Ashton Holmes Interview – Star of Wind Chill

When a pair of college students (Emily Blunt, Ashton Holmes) share a ride home for the holidays, they break down on a deserted stretch of road and are preyed upon by the ghosts of people who have died there.

Horror.com's Staci Layne Wilson was on the set in Vancouver, during the shooting of Wind Chill. Here's one of the interviews.

Q: What's going on in the scene you guys are shooting today? Sounds like you're arguing or talking?

Ashton Holmes: We didn't know what we were talking about either. In that scene you just see -- I feel so bad because all our action today is in that tiny little car that muffles the sound -- but we're getting to the point in the movie where we're starting to get really hungry. When you see the movie, you'll see that our car gets stranded on the side of a road, and we're there basically for 18 hours. So we start to get really hungry, and I'm sort of scouring around my car looking for something to eat. I think I've left a candy bar under the seat cushion, so that's where we are. You can imagine that tensions are running pretty high. My character and Emily's character, we don't really know each other very well -- so one of the great things about this story is that these two characters who when you start, they really don't know each other at all. They're very much strangers. By the end, they're really relying on each other. There's that trust there, and we really need each other to survive. 

Q: How did you guys meet, through a ride share?

AH: Yeah, it's common in colleges. It's like she missed the last flight home to Delaware where she's living, so we have this ride share board at our college. I stuck a note up there saying, "Anybody needing a ride for the holidays, call me." So that's how we met.

Q: How do you get stranded?

AH: I don't want to give too much away. It's a not a secret that this is a horror movie, so there is some supernatural element to it. 

Q: Did you guys take a shortcut?

AH: Yeah, I decided to take the scenic route rather than staying on the highway because she's totally bored with the monotony of just driving on this highway. So I decide to take a little shortcut, and it turns out to be a treacherous one. 

Q: When do you start to realize that something wrong or unusual is happening?

AH: Well, pretty soon after we turn onto that road, weird things start happening. My character really tries to deny it for a while. She's more sort of affected by the supernatural beings that might be messing with us. So right away, she's really on edge. Also there's an element to the movie that you might not know about -- and I don't want to give too much away -- but you're not really sure what my intentions are with this girl, whether or not I'm a good guy or a bad guy, and that kind of plays into the drama in the first half of the movie.

Q: What's your character's name?

AH: Interesting thing, when I first read the script, there were no character names. They're simply "Guy" and "Girl." At first I thought, "Oh, that's gimmicky. You don't really know." But then the more I started thinking about it and the more I read the script, I liked the fact that there isn't a defined identity. A name is something so personal, and I thought it was cool how these two could be any college students. We don't really need to specify who they are. We never actually get their names in the movie. 

Q: So when you're scared in the movie, you wouldn't address her by name?

AH: You would think that it would come up. But I never had to be like, "Greg, I need to call her name." When it was something happening, it was like, "Are you okay?" It's not like, "Emily, are you okay?" And I think Emily and I both chose names because as an actor, you do your homework. I kind of thought my character was "Ashton" and she was "Emily." 

Q: Can you describe some of the challenges of shooting in real snow and then in studio, like today?

AH: We were on location like five hours north in this place called Summerland. Summer was nowhere to be found. We were shooting in negative 28-degree temperatures. The other big character in this movie is the weather, so I think it was really important for us to experience that. I'm from the East Coast, so I know what cold is, but this was like a real severe -- negative 28 was like, especially wearing clothes like this, it gets so cold. One of the hurdles I had trying to act out in this weather was it was so cold, my concentration was, I wasn't really able to focus. You know, as an actor you have a lot of things to remember: hitting your mark, the beats to a scene, your lines. It was so cold, I would lose concentration.

I kept saying to Greg, "Is it working right here?" because all I could really do was shiver and kind of deliver the lines, but not with too much expression. I think it really worked. You need to see how bitterly cold it is for these two people out there. Everybody's felt like, "Oh my God. It's just so cold." And that's kind of what we're dealing with in this movie, so it was difficult, but it added to it. The other thing that we had -- we're using these big snow machines in the studio and when we were on location. And it gets a little distracting, the loud noise.  But the second or third day you just put it out of your mind. You almost don't even know it's there.

Q: Is there any scene in particular you were looking forward to playing out, when you read the script?

AH: This is my first stab at the horror genre, and I love to play those really broad, hyper-exaggerated states. I love when my character gets to get really angry. I've done that. Or like really sad. I've done that. Or super elated. And I've done that. But I've never been in a movie where I've been really scared. So when I read the script, and there were some moments in this movie when my character is shitting his pants. I couldn't wait to wrap my head around that. And there's one scene in particular ... I'm in this abandoned house that's in the middle of the woods. It's like a 10-minute sequence of just a bunch of things that I see up there that kind of freak me out. 

Q: How is it reacting to things that aren't there?

AH: It's always just putting yourself in that character's shoes. I remember waking up in my house -- I grew up in a really small town in upstate New York. It was very quiet, this town, and I actually lived across the street from the cemetery, and I would spook myself out. I would wake up and "What the hell is that?" It's just tapping into my own personal experiences in thinking that there's something behind the door and whatnot.

Q: Is there an effort to make the general atmosphere on set spooky as well?

AH: Not really. You hear the stories like on set on "The Exorcist" that spooky things were happening or people were dying. No, this movie was a tough shoot for everybody because of the weather conditions. So it was a high stress set, but it wasn't eerie. I wish I could give you a good story, but because the weather was so bad, we were all trying to life each other's spirits. It was so cold up there; everybody was on the verge of a breakdown. People got frostbite. It was pretty tough.

Q: How did you like just working opposite one person for most of the film?

AH: You really got to trust that actor because 90% of the movie is just her and I just in this car. Virtually all my scenes are with her. Greg was great. He brought us up here several weeks before we started production to get to know each other and get through the script. He really wanted us to establish that connection between Emily and I before we jumped into it. It's really important when the majority of the movie you're just looking at the screen with her and I on it. You need to feel that there's some chemistry there. I think that chemistry tends to develop over time. And I just have to say that Emily's a tremendous actor, and she was really generous to work off of. She's done a great job, and Greg's done a great job of manning this ship.

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