Crave Online: Are you under contract with Lionsgate now?
Julie Benz: Oh, I wish. I feel very lucky to be a part of the Lionsgate family, to be working with them. I would love it if they put me under contract. It'd be awesome. They're a really great company to work for. They've just been very, very kind to me and I feel very lucky to be part of the family.
Crave Online: Is it really a family, even between all the different films?
Julie Benz: Yes. Everybody who works at Lionsgate has been so kind and so wonderful to me and so supportive and just big fans. They've been very warm and welcoming.
Crave Online: Have you seen the final cut of Punisher: War Zone?
Julie Benz: I have not. I'm very excited to check it out. I think visually, it's going to be amazing. Lexi Alexander, our director, has just such a very clear vision of what it was she was trying to create. And she really wanted to make you feel like you were in a comic book. I think that's what comes off. I had quite a few moments on set where I would just look around and it just was like, "Wow, I'm in a comic book. This just is crazy." It's really a great experience.
Crave Online: A lot of crazy action going on?
Julie Benz: A lot of action, a lot of eye candy. The men in that movie are so smoking hot. I think every woman needs to go and see it just to watch the men.
Crave Online: Did you pull off the dark haired Italian look?
Julie Benz: I think so. I hope so. It was my first time doing an accent and it was very tough. I worked very hard at it. I had an amazing dialogue coach who was with me every moment. It was a great challenge but I hope I pulled it off.
Crave Online: Will the comic book fans be happy?
Julie Benz: Yes. Yes, definitely.
Crave Online: Well, they trust you.
Julie Benz: I hope they trust me.
Crave Online: When do you start Dexter Season 3?
Julie Benz: We start in two weeks.
Crave Online: How many scripts have you read?
Julie Benz: Absolutely none.
Crave Online: Not even the first?
Julie Benz: No, no. We don’t get that until right before. Just like all of these movies, our show is kept under wraps.
Crave Online: What do you know about what Rita will be going through?
Julie Benz: I know that I have to report on June 2nd. That's all I know.
Crave Online: Do you have any expectations?
Julie Benz: No, I just know it's going to be another great season. We have an amazing writing staff and I just believe that it's going to be another great season. That's all I expect.
Crave Online: What’s your character in Saw V?
Julie Benz: I play a woman named Brit and she is a real estate developer. I like to think of her as very career driven. She's a thoroughbred as far as her career is her life. That's about all I can say. It's such a great movie to be part of. For me, it was very psychologically disturbing. I was having nightmares while filming it. Not your usual actor nightmares about not knowing your lines or showing up naked on set, but about what was actually going on in the script. I mean, I think these movies, what makes them so great is they're not just like horror movies. I mean, they're psychologically terrifying. From the minute I read the script I was terrified. I think as an audience member and as a fan, I think the fans are going to go nuts for this one.
Crave Online: You have naked on the set dreams?
Julie Benz: Of course, who doesn't? I mean, it's that whole you show up naked and nobody can find your wardrobe and you don't know your lines. It's a typical actor dream.
Crave Online: What is the mood on a Saw set?
Julie Benz: On Saw, it's a great experience. The whole crew has been together for at least four of them if not all five of them. It's a very tight set. Everyone's very close and very supportive. It was really funny because the girl who did my hair, she had asked me, one of her questions was, "Have you ever done a movie like this?" I was like no. And she's like, "Interesting." When I started having nightmares, she's like, "It happens to everybody on their first one." But it's a very lighthearted set to be honest. Everybody’s very supportive and very jovial. Everyone's working hard and the newbie’s are getting freaked out.
Crave Online: Do you get as roughed up in Saw V as you did in Rambo?
Julie Benz: No. I don't think I could ever do a movie where I got as roughed up and dirty. And that was all real dirt. It's a dirty jungle. Thank God you couldn't smell any of us off screen because it was not pretty. If you thought we looked dirty, you should've smelled us. It was disgusting. We would all talk about how we'd get back to the hotel. I literally would have to take four showers just to get all the dirt off of me. I mean, it gets embedded in your hair and under your nails and in your skin, in areas of your body that you're just like, "I didn't know dirt could find its way in there."
Crave Online: Why not just leave it for the next day?
Julie Benz: No, because you stink so badly you can't. I would show up all so squeaky clean in the morning, and it was like just to get dirty again. That was not pleasant. Plus, I was covered from head to toe in 100% Deet because the bugs were so bad, the mosquitoes were so bad. It was either doing that or taking Malaria pills. Malaria pills are not fun to take.
Crave Online: And Saw is in a major city.
Julie Benz: We shoot in Toronto. Same with The Punisher, we shot in Montreal. It's a whole different experience when you're working in a controlled environment on a soundstage in a beautiful city. I think one of the reasons why Rambo is so successful and why this one was so successful was we were out in the jungle. We were basically. The conditions were not pleasant at all. My trailer was like a bomb shelter from 1962. The conditions were really tough on set but it kind of added that element of like we're really in this for good. We're all in the trenches here.
Crave Online: Do you have any scenes with Tobin Bell?
Julie Benz: You know what? I don't want to reveal too much. Just put it this way. I've met him. I'll leave it at that. He's amazing. He's brilliant. I think the whole cast is really great. I was so impressed with especially in Saw IV, all the scenes between Tobin and Betsy [Russell]. I think they did an amazing job.
Crave Online: How does that compare to the tone of Dexter?
Julie Benz: See, I'm not involved in any of that, that aspect of Dexter. I'm the warmth, I'm the heart, I'm the home life of Dexter. So I'm not really involved in a lot of the psychological death. I'm not involved in the blood. I'm involved in the family life. It is very different for me.
Crave Online: Have you seen the Rambo Blu Ray yet?
Julie Benz: I have not. I heard it's great.
Crave Online: Are you ready to see yourself get roughed up in hi def?
Julie Benz: Oh, you know, I get to see myself in hi def every week on Dexter, so I've already unfortunately had that experience.
Crave Online: You don't like it?
Julie Benz: You know what, it is what it is. You see everything so you don't get to hide behind too much makeup these days when you're shooting in hi def.
Crave Online: Well, there's a shot of you in the rain where you look very pretty.
Julie Benz: Oh, thank you.
Crave Online: What has been the reaction to you in a Rambo movie?
Julie Benz: Everyone was very excited about it. I think for me it was such an honor and a thrill to be a part of such an iconic franchise and to work opposite Sylvester Stallone. To star opposite a film icon was really an honor for me. And also, I had never imagined I'd be in an action movie so it was a physically challenging role and it was so much fun to be a part of and to do and to be the only actress in the movie and have to kind of man up and deal with the rigors of shooting on location in the jungles of Thailand. It's tough.
Crave Online: Did it open any new doors for you?
Julie Benz: Oh, definitely. Since then, I finished shooting the Punisher 2: War Zone as well as Saw V which are all action genre related movies and all Lionsgate movies. It definitely opened doors for me. It's given me a higher profile and it also changed my life on a spiritual level. I do a lot of work for the U.S. Campaign for Burma because of my experience with the movie. And I've become very involved in what's going on over in that part of the world.
Crave Online: That's great. What are some things our readers could do to help that cause?
Julie Benz: You can check out uscampaignforburma.org and sign the petition. They are trying to raise a million voices to speak out against what's going on in Burma with the military government and the mass genocide that's been going on. They're trying to free Aung San Suu Kyi who's the elected leader of the people. She's been under house arrest for over 19 years and she's the only Nobel Peace Prize Winner who is under house arrest. You can also go to burmaitcantwait.org and they have in the month of May, they were running 30 PSAs with different celebrities, everybody from Will Ferrell to Jennifer Aniston, Stallone, myself, Jason Biggs and Ellen Page. It's all very informative about what's going on over in that part of the world. They're very creative public service announcements that help inform you and teach you about what is going on in Burma and why we need to take a stand against human rights violation.
Crave Online: All the deleted scenes were your big speeches. Were they harder to memorize or perform?
Julie Benz: Oh my God, no, no. For me, it was finding that balance between being impassioned about what it was I was talking about but also not coming off preachy because I think it's such an important message. Stallone actually, there will be another DVD release this summer of the movie and it's entitled John Rambo, that will include all of the scenes in the movie. All the proceeds from the sale of that DVD will be going to help the Burmese refugees. It's especially important because of what happened with the cyclone recently. It just devastated the country. But it really for me, it was such a great character to play. To play somebody who really believes in bettering the world and being an activity, she was putting her life in danger going in there. This is a woman with amazing courage.
Crave Online: Are there more deleted scenes for the John Rambo cut?
Julie Benz: I think it's going to be a different cut altogether. It's like a more romanticized version of the movie. You're going to really get to see the heart of John Rambo and where this man is in his life and in a way, why Sarah was able to influence him to take them into Burma. You're going to see a better understanding of the characters and what drives them. The original cut is great. It's an action movie, but there is a little bit missing, at least for me, and I'm such a romantic. I'm such a girl that of course I'm like, "The heart is missing." But that's just because I think everything should be romantic. I'm not saying romantic as in love interest romantic. That's not it at all. When I refer to romantic and romance, I mean more of the heart of the characters, more of the sensitive side.
Crave Online: That sounds awesome too.
Julie Benz: Yes. Any time you shoot any movie, there's always different ways the movie could have been edited and put together and created. We had over a million feet of film on Rambo. You had to make a 90 minute movie. You can't put everything in. That's why I love the idea of doing different cuts because then you
