Dominic Purcell On ‘Assault On Wall Street,’ Going Broke, Uwe Boll [VIDEO EXCLUSIVE]

When I did this movie I was broke anyway, which was ironic and I had to do this movie regardless of whether it would be good or bad. Fortunately, it was very good and I was lucky. I think I came in to the movie pretty scared anyway because I was in a really bad place financially. I’d been experiencing a lot of fear with being broke because I have an ex-wife, four kids and I have houses and stuff, mortgages to pay and I didn't have any money. I was attached to a big movie that fell through a few weeks before this one started shooting and I was like, 'Fuck, I've gotten fucked.' Yeah it came through, so I came in with that kind of energy anyway so I think that certainly got me to places pretty quickly.

You know I’m very ignorant. I was very ignorant with all that stuff because I don’t watch news outlets. I don’t read a whole lot of current affairs and stuff like that. I don’t know why, I just don’t. But my business manager was telling me that stuff had happened on Wall Street and I was aware, semi-aware, of what was going on obviously and since then I've obviously I watched documentaries, but I was affected by that in that I bought two condominiums for a reasonable sum of money at the height of the market. I bought them just in 2008. Then the crash happened. Then my condominiums had ceased in having any value whatsoever. So some prick on Wall Street knew that the crash was happening and he didn’t call me to warn me to say, 'Listen, don’t buy your condominiums because the ass is about to fall off of the economy.' So that prick on Wall Street, I hold it against that prick on Wall Street, definitely.

Ah well, absolutely it could happen. We see it happening in society today, all these horrific shootings. I don’t agree with it, but it’s reality of our society definitely.

The most difficult scene was the church scene. I had to cry, man. It’s always, it’s always difficult crying on screen because sometimes you can do it and sometimes you can’t and when you can’t do it you look like an idiot. You’re just faking all these dry tears and sometimes you do land in an emotional spot and then all of a sudden the tears and everything just starts breaking down, and then you start crying and then you start thinking these terrible things. I happened on this particular day, to think dark heavy thoughts and I was there and it worked. But then afterwards you just feel like a fucking whore because you just feel like you just opened your legs to society and it always makes me feel dirty after I have done it because I’m using experiences in my own life to get emotional and you feel like you’re somehow cheapening memories and you’re taking advantage of people you love somehow.

He’s a regular guy that snapped. There’s nothing psychopathic about him at all in any shape or form. He is just, he’s a figment of someone’s imagination that actually goes ahead and does something. I mean there are people out there who want to shoot people. We all have gone, 'God I’d like to kill that bastard!' or you know, do something, and he’s that guy that just fucking snaps and says, 'Fuck it, I'm going to take care of these motherfuckers. He’s just that guy that does it and he does. In his own thinking, he has justification for what he did. I mean, he shot these people because he sees them as scums, as serpents, vultures, who’ve taken advantage of innocent people. He’s just like, 'Fuck you, you’re not getting away with it.'

Uwe is awesome. I’d never heard of Uwe before I did the movie. If I had heard of him before, I probably wouldn’t have done the movie. Well, I would’ve done it actually because I was broke, so I would’ve had to, but I would have been in one of those situations where I’d be like, 'Ugh, fuck.' But he’s really smart, I mean he’s a doctorate of literature. He’s one of those guys that is so intelligent. I call him the mad hidden genius. And we’re very similar, which is scary because sometimes I’m like, 'Fuck, you sound just like me,' and I’m like, 'Am I that bad? No, I’m not like him. I’m not as bad as him.' But he’s good in the sense that he trusts his actors. I mean he literally, he’ll have his laptop and soccer will be streaming on his laptop and he’ll be like, 'Ok, action!' And he’d watch the soccer match and then he’d look up, and then the producer would tap him on the shoulder and say, 'Hey, cut cut!” and then Uwe would say, 'Cut cut cut!' That’s just an example of it. He’s just one of those guys that—yeah he’s good.

I’ve done two great movies. I’ve done a movie called 'The Frozen' with Sturla Gunnarsson. I just shot that in Sudbury, Canada. It’s a father-son story. My father was a genetically engineered soldier who raped my mother, who was a scientist in the sixties or seventies. I’m half engineered and I grow up and want to track my father down, who happens to have fallen in some crevasse in some snow land in the Tundra somewhere. And then it’s all about me finding, tracking my father. It’s a father-son kind of thing. You know, I bring my father back to life and he escapes, and then it becomes 'Mad Max,' it’s a father-son thing. It’s very deep, quirky, 'Mad Max,' action kind of film. It’s beautifully shot. Sturla won an academy award or was nominated for an award for a documentary he did a couple of years back. I’d say I’m lucky to work with these great great directors and that’s for Sony, Sony studio. I’m doing another one for Sony, I think called 'The Fighting Man,' a boxing movie with Damien Lee. I’ve got a good home at Sony. The crew at Sony has kind of taken me under the wing a bit and I’ve done movies with them and I’ve got some good stuff coming down the line.