We loved her as Kara “Starbuck” Thrace on SyFy’s Battlestar Galactica, and now we get to see actress Katee Sackhoff kick some more sci-fi ass in Riddick. In the movie she plays Dahl, a deadly sniper who joins up with a group of mercenaries to hunt down Riddick, who is once again played by Vin Diesel.
The role allows Sackhoff to show just how much she worked out and trained and it’s a ton of fun watching her holding her own against actors like Diesel, Jordi Molla and WWE wrestler Dave Bautista. Like Starbuck, Dahl is not a woman to be trifled with, and she will leave you hurting for weeks if you are foolish enough to make a pass at her.
We got to catch up with Katee last week when she appeared at the Riddick press conference held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Among other things, she discussed where she looked to for inspiration for her character, what it was like working with Diesel, which scenes were the most challenging and more.
Check it out below.
We love seeing you play these bad ass characters, but do you secretly dream of doing a Jane Austen period piece someday?
Katee Sackhoff: I do, I wander around in corsets in my house all the time (laughs). I’m a lot girlier than the roles that I play. I joke with Tricia Helfer all the time that she’s my muscle. Yeah I do, but I also don’t believe that there’s anything wrong in this business with being typecast, I really don’t. I think that I am lucky and blessed to have the job that I have, and I am trying to create longevity. If that means that I transition into different things at different points in my life then that’s fine. I also believe that if doors don’t open, make new doors, so I’ve also started producing quite a bit of things. So maybe I will wear a corset at some point and adopt a British accent (laughs).
You had mentioned at Comic-Con one time that you were working on an action scene where a guy accidentally hurt you because he didn’t realize you were a girl. Was there a moment like that on the set of Riddick, or what approach did the guys take to remind themselves to take it easy on you?
Katee Sackhoff: No. It’s a very, very rare moment when another actor hurts you. That’s not normal. If anything, it’s the actor accidentally punching the stunt double which happens quite a bit. In this movie I was lucky enough that I really didn’t get roughed up by any of the guys. The moment where I realized how little I actually was was when Dave Bautista picked me off the ground, and I still wasn’t even at his pec yet. These guys knew that I was a girl, and I think that was one of the blessings of being the only girl on the set. The guys really treated me like their little sister. Matt Nable (who plays Boss Johns) and I developed a very, very tight friendship and I think he gave all the boys a talking to on day one and was like, “Listen, this girl is here by herself. Nobody hit on her, nobody be mean and nobody hurt her.” After that day we were all like brother and sister so it was really great.
Why do you think audiences love Vin Diesel as this character?
Katee Sackhoff: There’s a darkness to Riddick that I think allows people to want him to do bad things because you know Riddick is going to do bad things, that’s just the way it is. But I think that at his core, who he is and what he’s fighting for is something that everybody can identify with. He’s truly the last of his kind in a sense, and he’s just trying to get home and stay true to who he is and people just keep coming after him.
So I think that audiences kind of like him to do bad things, but I think also what it is is that David Twohy has done such a phenomenal job at creating a world that we don’t really see a lot of. There are pieces of the original Total Recall in there. There are so many different tonal references throughout Pitch Black to Chronicles of Riddick to this one as well. It really does take you on this journey and you kind of follow Riddick through this journey of trying to accomplish something and you know what he’s trying to accomplish and you know that there are people after him. It’s just a fun ride because you know what you’re gonna get when you go in. There’s a reassurance and that you know what you’re gonna get. People know what David’s done the entire time, and I think they will be pleasantly surprised with this movie.