the script, have a read; here are some sides, prepare them”, and I went into a room full of the director and producers and gave my audition. As far as I know, I was pretty much the first one cast.

What sides did they give you for Lucas? Because he’s basically, as we discover, the hardass of the whole lot.

Yes, he kind of turns, doesn’t he?

I think he shows his true colours, I don’t know about turns (laughs).

Yes, exactly. What I like about it, when I look at the characters and particularly when I look at Lucas, I think a lot of people would look at him and go “Oh, he’s just a bad guy”, but if you look a little bit deeper, to him – and this is the way I kind of look at it – he doesn’t think he’s the bad guy. He thinks he’s being loyal to his employers – he’s making sure he wipes everything – while what he does is for the greater good because he believes it serves humanity better as a whole. He’ll go to any lengths, and for him no price is too high to pay to make sure he gets the job done.

From his point of view, that gives the character a sense of purpose, even though overall he will be looked upon as the bad guy. What I tried to do with him was, no matter how bad or despicable what he was doing was, in his mind it was for the greater good. I guess that just stops you from going down the path of “I have to be good” or “I have to be bad”. It’s just he’s a human being trying to do what he does and operate on the level he operates on.

They always say that everybody is the hero of their own story, don’t they?

Yes, I love that saying, Paul. I think exactly what you just said, that everyone’s the hero of their own story.

As an actor I wouldn’t have thought you would want to play somebody who’s like the old proverbial villain standing there twiddling their moustache and going “Heheeheee I shall tie you to the railway line!” or tie you in front of the sharks in this case…

Exactly. You see when he comes in he’s very much a team player and then you see the progression as it unfolds. But yes, I love that analogy, twirling the moustache is very funny. An acting teacher, he made that point to me and it always stuck with me, so the fact that you’ve just said it now, I find that a little funny.

As you say, when Lucas comes in initially he’s very much in the background with Richard in the early scenes and it’s really probably about the halfway point in the film where we start to realise what’s really going on. What was your reaction to him as a character when you first read the full script through and you knew the whole truth about him?

I think that’s what appealed to me most. I think out of everyone in the script, he had the largest journey because he went from very much sitting in the background and just floating along, letting someone else think that they were in charge and leading the way. But all in all he was the quiet, behind the scenes character that really had control of the team or the other men – when push came to shove they weren’t going to listen to Richard. They would take orders and listen to me.

When I saw that, I was OK with it because it was the turn that most appealed to me. If you have a character and he’s the same the whole way through the movie it’s cool, and I guess a lot of actors can do stuff with that, but I liked the fact that he was able to almost float and be subtle and just blend in among the others until circumstances dictated that it was no longer going to be that way and it was time for him to take control.

That’s what really appealed to me. I watched it with my wife and my kids, and when the turn happened both of them looked at me and said, ‘What?!’ And then of course my daughter goes, ‘Yeah, I’m on the bad guys’ side now!’ (laughs)

The cast were great, and I’ve got to say John Pogue was just fantastic as a director. He let me stretch every which way. Whichever way I wanted to go he’d say, ‘Yeah, you’re good’ and it was just great to have that dynamic working relationship with him that allowed me to push the boundaries.

There’s some stuff in there that wasn’t in the original script, such as, when I sit down with the boys and I talk about Brown, who got bitten in half. I said to one of the boys [slapping him down], ‘I’ve known Brown for fifteen years and if you’re going to talk about him have some respect’. I was just thinking I had to make this connection with Brown. John and I discussed it and we had a few takes with a little bit of ad lib with the boys and it stayed in.

There were a few other things throughout the way that happened and they just happened – particularly when I called Richard a ‘dumb shit’! It wasn’t in the scene but it just came out when I was in the middle of that speech. John was very supportive of that and as an actor when you have a director who’s very supportive and collaborative with the actors it just makes the job so much more enjoyable and so much more artistically fulfilling.

It was a really good time.

It comes across when you see the B roll footage that they put on the DVD. Where did you shoot the village? That threw me, when I was watching the B roll stuff and there’s cars going along in the background!

They did a good job, didn’t they? (laughs) We shot it in South Africa at the Cape Town film studios. I’ve got to tell you, when we walked onto the set it was just brilliant: the attention to detail. If you went in there you couldn’t see anything else. You couldn’t see the road or some of the buildings in the distance, it just looked so real and legitimate.

I think that helps a performance. What you have around you, your environment, you’re able to really take it in. Even down to the walkways over the water, everything was built with attention to detail. They weathered everything and aged everything and they really did such a fantastic job.

What was the biggest challenge you faced on this film? Compared with other work you’ve done but also specific to this?

I think probably the training beforehand with the SCUBA diving. I’ve done SCUBA diving before – I did some on The Last Ship. So I’d had a lot of SCUBA training beforehand but we all had to get certified. Not that it was difficult, I think it was just the repetitiveness and the rushing to get that all done before we had to fly out to South Africa and then upon arriving in South Africa there were many consecutive days where we were SCUBA diving every day. I think the frog squad, the team over in South Africa who were responsible for the SCUBA diving section of the film, they wanted to ensure we were all capable and we were doing things correctly and we knew what we were doing while under the water in SCUBA gear.

So that was, I don’t know, not really difficult but it was repetitive and it was physically taxing a little bit, but I really enjoyed it so that was good.

I’m thinking challenges, not difficulties; challenges don’t always have to be difficulties but just something that you hadn’t expected. You read a script and you go, ‘Oh it’s going to make me do xyz’ but then you get out on set and you realise there’s more to it. Was there anything like that with it?

No, I’m kind of malleable I think. Whichever way someone throws me I’m going to go. I don’t really complain, I’m just good to go. Once I get on set, I’m, “You want me to do that? Yes let’s do it. You want me to do that? Yes, let’s go.” So I’m happy to do anything.

Challenges? I don’t know if I conceive them that way. You’ve got me thinking now…

When a script comes through to you, what do you look for? What, if you’ll pardon the pun, floats your boat on something like this?

It has to have some relationships in there. I’m not talking about romantic or anything like

that – I mean that’s always a bonus – but there has to be some kind of relationship in there. That’s why [the scene about Brown] was very important to me: some people might say ‘Oh this guy just got eaten and that was it’ but it was very important to me that each of my men, I had a relationship with.

So when I look at the script I look for where I can build a relationship. A lot of people might look at this and say, “Oh, it’s a shark movie, Friday night popcorn and a lot of fun” but I take my work pretty seriously regardless of whatever the project may be.

When I first got the script I see OK, Lucas has got Brown, he’s got his other two guys there, he’s got Richard. I’ve got all these people that I can build relationships with. You’ve always got to make the choice that you care because it’s so much more interesting. Even though things turn out the way they do with Richard, when I look at the script I can see I’ve got an opportunity here to build a relationship with this guy, have him as a good mate and maybe we’ve just spent the last couple of years working together. Once there’s a bit of friction between us, I’m still human; there’s still that conflict, there’s still that sense of “OK, well, you were once my mate but now all bets are off. I will cut off this relationship and pursue the task at hand that I must accomplish.”

For me, Lucas puts the job before everything, before his friendship with Richard, before everything. If I’d just gone in there and he’s a robot and doesn’t have any kind of relationship or affinity to anyway I think that can get a little boring.

What I do look for in a script are the opportunities. Even if it’s backstory and the audience don’t really know about it, if I’ve got some kind of relationship inside me, or thinking in my mind, the camera is going to pick up some real life up there. For me that’s very important.

If I get a script and there’s just nothing, there’s no opportunity to build a relationship with anyone, in that case I wouldn’t consider it a very good script. If there’s no opportunity to build a relationship with other people then what have you got? It’s void of humanity… Getting all deep and meaningful here, aren’t we?!

Nothing wrong with that. I mean that’s the point, isn’t it? Whether it’s a book or a movie, you want to have the feeling that you’re seeing these characters for part of their life and they’ve had X number of years beforehand and if they survive, Y years after and we’re just seeing a bit of it. But if they’re two dimensional then they might as well be blow up dolls that have been put there to do that bit of the action.

Exactly, well put. Spoken like a man who understands the world, thank you. You’re 100% right Paul, you’re 100% right and those things are what appeal to me when I look for a script. So yes, exactly.

What’s next on the agenda for you once COVID restrictions lift and we’ve got the industry back in the water again?

It’s a really crazy time. I’m not sure, I had a film that I booked at the beginning of the year which was supposed to shoot in Australia in July, then they couldn’t get insurance because of COVID so that’s been postponed. I’m assuming that it will come back at some point but right now I think as things get a little bit lighter here, I think we’ll probably travel back to Australia for Christmas. That’s my favourite time of year – we’ll spend that in Australia and we’ll do summer there and then I’m not too sure. Something will definitely come up and when it does I’ll be grateful and happy to receive it but until then I guess COVID has really thrown everything up in the air.

Deep Blue Sea 3 is out now on DVD from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment

Click here to read our review

Thanks to Thomas Hewson for his help in arranging this interview.