EXCLUSIVE: Sam Page Opens Up About Creating Relationships, Crafting Characters, & More in New Movie, Brazen

Brazen is now out on Netflix and we got the chance to celebrate the release with one of the stars of the movie, Sam Page. Based off the Nora Roberts book, Brazen Virtue, Sam plays our leading male, D.C. Investigator and Grace’s (Alyssa Milano), Ed.

During our chat with Page, we talked about what brought him to the movie, if he read the book, making the character his own, and so much more. Check out what he had to say below.

For you, what brought you to this movie and made you want to be in it?

“Well, I had worked with Monika Mitchell, the wonderful, wonderful director of Brazen, before. And I was up in Vancouver where she lives, working on something else and we met up for lunch and she said she had been working on developing this project for a while and that they were getting into the casting stages. She pitched the idea to me and I said, first of all, I think that’s very exciting and second of all, I know who Nora Roberts is, and I know what a big deal adapting her books is. Also, what a big deal it is to do a thriller for Netflix. And how much I would really love to work with Monika again, jump at that opportunity. So I said, ‘Wow, this checks all the boxes. Let’s do this, it sounds great.'”

Did you read the book after you got the part or did you just stick to what was written in the script?

“I think the script filled it out enough for me, who the character was. I didn’t want to because, having read it, in reading it, I was able to come up with the character or my take. A fairly clear idea of who I thought the character was, make every scene my own, and for it to make sense of the narrative. So I thought, I didn’t want to muddy the waters. So I didn’t read the book.

I felt like there was enough there in the script, in the dynamics of his relationships with his partner and with Grace and with the captain. We also, were able to find some fun relationship stuff there too, with all those dynamics. And we were encouraged, from the beginning we were very encouraged to do that by Monika.”

Why did you want to make Ed your own?

“I wanted to make him my own because I think, right off the bat the physical description of him was already a little bit away from me. It sounded like he was a giant of a man with ginger beard and hair and stuff. And I thought, ‘Well, I can come up with a beard, but that’s about as close as I’m going to get.’ I really wanted to do something that could make it or I could make the character my own, because I think the audience would prefer to have something organic happening on screen instead of me trying to be a character to meet an ideal.”

You can read the rest of our chat below the jump. For those who checked out the new movie, what did you think?

Photo credit: Sergei Bachlakov/Netflix

You shot the movie during COVID and I have to imagine that trying to film a romantic thriller during COVID doesn’t leave much room to crafting and creating the relationships as easy as it once was, pre-pandemic.

“It was a little more difficult. I had worked a couple times before this, in the pandemic and one of which was kind of early on so people were very scared and you were really not allowed to talk to anybody. I remember one thing I worked on, I didn’t even see the director’s face the entire time. So if I saw her today, I wouldn’t know who she was, having worked with her for a month.

And then there was the thing I shot, literally two days before we started filming Brazen, I was finishing something else in Quebec. And Quebec was much more of a hotspot for COVID for Canada. So the rules and laws even, were different there, as far as what could be done. And we had to do a kissing scene in Quebec. At that point, you could not legally kiss on camera so you had to have these rubber prosthetics on our face. And one person had to have it on and, depending on which camera angle, the breathing tube coming out, it looked like a person with no face and a big, huge egg for a nose. Or no mouth. And it was so bizarre.

We didn’t have that because that was very unique to Quebec. We were given some space. And actually, things were starting to calm down and the numbers were fairly contained in certain areas and enclaves throughout Vancouver so we felt very safe. Plus the protocols that were in place, Netflix were the people who came up with the protocols that the entire industry was following because they were the most proactive from the beginning, of trying to figure out how to reconvene production. So it was a well-oiled machine, as far as how to keep everyone safe, cast and crew alike.”

So how were you and Milano able to create your characters’ relationship during a pandemic?

“Alyssa and I had a lot of time to talk ahead of time. Like I was saying, I was shooting in Quebec before I went to Montreal, but I also had to spend two weeks in quarantine in Quebec, as we were all doing prep for Brazen. So in that prep time, Alyssa and I were on the phone a lot, talking about the characters and trying to figure out what angles they were going to come at each other and how they would align their abilities to solve the case. And where it would be nice to have friction and where it would be nice to have attraction and where to let those things come into the scenes. And after that, it’s just… Alyssa’s just a magical person to work with. It’s all right there in front of you. You just have to look there and talk to her and it makes the scenes come alive.”

Do you think that two week period helped you fall easier into your characters once filming began?

“Yeah, it really did. I think our first scene together was outside of her sister’s funeral, which was a hard day for her to start. No, no, no, she started the day before that. But yeah, I do think that we did tee it up really well in that two weeks of having the time to be able to focus on the task at hand and kind of craft it. Then we’d have calls with Monika together and separately, and Monika was very hands on, but also gave us a lot of, gave us some of the keys to the scenes, like where she wanted us to get to. But also said, ‘If something else happens and it’s great, we’re going to use it. I just want just to feel a chemistry. And then we’ll play with that, we’ll fine-tune that on the day.’ But I felt like that showed up when we were working.”

It is safe to say you had fun filming the movie?

“I guess maybe sometimes you’re supposed to be miserable when you’re working and it’s supposed to read on camera that you’re going through something, but we had a blast. We had a really fun time making this and not just on screen, but behind. We had a lot of time to sit around. It was a big production, bigger than I’m used to. The lighting setups and the turnarounds and… took a lot longer than I’m used to, we did fewer pages than I’m used to so… Pre-COVID that would’ve been, one of my favorite things is just to sit around and, and chat with the crew and chat with the creatives and you get to know everybody and really… It’s always more fun to shoot on a set that you feel at home on”.

For my final questions for you, what are you hoping fans get from the movie?

“I’m hoping that fans that didn’t read the book want to read the book, fans that did read the book want to see the next movie.”