ComingSoon spoke with Altered star Tom Felton about his new sci-fi movie, which is out now in select theaters and on digital. Felton discussed the film’s sci-fi world, what drew him to the project, and how being on Harry Potter helped him look out for younger co-stars on set.
“After the world is ravaged by nuclear war, the few remaining survivors turn to genetic enhancement as the way forward. When a small segment of the population can’t keep up, they are forced to fight back. One of these rebels is Leon (Tom Felton), a proud, quick-witted, and talented inventor, who crafts intricate mechanical devices in his workshop that help the unmodified (aka “specials”) like himself pass as “genetics.” Leon also looks after a spunky Chloe (Elizaveta Bugulova), an orphaned teenager whose parents previously ran the workshop. Felton shines as Leon with versatility, charisma, and depth in a leading role unlike anything we’ve seen from him before, while young breakout Bugulova will turn heads with her feisty and commanding on-screen presence. The film also boasts a great supporting cast, including Richard Brake (Game of Thrones) and Aggy K. Adams (Undercover Hooligan),” says the official description.
Tyler Treese: Altered was really fun, and it has a lot of interesting ideas about genetic enhancements and the divide that they can cause in society. What about Altered really attracted you to this project?
Tom Felton: Well, there’s so many different strings to its bow, really. The first being the cool world that we get to create this sort of slightly dystopian future, had we taken a few different courses of action in our human world. So, that’s obviously a very cool thing for anyone that loves sci-fi like I do. You get to play a different version or an enhanced version, in some cases, in the film or a lesser enhanced version.
So I always loved the human element of that. But then put that with a really great story about this young whiz kid who really has not had much go right in his life. For him to have this opportunity to step out of that and actually do something for the world, greater than just for himself. It’s a classic old story, really, but just told in a completely new way. So as soon as I grasped that and understood that, it was pretty easy for me to say yes.
This is a pretty interesting performance for you as well because the first 30 minutes of this film, you’re in a wheelchair. How was that experience of having restricted movement and just acting from a wheelchair for quite a few scenes?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, the physical element of the character definitely was a new thing for me and a challenge. Like you say, half of it, he’s wheelchair-bound, and the other half, he is a crime-fighting kickass superhero with a suit that can do some very, very cool stuff. I think the wheelchair, I could practice quite a lot in my in my hotel down the lobby. The suit, I think, I thought was gonna be a lot trickier to figure out. It’s an incredible suit. They built this amazing, like 18-piece carbon fiber super lightweight suit. So that was really cool getting to learn how to use that in the best way possible while keeping us all safe, while also, you know, picking up cars and throwing them around and stuff.
Yeah, there’s a lot of fun action scenes once you get the super suit. Obviously, Harry Potter, you’re not really getting the hand-to-hand combat there. So, had you done many action scenes before? How was it learning those?
Yeah, no, I hadn’t really. There certainly was not much the wand work really helped me with on this. I mean, I have done quite a few difficult physical things, whether it’s riding horses, wearing chain mail, flying in the air on wires, and stuff like that. But nothing like this. So much of it was practical.
Timo, our director, he’s a big, big sci-fi super nerd if you will. He won’t mind me saying that. And he loves everything to be practical. So there was very little green screen, very little changing it afterwards. He wanted everything to feel real on the set, which makes it so much easier for the actors then to believe that what they’re doing is real.
And he was very, very particular about all the small little details that these films have that make such a big difference to the audience. He was always really, really on that. So, again, that really helped take the burden off of doing that. It just made it a lot more fun to be the character.
You might be underselling it, calling him a sci-fi super nerd. He started out doing Star Trek parody movies in Finland. It’s wild to see his growth as a director and what he is doing now. What stood out about collaborating with Timo?
Tom Felton: Well, just that he knew the world. He knew the world so much. You know, after sitting down and talking it through with him for a few hours, I couldn’t help but ask, “So what does it look like? Show me exactly what the suit looks like? Show me exactly.”
And I was expecting him to sort of explain them to me, but instead he pulled out like a thousand different images up there from his laptop and drawings that he’d done, not just of the suit, but of the world itself. He was always really, really passionate on set about bringing in all these old knick-knacks from our world, from computing things to biological things.
Like in Leon’s lab, for example, he didn’t just make a workshop. There were details way way in the back of the set, which he probably wouldn’t have picked up on. But he did, so it would drive him crazy if there was anything that wasn’t perfect. So if you have someone with a vision like that, as in so strong visually, but also he wrote the script as well, so naturally he knows the characters better than anyone. That was really helpful.
I wanted to ask you about the young actress, Liza Bugulova, who plays Chloe in the film. You obviously know what it’s like being young and in really important scenes of a movie. So how was it being on that other side of working so closely with a young actor and kind of being in that mentor role where you’re the adult on set now?
That was a weird one. That was a bit of a weird one. “Hang on a sec. Wait, what? I’m the old guy? That’s not right.”
It was nice, it was nice that Lizzie was incredibly talented. She knew the script better than I did. She corrected me on lines that I got wrong, I think. So she’s clearly a young superstar in the making. But yeah, it was nice, I suppose, and I never thought about it like a parental role or the senior or whatever it may be.
Lots of things that I have learned over the years on the sets as a kid I got to put into practice as far as looking out for everyone, looking out for her, and making sure that everyone’s having a good time and that we don’t rush things and that everyone feels like they’re in a good place before we before we roll cameras. So that was really nice. She’s got an incredibly wicked sense of humor, which obviously helps.
You also share scenes with Richard Brake, who has a very interesting role. I love watching him throughout the years. What stood out about him as a scene partner?
I think we only met briefly the day before, so we had to sort of talk quickly about the relationship between the characters and working with someone like that. He is such a pro anyway, but also someone who doesn’t want to just turn up and do it. He wants to do what I would do, which is sort of dive deep into the backstory that even if we don’t see it, we can feel it.
Then on the actual day itself, well, he’s actually a lovely man in real life. He’s rather charming and debonair, shall I say, but quite the opposite on screen. He has a certain viciousness with his eyes, and he can say very little in it, and it can mean a lot.
So yeah, I just enjoyed that element. It makes working against him just very easy because It’s a lot of reacting to his performance rather than having to completely invent your own outta nothing.
