By: Izumi Hasegawa February 9, 2014
Yes, there is a queen bee in every high school, but at St. Vladimir’s Academy (a.k.a. the Vampire Academy), we have a vampire princess! Lucy Fry plays Vasilisa “Lissa” Dragomir, who is a Moroi (vampire) and the last of the royal Dragomir family, a princess. Vampire Lissa has a very warm heart but she doesn’t have any ambition to lead people. And she has her best friend/guardian Rose, who is the heroine of this film, played by Zoe Deutch. Are they good friends off screen? What does Lucy like about her character? And we got the inside story about the kissing scene with Dominic Sherwood and also what Danila Kozlovsky was like on set! Plus, she answers some questions you guys wanted us to ask her!
Q: Did you do anything together off set with Zoey Deutch?
Yeah, we did actually. One of the really fun things is that Zoey is really into fashion and she took me shopping. It was the first time that I sort of went shopping with a girl for fun. I know it’s weird. In America, I think you grow up and it’s a thing that you do. I grew up not really doing that. We would kind of go to the beach and go surfing or go hiking. It was more of an active outdoor kind of lifestyle. So yeah, it was really fun to learn to play with clothes more and she’s really good at it. So it was really fun to learn that. And she’s such a fun person to be around. She’s so hilarious and playful and really loving and sensitive.
Q: What did you like about your character?
I love her heart. I think that’s the center of Lissa. She’s really loving and vulnerable and fragile in a lot of ways but she also has a deeper strength. She’s a leader, even though she is naturally shy. And one of the things that I loved about this film, her development in the first film and the first book is that she loses control of it. She wants so much to protect Rose and to be OK in this crazy high school world, that she uses her powers to manipulate everyone around her and in doing that she loses herself. And she needed to lose control completely in order to find a balance at the end. And I really enjoyed playing that arc of craziness in order to get to the peace at the end.
Q: Vampire Academy is like your own high school experience?
No. I wasn’t really popular or nerdy. Well, I guess I was nerdy. I was a drama nerd. That’s true [laughs] and I loved sports. I kind of just threw myself into a lot of activities and spent a lot of my time playing water polo and hockey and basketball and doing all the school plays that I could get my hands on and theater outside of school. I played bass guitar. Just more doing stuff. I think that I was so scared of the world of popularity and girls that I just hid from it by doing activities.
Q: Lissa or Lyla (from Mako Mermaids) — which character do you identify yourself with more?
I think I actually identify more with Lissa, in that everything that she does comes from a place of love but she struggles in order to stay herself in a world that is crazy and where everything is under threat. She loses control at a certain point in the film when she decides she really wants to protect Rose and use her powers to manipulate other people in order to feel safe. And I think that is a really interesting thing in everyday life — people sort of struggling to be themselves and yet to not feel vulnerable to the world and that balance of being honest and feeling secure. It was a really, really interesting character for me to play in order to find that balance. And I think that everyone will relate to that internal struggle of wanting to relax and be yourself and also how to manage those days when you just feel out of control.
Q: Did you read the books before you got the script?
When I first read it, I loved it because of the friendship between Rose and Lissa. I think that a story about female friendship is really exciting and powerful. When I found out that I got the part, I read the book about six times. I probably over-prepared for the role by just reading it over and over and over. I’m up to book three now. I didn’t want to get ahead of my character. I just wanted to exist in the world of the first book. And then when we finished I wanted to read the second one so hopefully when we get to make the second movie, I can get that story arc internalized. But I’m so addicted now that I can’t stop so I’m probably going to finish it pretty soon.
Q: What kind of music do you like to listen to?
I like sort of folk music. I go to this festival every year in Australia called Woodford Folk Festival and that’s where I delve into my music happy place, which is sort of Gotye and Matt Corby, and other Australian artists like Angus & Julia Stone, Cat Empire and Babylon Circus — really just fun crazy music I love.
Q: How was working with Dominic Sherwood? Your kissing scene with him was easy?
On the second day of filming, we had our first kissing scene and that was really awkward of course. We were like, “Hi. Nice to meet you. OK…” [Laughs] But it was good to get it over with straight away. So it was like, “OK we know what that’s like. That’s fine.” We’re really goofy with each other and it was a really easy relationship in that we make each other laugh a lot and don’t take anything too seriously. So that made it fun.
Q: How about working with Danila Kozlovsky?
He’s amazing. He’s such a good person. He’s just fun and goofy and playful and deep as well. He’s such a great actor. We were all in love with Danila. We all want to marry him.
Q: He is really the funniest one?
I remember this one time we were waiting in a room in a school and it was just such a boring room. And then randomly he saw this book, which was like the biggest book you’ve ever seen. It was half a meter almost — this massive book. And he just pulls this book down and starts goofing around pretending as though he’s just reading it casually and walking around with this book and doing this whole skit show with the book. He’s that kind of guy who could just make anything funny.
Q: We need to know this, we heard Danila calls you “Royal Highness” and your response is “Yes, my guardian” off the set. Is that true?
Yes. That was true.
