Alexandra Feld has burst on the scene with her husband, indie filmmaker Elliot Feld, by appearing first in short films before nabbing a lead role in the web series Slate Your Name, which revolved around casting in Hollywood. However, she is about to burst on to the feature film scene in the titular role of Killer Kate!, coming to select theaters, VOD, and Digital HD on October 26 from Freestyle Digital Media, just in time for Halloween.
World Film Geek had the opportunity to talk to Feld about her feature film debut.
Thank you so much Alexandra for talking about Killer Kate! I imagine you are excited about your first lead role in a feature film.
Oh my word! Of course I’m excited! It was an amazing experience to get to be also a producer on the film and my husband directed and co-wrote it with Daniel Moya. I got to be a big part of it from development to production to where we are today. So not only did I get to have this lead role in my first, but my husband directed and we did it all in like a year. There are so many levels of excitement and it is a bit surreal.
Your husband co-wrote and directed the film. Did you have any input in terms of bringing any elements to the story?
Yeah I did for better or worse for sure (laughs). I think ultimately it helped for all of us. But Daniel and Elliot would go off and write and then we would have discussions or re-read the scenes. They really allowed me to get my input because it was so important to me as an actor of course. But, to them as well because the core of the film is that the relationship between the sisters felt real. Because if we had that, everything else would come together well. And then we can also play on that comedy and heightened world. I have a younger sister myself, so I tried to bring as much as that experience, even though we’re not estranged, as much as I can.
I mean when you have two male writers, it makes a huge difference. So, I would be like ‘hey, you don’t have an estranged relationship with your sister or brother, here’s what I suggest’, and they were so reflective and grateful for that feedback. Even on-set, if the actors had suggestions, they would open to re-writing for readjustments and that kind of thing.
That’s awesome! What was it like working with cast? I felt there was a lot of diversity in the characters.
That is such an easy question because this to me, was a dream cast. We did casting for two days and so many great people came out. As a producer, I got to be there to read with the cast from the other side of the camera, and when those people came in, especially the girls, I knew that there was our Sarah, our Mel, my little sister Ange. On the set, when you know you know because there’s that instant chemistry. Not only are the characters written differently, but each of the ladies brought their own thing to it that we didn’t need to do a read through internally. They brought that realness to their characters.
The Birkman family, the villains of the films, they needed to be more quirky like caricatures. But our girls, it was very important to us that they were real and it felt to me that they were a very-well defined group of individual girlfriends. Being part of that was the writing and part of that was what they brought on the set. What’s astonishing is that we shot the film for ten days, and yet I felt like I’ve known these girls for at least a few days. It was instant and easy to work with them and we still text each other and we’re excited to get together for the premiere this week.
The film looked to be a family affair with both your family and Elliot’s family working behind the scenes. I think that shows the level of support that is a recipe for a good film.
Yes, I couldn’t agree more. It was a special experience that way. I also felt it made the level of comfort on set together as a whole. I think the fact there was so much of our family involved on set, it was already a family atmosphere. So the two different family characters coming to play really lent itself. All the girls think of my family as their family. I think that unique environment especially for a ten-day shoot to walk on to the set and feel like family. So we didn’t just feel like family, we actually were a family. I think it’s an awesome and rare experience, I mean flawless. So yeah, I think that’s awesome.
What would say is your favorite scene of the film? For me, it is when you see the killer with the bat that sports your character’s name and it becomes the catalyst of your titular name.
(Laughs) That’s awesome! That was a really fun scene and we got to come back to it for a day of re-shoots. That was more fun because we got to play with it because Elliot wanted to add more to it. So I felt we got to do it twice.
For me, it was all the weapon scenes. I mean, now because of this, with all the action, I really want to do more action scene. I think the baseball bat scene was scene. The fight between Kate and Jimmy in the basement. That was probably one of my favorite scenes. It was definitely memorable.
I’m not going to spoil it, but the part of the fight where he was on top of me, we had to do that in one take! Because of time constraints, so the entire cast and crew would be in this little basement to watch this background. I have a theater background so I thought of it as okay, this is a stage play, we have one chance so we have to kill it (no pun intended). And Grant [Lyon] told me, “I’m gonna shove this in your mouth” and I said, “Well, I’m gonna take it all in!” We did and it was thrilling. It was disgusting but so much fun. When Elliot said cut, everyone was laughing and cheering. It was awesome! Very fun!
Were there any difficulties you faced while shooting the film?
Gosh! That’s an amazing question. You would think we would have a lot of issues because we only shot for 10 days. But, we had a great first day. We didn’t go over any of the days. I think from a producer standpoint, there was the scene where the girls first enter the house and we were losing light. So we rushed into that but were able to do it again during re-shoots, but that’s a boring example (laughs).
One thing for sure, it was both stressful and very exciting to have that limited amount of time. I think we were able to rehearse every scene before shooting it and that was really important for both Elliot and myself. So when we got to shoot it, we didn’t have to do it in many takes not only because we had this limited amount but we were able to rehearse it three or four times before shooting. We knew as actors, we had to bring it, not goof off. We don’t have a blooper reel (laughs). We were all very focused on getting the film made and I think that is the benefit of shooting in a short timeframe. You don’t have time to screw it up, you just go with it! The actors we worked with have theater backgrounds so it really helped and we were able to pull it off.
This is both a fun film and looks to be quite an experience for you. Do you plan to do any more feature films?
Oh my goodness yes! That’s all I want to do now! I think now I both acted and produced a feature film, I don’t want to go backwards. I am hoping to go full-time as an actor and I know I won’t get to produce everything. But to have that creative input for so long, I really loved that and would love to continue doing that.
I don’t have any new projects yet, but we do have some scripts in the works and things in development. There was a film we planned right before Killer Kate! But due to time and budget constraints, we put it on the backburner, but I would really love to bring it back. It’s called The Woods. It’s a suspense-horror world but set in the post-apocalyptic vampire world. It’s a really juicy great role for a female and if I can do that, then it would be great! I hope we get to come back to that. I would like to do it, but we’ll see what happens.
Killer Kate! Comes to theaters, VOD, and Digital HD on October 26. This is truly a great year for indie horror and this fun and wild ride just adds to the greatness of the genre. Thank you so much again for talking about the film.
Thank you so much and I hope you tell all your friends to check out the film!
A Special Thank You goes to Katrina Wan PR and Alexandra Feld for making this interview possible.
WorldFilmGeek 