This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.
I had a chance to recently speak with the cast of Dark Match, including Ayisha Issa, Steven Ogg, Chris Jericho, Sara Canning, Mo Jabari, Jonathan Cherry, and Justin Lawrick, just ahead of the world premiere this past Sunday at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal.
How are you enjoying your time in Montreal so far?
Ayisha Issa: I’m actually born and raised here. I haven’t lived here for a while, but I was out here filming Transplant for the last four years, but I absolutely love Montreal. It’s such a unique city.
Steven Ogg: Loving it. I haven’t been here since I lived here when I was 17 for the worst winter of my life. I am an Alberta boy, but it was hell. It was terrible. But I had a wonderful time. I haven’t been back in years, so it’s been absolutely wonderful. Today, we were on bikes going to Verdun. It’s so beautiful. We’re staying in Old Montreal, which is great, and it’s just so nice to hear French again. It’s so great.
Chris Jericho: I always love coming to Montreal. It’s a great city, especially in the summertime. We’re happy to be here, and it’s going to be a fun day.
Sara Canning: It’s been wonderful. The last time I was here was a decade ago, and it was February and I had to buy new winter boots because it was freezing. So, it’s really cool to be here in the summer.
Mo Jabari: I love Montreal. It’s actually my second time in Montreal. The last time I was here was about two years ago, but I didn’t get a lot of time in the city. I have a lot of time now and it was awesome. Great people, great city, great everything.
Justin Lawrick: Montreal is a beautiful city. I’m really, really enjoying my time. I’ve been doing a lot of exploring and a lot of walking. My feet are killing me, but I’m super happy to be here.
What was it about Lowell Dean’s script that made you want to get involved with the film? Were you familiar with his previous works?
Issa: When I was younger, I used to wrestle with my cousins. We used to watch WWE on Saturday mornings and I would spend a lot of time playing around with them. Later on, I ended up training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu for quite some time and competing. So, when the opportunity came to play a character that was in that world and to learn to take some bumps and things like that, I couldn’t pass that opportunity up. Then it just seemed like a cool, interesting film, and of course, Lowell always has these really poppy concepts and all of that together just made it really great.
Ogg: Script. It was something, for the character, I’d never played. So that’s appealing. Just reading the script, it was a very unique, different voice. I love the strong woman in Ayisha’s character. I loved how different it was. Like “what the fuck is this genre?” I’m not a horror fan, but I loved wrestling growing up, so that was a big thing. It was more like “oh wow” with the wrestling, the violence, and the character. It was all the script. It was such a unique voice. I love to be of service to unique voices.
Jericho: It’s really not about the wrestling culture. It’s more of a really cool, dark horror movie with wrestling as a background. That’s what attracted me to it. It reminded me of my early days in wrestling where this could have happened to me. An independent wrestling company shows up to a town to do a show and then they find out they’re part of a much bigger, more macabre plot. I just really enjoyed the whole concept of the film and once I read the script, I kind of got into it with Lowell as far as what he wanted to do. This is not Chris Jericho as Chris Jericho in a wrestling movie. This is the prophet and evil satanic priest, played by Chris Jericho, and I like that aspect of it.
Canning: I’d always thought that Lowell would be so cool to work with. I was familiar with his awesome genre films and, honestly, I just never thought I would be invited to play a wrestler. I did not think that was going to happen in my career, so it was a great challenge. It was such a fun physical challenge and I just love this team of actors so much. Really fun.
Jabari: I liked my character in the movie, Enigma. There were a lot of connections and a lot of similarities with myself and my real life wrestling character in the sense that he’s an underdog. He’s a loyal wrestler, friend, and things of that nature. I really love this movie and I can’t wait to see it from my memory of filming it. It was really awesome in the sense of having wrestling in it. I’m talking about real wrestling. It was put together by wrestlers. So wrestling fans around the world will love it. It was fantastic.
Lawrick: Professional wrestling. Professional wrestling is what I’ve been doing my entire life. I started when I was 13 years old. So, when I had a chance to read this script and see how he was tying in professional wrestling with his art in film, it was unbelievable and to see his vision that came through his brain come to life in first person is absolutely incredible for me as a performer, as an actor, and as somebody that just had a chance to take part in the film.
Do you watch wrestling in your everyday life?
Issa: I watched a lot of it when I was younger. Then I just went off in other directions and I’ve been doing other things. But there was definitely a time after filming the movie where I was considering re-examining that and trying to explore if there was an opportunity to do a little bit of wrestling again. Right as I started doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, there was a show called Tough Enough that had come out where you could try out for pro wrestling. I really seriously considered it, but I just didn’t have the confidence. I didn’t think I could do it so I went into jiu-jitsu instead.
Canning: I used to watch wrestling with my grandfather when I was five. But also, one of my best friends is a massive wrestling fan. So, I kind of feel like I did the movie for him too. He came to visit me when I lived in Atlanta, and we went to WrestleMania.
Jonathan Cherry: I grew up a big wrestling fan. I’m not anymore, but since I’ve finished the movie, I’ve got an amazing appreciation for it.
Were there any specific wrestling personas or parts of wrestling culture that you were trying to draw influences from?
Issa: I think that I just liked the vampy, seductive, dangerous, cunning type character. A little bit slinky, you know. We had a lot of fun putting it together. It was a joint effort as well. Lowell had some ideas about how he thought my costume should be as far as the colors were considered. The costume designers did a great job with that. So, all those pieces coming together, created the character.
Ogg: Not really, especially because it was in the eighties. That’s when the male ego there was still a lot of peacocking. I wanted Mean Joe to, even though he’s in the time of the eighties, be much more sympathetic to Ayisha and her character. I wanted to be there to be in support of her as opposed to her supporting me. I don’t know if that’s translated, but that was always a big thing for me, is to be of service to her and essentially acknowledge that she could kick my ass.
Jericho: Not really because I didn’t want it to be, wink wink, this is Jericho. I was thinking more if you ever read The Stand by Stephen King and how [Alexander] Skarsgård played that in the streaming show. It’s a little bit of John Dutton (Kevin Costner) from Yellowstone. There’s that vibe to it as well. It is a dark role, of a very calm and collected psycho who essentially wants to take over the world. For me, it was deeper than just wrestling. I wanted to really delve into some of the other influences that I had as an actor.
Canning: You know, I actually kind of more so than wrestlers, I was sort of looking at Wonder Woman and Supergirl, and kind of mixing those characters within. I was watching wrestlers as well, but I was going with a very cheeky, fifties feel for this character.
Jabari: It’s not what I do in my wrestling personality or character. He’s a masked wrestler and the similarity that I have with my character in the movie is that he’s an underdog. The good thing about him is he flies around, and he does a lot of cool things. Doing some of the moves in the movie weren’t really too crazy for me. I’ve done it before. It was a good person to play the character.
How did you find that the wrestling culture was portrayed in the film?
Cherry: I haven’t seen the movie yet. But while shooting it, we had so many local Stampede wrestling-type guys around, and they were saying it seemed authentic, and it seemed like what it is.
Lawrick: I thought that they represented pro wrestling, in general, really well. I thought it was cool to see two worlds come together from acting and pro wrestling because everybody in the cast did a really, really, good job of wanting to keep the art form of pro wrestling as a whole. They all wanted to make sure that they were doing a good job and being respectful to the art. For us as pro wrestlers to be able to come into their world, that was kind of our goal too was how do we apply ourselves as pro athletes and professional wrestlers to be able to come into your world, and be able to act accordingly while being able to mesh the two. I thought the cast did a really incredible job of being able to stay true to that art form and showcase it in a really respectful and awesome manner.
Ayisha, you mentioned your experience with Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Were there any opportunities for you to be able to utilize that experience in your fight choreography? Was it something that Lowell was open to?
Issa: Absolutely. I think that’s a big thing about character building and that’s one of the things that Justin did a lot of our training for and helped us learn about wrestling. That was one of the things, which was that we tried to use as much of our personal skills as we could to build our characters. In the case of my character, Miss Behave, my jiu-jitsu background is going to become helpful. But I also think in terms of being able to learn the fight choreography, understand where my body is, be a little bit comfortable with being on the ground, being in close proximity to another person; all of that comes from jiu-jitsu.
Steven, you have another film premiering tonight, Scared Shitless.
Ogg: Talk about timing. I’ll see it tomorrow. I won’t be able to do it right after this, which is kind of a bummer. I wish I could show up, I know it’s a smaller theater. It would have been fun.
Special thanks to the Dark Match team for the opportunity to speak with the cast.
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