I am not bragging, because believe it or not it gets humdrum after a while, but I meet a lot of celebrities in my line of work, and Jake Abel genuinely comes across as one of the cool ones. He’s sequestered in a hotel room at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles, doing one interview after another, and insists on sitting outside on the sunny patio, remarking on the interesting bugs that pass us by as we chat openly about the strange story arc he goes through in his latest film, The Host. Jake Abel plays Ian O’Shea, who falls in love with an alien occupying the body of another man’s girlfriend, played by Saoirse Ronan. It’s an awkward, awkward love quadrangle, but one with many sexy possibilities that we discuss in our interview about the latest Stephenie Meyer adaptation, this time from director Andrew Niccol (Gattaca).
The following interview contains some unintentional spoilers about the plot of The Host, specifically about the film’s alien species and Ian O’Shea’s romantic story arc, so until you see the film, the following may be more for fans fo the book than anybody else. You’ll be able to catch up when The Host opens in theaters on March 29, 2013.
Jake Abel: They keep me cramped up, and so they bring me to a room with a balcony, you know I’m running outside.
CraveOnline: The last time I did an interview on a balcony it was Jamie Bell, and it was just because he wanted to smoke.
[Laughs] How is Jamie Bell? I think he’s a tremendous actor.
He was super cool, actually. Very nice.
He is so @#$%ing good, that kid.
Is he a kid? Is he younger than you?
He’s probably thirty and I… It’s just one of those things. He’s a young guy. It’s not patronizing in any way. [Editor’s Note: For those keeping score at home, Jamie Bell is actually 27 years old, as of this writing, and Jake Abel is 25.]
You’ve done films before, you’ve done TV before, now you are – according to US Magazine – a “sexy hunk.”
[Blows raspberry]
Sexy hunk!
Sexy hunk! Add that to the resume! [Laughs]
That’s at the top. “Sexy Hunk.” Did you expect that? You’re doing a Stephenie Meyer film, you’re a love interest…
I think… I don’t plan on any of that, obviously…
Well, you work out.
[Laughs] I only work out because I have high anxiety, and if I don’t I tend to… I say I’m like a border collie. If I don’t have something to expend my energy, I chew the furniture. So it just helps me level out so I don’t do copious amounts of drugs. [Laughs]
You could still do that. You’re an actor.
I guess I could. Especially now. I’m a hunk!
You’re a super hunk. Everyone wants to liquor you up.
[And] give me drugs!
My girlfriend and I were watching this movie, and we were both kind of like, “Oh, he’s the cute one. I hope she ends up with him.”
With Ian? Oh, thanks!
No problem. You’ve got an interesting character. There’s a good line of dialogue where Wanda says, I’m going to paraphrase obviously, “If you saw me the way I really look…”
“You’d crush me.”
“Because you’d be disgusted.” That’s an interesting point. Did they ever show you what the Souls looked like while you were shooting the film, so you’d have an idea?
Yeah, they did. What’s remarkable about Andrew Niccol’s office when filming a movie is, you walk into it, and all four walls are covered with pictures, and they tell the story of the movie. So you walk around his office and you watch the movie, and our pictures are on there for each scene, and by the end you’ve seen the entire film, just in photographs that he’s pulled. Within those they had the pictures of the Souls, which is good because up until that moment we have seen them. We’ve tried to butcher them out of the human bodies, but that was the first time we’ve seen them not butchered, and completely in its fragile state. It’s weird, you can’t really call them tentacles. I haven’t figured out what to call them yet, because they’re like…
Honestly, if I may? They look like energy sperm.
[Laughs] Sperm!
Well, they do! They go into the body, they’re giving life. Someone had to think of that.
Energy sperm, that’s hilarious… They’re like fiber optics, though. Fiber optic cables. The kiss upon the hand with the light of the energy sperm tip. So yeah, I did see those beforehand, and obviously for that scene, in receiving it, Andrew really talked us through and tried to figure out what it meant to look at something so peculiar. Especially something that was such an enemy.
They’re also really delicate, too.
Very fragile. Very, very fragile.
Was there any sort of frame of reference you were able to use in real life for that scene? Or were you completely making that up?
Just pure imagination, I guess, involving the love I have for her. This is the first time we’ve taken one out of the human body without butchering both the body or this thing inside, knowing that in essence, I am holding what she is. This is the greatest love of his life, even though he’s holding the Seeker it’s still of her species, and that’s shows the evolution of Ian, and sort of, maybe, how freaky he is.
There you go, right?
Yeah. “Freaky Ian.”
He does not shy away from that. “Don’t you judge me…”
You know, William Hurt is a very cerebral man. He got fixated in rehearsal – we got two weeks’ rehearsal – fixated on how Ian would have relations with the actual alien itself. And at one point he brought up the word, does it “grip?” “Does it grip?” So we got deep, deep into what it meant to be in contact with these creatures.
I’ll bet you did.
Yeah.
