By Gill Pringle
When FilmInk met with Chris Hemsworth on the set of the upcoming fantasy adventure sequel, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, he was a week out from wrapping, and was then heading directly onto the set of the much debated, all-female reboot of the 1984 supernatural comedy smash, Ghostbusters (starring comic powerhouses, Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones), which sees him playing the team’s receptionist, Kevin.
An apparently unlikely career move, Hemsworth scored the role after he delivered the comedic goods as guest host on the famed sketch show, Saturday Night Live. “[Ghostbusters director] Paul Feig called me up and said, ‘That was great! I didn’t know that you could do that! Do you have a bigger interest in doing more of that?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve always wanted to do comedy.’ And he said, ‘I’ve got this role. There’s not much at the moment. Just read the script. We work by throwing suggestions around and just trying things.’ I loved the script, and I loved all the girls involved, so I thought, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ I still don’t have a whole shooting script. I’ll just turn up in a week and go, ‘Okay, give me something funny to say, please!’”
Happily, for the Byron Bay-based actor, playing Kevin in the new Ghostbusters film will take him back to his childhood. “I haven’t seen the original Ghostbusters films in years, but they’re very still prominent and vivid in my mind,” Hemsworth tells FilmInk. “I watched them so much as a kid, and I loved them. I love the films of the eighties. I don’t know if films were different in the eighties, or if it’s just a nostalgic thing because of who I was, or that period of my life watching them, but they defined so many things: my own sense of humour, the way that I acted and interacted with people, and how I saw the world. So it’s cool to be a part of that and to revisit it without it being just a remake. There’s a whole new spin on it now.”
What other eighties films does Chris Hemsworth love? “The Indiana Jones movies, Willow, Ghostbusters, the Star Wars sequels, Stand By Me, The Breakfast Club…all those classics,” the actor replies. “They’re the eighties films that we all grew up on – and that I certainly grew up on – and they certainly shaped my taste in film. I have quite a broad sense or feel for what I want to be a part of, or what I like [partly based on those films].”
Ghostbusters will be released on July 14. The Huntsman: Winter’s War is released on April 7.
