AUSTRALIAN ALIEN INVASION FILM “OCCUPATION” STREAMING NOW (INTERVIEW)

ACTRESS STEPHANY JACOBSEN

Born in Hong Kong and raised in Australia, Stephany Jacobsen made her debut on American Television as the lead role of Kendra Shaw in “Razor,” the highly successful feature-length installment of the critically acclaimed Universal/Sci-Fi Channel series “Battlestar Galactica.”  She’s amassed a fan base in the U.S. , drawing critical praise as Doctor Lauren Yung on the return of the series drama “Melrose Place.”  She also starred in the Syfy Network movie “Three Inches.” Most recently Stephany had guest-starring roles on “Hawaii 5-0,” “Two and a Half Men,” “NCIS,” and had a recurring role on ABC’s “Revenge.”  She plays Amelia in OCCUPATION, which is in theaters and on VOD and Digital HD now.

AMFM: You guys just had your Australian premier. How did that go?

Stephany Jacobsen: Fantastic. It turned out to be a bigger event than I thought it would bre. Australian premieres are not as grandiose as L.A. premieres, but this was pretty close the turnout was great and the response we got from the audience was great. Everyone’s in great spirits following.

AMFM: Tell me a little bit about your character.

Stephany: I play Amelia, and at the start of the movie she is a waitress helping her mother run a local cafe, and she’s a law student engaged to be married. Over the course of the movie she transforms into a warrior and one of the leaders of the human resistance.

AMFM: It seems that you have a lot of experience with characters that become warriors, you were also in “Battlestar Galactica”, so that’s good for women these days. In a lot of film and television women are getting to be the center of stories more and more. I was surprised you had strong leading males around you but your character became central and kept everyone around you together. Do you have any experience from your life that helps you be able to carry this transformation off?

Stephany: Well, Amelia and I, we’re kind of the same in that regard. We’re both very protective. But I think what made it easy for me in that the way that she cares for the characters in the movie. The fact that the way she came to perceive the characters in the movie was the same way I came to feel about my castmates. You spend six weeks working alongside people, and you’re doing long shoots and night shoots with practical effects. You’re fighting wars together. You do bond, you become a tribe. I feel like we became a tribe on set like the way they became a tribe in the movie and I felt the same protectiveness to my tribe like Amelia felt towards her tribe in the movie.

AMFM: You’ve done film and television here as well as Australia.

Stephany: I’m an Australian citizen, but I moved here in 2007 after Battlestar Galactica. ‘

AMFM: How did that come about?

Stephanie: Very organically. It was one of those things that happened very very fast and serendipitously. What happened was I had tested for The Bionic Woman in 2007 but didn’t get that, but this role came up a little bit later. They sent me the audition and they booked me for that off the tape. So I went to Vancouver I shot “Razor,” I went to LA for what was just supposed to be a week, and take a few meetings. Then a week became a month, then two weeks after I came back to Sydney I booked another pilot, and went back. I ended up on a holding deal with the ABC Network, and then I got Terminator. It was like one thing just rolled into the next.

AMFM: Are there any similarities or differences that you felt as an actress between the American market and the Australian Market, in the way that film and television is shot?

Stephany: Yeah, there’s a prodigious difference. There’s almost no similarities. It’s almost like everything the American market responds to the Australian market doesn’t, and vice versa.

AMFM: Can you give me an example of that?

Stephany: I can still use OCCUPATION as an example in that it is something very very rare to come out of Australia. There’s been one, maybe two that you can arguable draw similarities to, but strictly speaking, you’ve never had an alien invasion sci-fi movie come out of Australia before. In a lot of ways, even though we all speak in our Australian accents, this movie has a very American feel to it. I actually think that Luke has very American sensitibilities as a director.

It’s one of those things that you can exemplify it based on personal experiences as well, for me I really only did two jobs in Australia. I did a soap opera when I was very young, and then I did another series for the same network, which was very short lived. A few years later, I feel that America is much more ready to embrace ethnicity, and do away with gender restrictions.

AMFM: There’s still a lot of gender restriction in Australia for strong female roles?

Stephany: Ok, this is the only thing that I’ve done here since 2005.

AMFM: This is kind of a different time in film and television from 2007.

Stephany: What I really meant by that is that there are certainly productions that are female led here, and there are certainly strong female characters here, but they’re not doing Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel, and Jessica Jones yet.

AMFM: So the roles are home-grown vs. universal, world-wide characters?

Stephany: A hundred home-grown stories to one universal, world-wide themes. Having said that, I’m not putting down the Australian industry in any way, because beautiful, beautiful film and television comes out of here, it’s just that the diversity of content isn’t the same.

AMFM: What are you looking at for the future? I know that OCCUPATION has already been greenlit for a sequel, which is amazing. Is that your next project or something in-between.

Stephany: We start that in a few weeks, so I literally don’t have time. there is nothing in-between. That’s going to take me well into the fall, after that I’m going to be really tired and I’m just going to call it a year.

AMFM: Tell me about working with Luke, he’s fairly new on the scene as a director.

Stephany: I love working with Luke, I think his newness, in the best way possible…fiorst of all I think that he was always going to be a director. Whatever he did prior I think he always would have ended up a director, it’s who he is as a being. He’s a very even-tempered…he does not seem…If someone walked onto his set, and you said this is a new director, it’s his second movie, it would have been disconcerting. He’s very very even-keeled. He’s very clear about what he wants and is very firm in his vision. But one of the things I liked most about him is he is truly and authentically open to collaboration. He doesn’t have any ego.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column]