Exclusive Interview with  for Riddick
Interview By Jamie Ruby
Written By Jamie Ruby

Recently released on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD, the third installment of the Riddick film franchise finds the title character (Vin Diesel) trapped on a sun-scorched planet, battling a new group of bounty hunting mercenaries, as well as deadly aliens.

One of the mercs, who vows to bring back Riddick's head in a box, is Santana, played by Jordi Mollà, who recently talked to Jamie Ruby of SciFi Vision in an exclusive interview about the film.

The actor talked about how he developed the character of Santana for the film. "I met the director, David Twohy, and that was months before we started shooting, and I didn't read the script at that point. I had to wait like three months until they made the real offer.

"In the meantime, I watched the two first movies to have a taste of it, and at the end of the day when I started shooting, I kind of forgot the two movies and read the script and said, "Ok, this is what I'm going to do." My idea was to make a grounded role in a science fiction movie. For me, when I saw the first images of Riddick, it looked like a western, and that was my idea when I started making the movie. Forget that this is a science fiction movie, because all that in a way affects you. You're surrounded by green screen and strange weapons and stuff like that, and all of that affects you. And I didn't want to play like a robot or that kind of thing in a science fiction movie. I wanted to play a real guy who smokes a cigarette when he wants to, and a guy who spits on the floor, and he could be wearing a pair of jeans. So my idea was to make an earthy performance, which I think the audience liked. You know, a funny guy who lets himself be punched by a beautiful girl."

The scene where Mollà was punched by costar Katee Sackhoff was quite memorable both to watch and to film. "I always get hurt when I have some action scenes. I'm kind of bad with action scenes, and I always want to have a stunt[man] to cover me, and for this one I didn't have one, but the action scene that I had with Kate, she's so strong that she really hurt me. Because I was on top of her, and with just a simple movement of her hips, I was flying, and I knocked my head on the floor...She's so strong she can't control her strength."

Mollà also talked about the scene where he wrestles the jackal. "The jackal [scene] I did by myself, but there was a stunt there for a couple of shots. Basically it was me all the time...For close shots they built the jackal, but obviously the jackal wasn't moving, but it was very effective, you know, it was like in the old movies, when you get the animal and the actor gives life to the animal, but the animal is totally just a piece of hair and makeup stuff.

"I really liked the mix between giving life to the jackal and then the guys with the computers who bring all this life and strength to the animal. It was pretty interesting because I only shot two shots with the fake animal and I thought, how are they going to do the rest?"

The actor also worked with green screen on the film. "I remember I shot a movie in green screen years ago and it was a nightmare, because when you're on a set with green screen all the time, when you close your eyes, you see everything green. It's like a color that follows you everywhere, because it's so intense, this green.

"So I was concerned being for eight weeks in a green huge massive studio shooting, but since we shot it in Canada and it was super extremely cold outside, I forgot totally about the green color. I thought if we had to shoot outside we'd be dead in one second. So it was good because it was very warm, and outside it was freezing."

As Santana, Mollà carried weapons in Riddick, which he isn't always comfortable with. "These people, they train people with guns, and they do it so seriously. I'm not violent at all, so [I] get a little bit stressed about, is this going to fire for real or what? Because they explain it to you so seriously, but of course it's their job; they want everybody to be safe...but I'm not a gun guy; I'm not violent, so I just try to do my best."

One of the scenes that stands out in the film to many people, is Santana's gruesome death scene. Throughout the film, Santana had threatened that he would cut off Riddick's head and put it in a box. In Mollà's final scene, Riddick, with his arms chained, flips a machete with his foot and sends it at Santana, which slices his head off at the jaw, which then falls into the box at Santana's feet. Mollà talked about how the scene was filmed. "It was pretty clear how the director wanted to do it. It was basically three shots one with the [knife] flying, one of me where the camera comes to me like if it were the knife, and then the rest was a prosthetic, so it was pretty simple. It was really, really effective, because the prosthetic was done so well that everybody in the theater was like, "Whoa, what was that?!""

You can watch Jordi Mollà in Riddick, out now on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD.