Josh Cruddas stars as Ben Bertolucci in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City and he'll also appear in 2022's Moonfall. Welcome to Raccoon City is a reboot of the iconic Resident Evil film franchise and adapts the first two games in the series faithfully for the first time. Moonfall is the latest disaster movie from Roland Emmerich, director of Independence Day.
Screen Rant sat down with Josh Cruddas to discuss both movies and the actor revealed how he got over his fears of being on set with life-life zombies, details about his Moonfall character, and how both experiences helped him release his debut pop album.
Screen Rant: So you're going to be in Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. Were you familiar with the games or the previous movies before signing on?
Josh Cruddas: I was familiar with both. I always say that I was too scared to play the games as a kid because I get scared by Peppa Pig a little [laughs]. So I was trying to get be really brave before I shot the movie. And I played a bit of it - it's such a good game. It's so scary, like all of them are. B
But the first and second ones, which this movie is based on, [are] just so scary. And so good. And the movies too, are something obviously completely different than what we're doing with this new one. But they're so great. So action-packed. And there's such great, crazy set pieces and stuff. It was very exciting to learn I was going to be a part of this pretty storied franchise. I was pretty stoked about that.
Your character, Ben Bertolucci is major in the game series. And even though the actual movie takes place in 1998, as far as his conspiracy theories and things like that go, there's definitely some modern relevance there. So what was it like tapping into that?
Josh Cruddas: It's tough because right now there are lots of conspiracy theories floating about some truly crazy things in our world. But I tried to lead Ben and his ideology away from that because his real motivation is care and concern about what's happening in this small town in America. In the games, it's kind of from an outside perspective where he gets airlifted into this situation and dropped into some pretty nasty stuff.
But in the movie, we wanted him to really care about the people of this town and to be actually concerned about their plight and what's really going on and how this giant cooperation was kind of playing God in the worst way with these real people in this community. And so I hope he is a pretty sympathetic character because he's sympathetic in the games - he clearly wants to help. He's just being met with bad stuff at every turn. And certainly, that carried over from the games for sure.
Obviously, the previous Resident Evil movies were such big hits, but I think one of the things that fans of the franchise were really waiting for was this game accurate adaptation. And that's been talked about a lot as far as Welcome To Raccoon City - bringing that to life, not only visually, but even that horror vibe. What would what did that feel like on set?
Josh Cruddas: Yeah, I think you're right, it is definitely a vibe. The whole thing is a vibe. It matches the games, which is what Johannes [Roberts], the director, really, really wanted to do. He approached the source material of the games like a novel. And so we got the blueprints from Capcom for the sets and they're incredibly realistic. Too realistic. If you're scared like me, it's really scary. These locations you walk in, you're like, "Oh my god, am I gonna get bitten by a horde of zombies?" It's very, very well done.
And then in terms of how it's shot to the music - there's going to be a lot of people nodding in the theater, people who play this game will be like, "Okay, right, like they're getting the stuff right." It's cool to see because the original movies kind of went in a different direction. And these truly feel like a love letter to the games if you're someone who plays those games. And if you're someone like me, who's terrified of horror movies - I've been lucky to be in a few you know - I just read the scripts, of course. You know, you're making the movie and then at the end, you're still terrified. So it's really something else that's for sure.
Since you were familiar with the franchise, what was it like to walk onto that set and see Raccoon City and Spencer Mansion and all these things? What was that feeling for you?
Josh Cruddas: It's pretty surreal. You can tell when people care about something, right? When you're working on a movie where the people from every level, from the crew on the ground on the day to the people who have been planning this stuff in advance, you can tell when there's care being taken. And that is exactly what I felt. I've been lucky to work with a couple of producers on this movie before and they clearly were passionate about it. There's a level of care and so that was super cool to walk into. And then seeing the emblems of the Raccoon City Police Department on the ground. They went the full mile. And I think I hope people are gonna really, really love that.
You're also going to be in Moonfall from Roland Emmerich next year, can you tell me a little bit about your character in that movie?
Josh Cruddas: Yes. Well, Scrawny, as you may imagine, is someone who looks a lot like me. He's not a nice guy. He's a bad guy for sure. Like we can't deny it. But he kind of sabotages some really important plants that people on Earth have. Someone who I really admire, Michael Peña, who plays Tom in this movie, has this really life or death mission that they have to do on Earth whilst some crazy things are happening in space. And Scrawny is a guy who just finds a way to try to ruin those plans as much as possible, as best as he can. And he's with a crew of - we're all gingers, Kyle and Katy [Breier] and I are like ginger bad guys. And you know, they're really tough both of them and I just decided that I think Scrawny is just happy to be there, he's happy to be part of the team of horrible people.
It's gonna be a spectacular movie in IMAX and I'm freaking out because I'm a movie buff. Obviously. So to see my scrawny little face in IMAX is gonna be something that the world's not gonna want, but I do, so I'm very excited about that.
So Scrawny is a little bit more of a bad guy and then you've got Ben who is definitely more of a good guy. So how was it transitioning to that role with Moonfall and Raccoon City shooting so close together?
Josh Cruddas: Quite close together. That was a crazy period of time. At the same time that I was shooting Raccoon City, I was shooting another movie in another city. So it's going back and forth and then Moonfall happened right after that. I've been very lucky - I get to work a lot and I get to do a lot of fun things but I usually play horrible people and getting to play Ben was actually a bit of a treat because there is a real heart there and we want him to have a sense of humor too, which I think is important.
There's a real heart there, so going from playing him to playing this miscreant in Scrawny and then right after in a movie called Cascade I played an even more horrible person. So it's just like a staircase down to hell, I guess [laughs]. But yeah, it's always a treat; I love getting to play around with different vibes for sure.
Even the movies themselves - you're going from this super gritty, super dark horror movie with a lot of practical effects zombies to this CGI spectacle. What was that transition like from Resident Evil to a Roland Emmerich disaster flick?
Josh Cruddas: In Canada, we get to kind of do everything. We do movies that were made for three hot dogs and a sandwich and then we get to do movies that are made with $150 million like Roland's movie. We really wanted to make a lot of things look as real as possible on Raccoon City so it's a very practical movie in terms of the effects and the makeup and the special effects. It's all really, really cool. You could see it happening on the day like, "Oh, this is terrifying right now."
And then you go into Roland's world and everything is so meticulously planned. Like he showed us all of the pre-vis for all the visual effects and so we kind of know what's happening. But we got to be like, "Okay, we've got to be terrified later and act now. See the results later." So it's, it's definitely a cool transition. I think it's kept me on my toes.
Both situations are terrifying in their own unique way. You've got this super specific, in your face, zombie. And then you've got the green screen, moon falling literally onto Earth. Did you find overlap in just finding this fear within you when you're acting on both or do you have to go to different places as a performer?
Josh Cruddas: I always say to people that there's an innate terror that lives within me any day of the week, whether I'm just walking to get my groceries or whatever. I feel like I'm just so scared of horror movies. But I think it's an asset, for sure. I talk a lot about fear and how, unfortunately, fear as an actor holds you back. A lot of the time, it holds you back from making the choices you want to make whether you're auditioning or you're on a giant set like that. But especially for Moonfall, I could have very easily been swallowed alive by the scale and the scope of this movie. I've got to really actively try to not have that happen to really make sure that I'm playing around as much as I can and being like in it and taking chances and taking risks. I hope it paid off. We'll see in February.
But there's a real joy about that and it really has helped me. I'm releasing an album, my first album of pop music that I've been sitting on for a long, long time. And at the end of the day, I was like, "Why did it take me this time long to do this?" And it's because of that fear, right? You want things to be perfect and if people know me from something else then they're going to come into this world of this album - it's called Variety Show - and wanted to have people enjoy it. So there is that innate kind of terror that you do with anything artistic.
And then you just did that show for HBO Asia, Dream Raider, that you won the award for composing for?
Josh Cruddas: Well, I don't know if I won an award, but that would be nice. I've been very lucky to win some awards for composing. But yeah, I wrote the score to this show called Dream Raider on HBO Asia and that was - again, there was not too much time to be scared because of the turnaround time on these episodes. They're like, "Okay, we need the first four episodes and all the main themes done in three weeks before Christmas." And you know, it's a big sci-fi, flagship hour-long drama and there's no time to question, no time to do anything but follow your instinct. I think that really helped me with Variety Show, getting that out there and just being like, "Okay, this is something that I can do now." The fear is kind of gone a little bit.
