Resident Evil Star Marina Mazepa Teases Lisa Trevors Tragic & Twisty Backstory

Resident Evil Star Marina Mazepa Teases Lisa Trevor’s Tragic & Twisty Backstory

Contortionist, dancer and actor Marina Mazepa details how she embodies iconic monsters like Malignant’s Gabriel and Resident Evil’s Lisa Trevor.

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Resident Evil Star Marina Mazepa Teases Lisa Trevors Tragic & Twisty Backstory

Ukrainian performer and contortionist Marina Mazepa is quickly becoming a horror icon. On America’s Got Talent Season 14, Mazepa won a standing ovation for her haunting and twisty dance routine set to Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” Mazepa’s unique style — mixing ballet with logic-defying pop-and-lock sequences — and flexibility soon caught the attention of horror directors. In 2021, James Wan cast Mazepa as Malignant’s Gabriel, a role that led her to star as The Girl in the Woods’ creepy monster, Echo. Enchanted by her range, director Johannes Roberts then cast Mazepa in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City as Lisa Trevor.

According to Mazepa, she never auditioned for these monstrous roles. The directors crafted these creations based on her talents. For Malignant, she danced backward while wearing a mask to embody Gabriel’s chilling walk. Welcome to Raccoon City, on the other hand, pushed Mazepa to delve deeper into her storytelling abilities. She fleshed out Lisa’s backstory and used movement to express the character’s sorrow. During an interview with CBR, Mazepa examined the joys and challenges of bringing monsters to life on-screen and teased what fans can expect from her empathetic take on Resident Evil’s Lisa Trevor.

Resident Evil Star Marina Mazepa Teases Lisa Trevors Tragic & Twisty Backstory

CBR: You’ve had quite a busy year! You’ve starred in The Unholy, Malignant, The Girl in the Woods and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City — all roles that require you to use your body a lot. Is it the physically demanding nature that attracts you to these roles? Or do you just enjoy starring in scary stories too?

Marina Mazepa: Well, first, with my background as a dancer and contortion, I have found it to be an easy access point to the movie industry. I have a specific style that translates perfectly to horror. Also, I find it quite interesting that when people see me for the first time; they don’t expect me to be able to do the things with my body that I can do. So it’s interesting to watch and I’m proud of that as well. I can surprise them and shock them, which is fascinating.

It’s just fun to play these characters with power. You can play around a lot. I didn’t audition for any of my roles. I was lucky to be contacted because people would see what I can do with my body and how I could turn into my characters.

Resident Evil Star Marina Mazepa Teases Lisa Trevors Tragic & Twisty Backstory

As someone who has a background in dance, I’m sure you’ve seen many different interpretations — on-screen or on-stage — where people embody scarier characters. What are some things that you think translate well, or don’t?

Being a contortionist performer, I watched, of course, a lot of performers for performance. To be honest, I never had any role model of a horror contortionist person. What helped me was looking at the actors who would turn into weird interesting characters like Dracula and I would watch how they would change their physicality. They’re still people — they would breathe, they were alive, they would think — but they had this weird physicality. I would just copy/paste that into my characters and add a different level of physicality.

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But I think it is something that comes from me. I developed this unique contortion dance style many years ago in my first performance was on So You Think You Can Dance in Ukraine when I was 18. I was very shy and embarrassed by my dance style, but I’m glad that I embraced it because, after my first performance, people really loved it. I got standing ovations and great responses from the judges. So I guess that was a very defining point for me. When I realized, “Well, people really want to see what I can do. It’s different, but this difference stands out.” So this is what I have to follow, this direction.

Building off of that, what were you shy or nervous about at that time — when you were debuting your style? What felt so different about it, to you?

I never would consider myself to be just a contortionist or just a dancer. I would always be a storyteller. All my performances had a story, because I would combine it with acting. I always thought that performance on stage is not only about your technique. It’s about what you bring as a story as motion. I always tried to fill my performance with those, with those things, with those ideas. Combining dance/contortion/acting into one performance, that’s what probably gave me a leg up and distinguished me from other dancers.

Resident Evil Star Marina Mazepa Teases Lisa Trevors Tragic & Twisty Backstory

That sense of character definitely comes across on-screen, especially in Malignant’s Gabriel! James Wan mentioned that you had to learn Gabriel’s moves backward, perform them backward, and wear a mask during it. What was the trickiest thing about memorizing this sequence? What’s one thing that you wanted to make sure came across on-screen?

Well, when you do your moves backward, you literally focus on everything. [laughs]

But the most important part was learning the moves facing forward, and then I would close my eyes and figure out how I would do it backward. So it would look like I was meditating, but with slight movements. I would imagine how I would do the same choreography that I just did forward but backward. I would have to count my steps and memorize the distance between my steps. I use my muscle memory in terms of how high my arm would go without looking at it.

James Wan’s directions on set helped me a lot. He would yell out, “More left! More Right!” I was moving, and he’d be like, “Turn! Stop! More left!” And then I would ask, “Is this how you want me to be looking?” It’s funny because I was wearing my mask on the back end of my head. I didn’t know how it looks from the front. So I would ask him and he’d say, “Now you need to have more left.” So I would look to my right because I was facing the reverse direction.

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So we created those patterns. We were so much in sync with each other. That really helped us. We didn’t know how it’d work. We would show up on set and we’re like, “Okay, let’s figure this shit out! How do we do this?” It was really interesting. With my own eyes, I would choose a focus point and memorize where I should look for this specific move. I’d look at the wall and imagine a dot so I know that this means that Gabriel looks exactly at the person that he has to, but backward.

Like you’re looking in a mirror the entire time?

Yeah! So it was counting my steps, muscle memory and focus points that helped me most.

You next star as Lisa Trevor in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Director Johannes Roberts previously teased that Lisa will have a strong connection to Claire in his film. What can you tease about this connection?

Hmm, what can I say without spoiling it? Well, maybe how sympathetic she was? Lisa was lonely and she was looking for a friend in Claire. I think that’s all I can say without revealing too much.

What’s something that you’re bringing to the role of Lisa that you think will surprise Resident Evil fans?

When I found out that I’m going to be Lisa Trevor, and they sent me this character — to be honest, I didn’t know who she was. So I started researching and writing a backstory. I started reading, listening, watching a lot of videos on YouTube. I read a lot of articles. Also, I saw people’s comments about Lisa and I took some things from their comments as well. It helped me to understand how people saw her and how differently people feel for her.

Knowing her backstory helped me with her moves and her attitude because when I started being her, I realized how strong the connection between her physicality and her backstory is. I started recreating her story — her tragic, really dramatic story — with her movements. It made sense to me as a performer, as an actor, while she had a slow physicality, why she had this ape-like posture and this sadness in her eyes. You have so much empathy for her. Even though she looks monstrous, she’s so innocent. She’s a 14-year-old girl who just got stuck in this body.

Written and directed by Johannes Roberts, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is in theaters on Nov. 24.

Link Source : https://www.cbr.com/resident-evil-marina-mazepa-lisa-trevor-interview/

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