By Travis Johnson
Of course model turned actress Sylvia Hoeks was familiar with Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s hugely influential 1982 cyberpunk thriller. Lest we forget, that film saw Harrison Ford’s futuristic detective tasked with tracking down a cell of rogue androids – “replicants” in the film’s sci-fi patois – led by one Roy Batty, played by Rutger Hauer – and Hauer, like Hoeks, is Dutch. According to her, it was pretty much a matter of national pride that everyone in Holland see the film.
“I think I was like eight years old when I saw it with my whole family,” she recalls. “My parents decided that we had to see the film. I was very young, and everyone was very proud of Rutger. And my eyes were popping out of my head seeing what was happening on the screen, I remember being so excited by the world I saw.”
And now Hoeks is part of that world, bringing to life the role of Luv, assistant to replicant manufacturer Niander Wallace (Jared Leto). From what we’ve seen, Luv is a fairly ruthless henchwoman – perhaps inhumanly so? – but Hoeks is not going to spill the beans. Indeed, our conversation is somewhat strained by the veil of secrecy that surrounds the plot specifics of Blade Runner 2049, which follows Ryan Gosling’s dogged investigator, K, as he tracks down Ford’s Rick Deckard, the hero of the original film, to get help in unraveling a vast conspiracy.
What she can tell us, however, is that Leto’s reputation for being a committed method actor is earned; the Oscar winner stayed in character for the entire shoot. “I saw him on set and I introduced myself as Luv and he introduced himself as Niander Wallace,” she explains. “We hadn’t talked about our characters beforehand or rehearsed together, so it was really a different experience for me.”
That fed into the “complex and intense” relationship that exists between the two, with Luv being utterly devoted to Wallace, while the latter is kind of a distant paternal figure. “He was more untouchable from my perspective, and I was longing for his approval. Because we didn’t know each other it was actually creating an extra tension in the way we played those scenes.”
In preparation for the role, Hoeks trained extensively, packing on an extra 15 pounds of muscle and undergoing fight choreography and stunt training in order to be able to tackle the extensive action sequences. In terms of embodying Luv’s character, however, she turned to an unexpected resource, looking at how female stars like Selena Gomez and Taylor Swift handle their public lives. “They live their lives on social media most of the time,” she says. “They have a very strong virtual life and they are followed around in public every second of the day. That was very interesting to me, the way they control and dictate that, so I used it for this character.”
The blurring of the line between real and artificial, human and construct. How very Blade Runner.
Blade Runner 2049 is in Australian cinemas from October 5, 2017.
