"Selfie" cast talks bromance on set

Writer: Florey DM

"Selfie" cast Scott Burden (left) and Richard Herrera.

Previously, we brought to you an exclusive interview with the director and producer of the Singaporean horror-thriller, "Selfie".

Now we have a round of interview with the stars, Richard Herrera and Scott Burden, as Cinema Online recently had the chance to talk with the actors.

28-year-old Scott Burden, who studied network engineering but later decided to pursue an acting career, plays Detective Paul in "Selfie". The half-Singaporean Chinese, half-American never did live in America, growing up instead around Asia including Hong Kong, China, Brunei and Singapore.

Former MTV VJ Richard Herrera, meanwhile, plays the main character Detective James. The half-Filipino, half-American will also be seen next in Hollywood production "Equals", which stars "Mad Max Fury Road" actor Nicholas Hoult and actress Kristen Stewart, who shot to fame with the "Twilight" franchise.

Let's take a look what the duo has to say about playing their roles, their bromance on set and who they think the killer is.

(From left) Richard Herrera, Scott Burden and director Mikael Teo.

Cinema Online: Did director Mikael Teo personally pick the two of you to play your roles?

Richard: Mikael is pretty persuasive, he's a friend of mine. He has a lot of self-belief in his nightmares; he gets a lot of bad dreams [laughs]. So I think he wanted to translate some of these dreams into a film, went out and found the best looking psychos in Singapore and put them all in a movie. He needed a couple of wholesome looking guys to do the investigating work and that's where we come in.

Scott: Same here for me, I know Mikael from working together on previous projects. So he approached me with the script. I said it sounded good. I like playing goofy, funny guys.

Was it hard to portray your characters?

Richard: For me, it was quite difficult, it's the opposite of the way I am. I'm usually wild and, like, bouncing around all the time. In it, I had to be very focused, very calculating and serious.

Scott: For me, it was okay. I kind of played it like I had a man-crush on Rich, so it mimics real life. It translates onto the screen, not too bad.

Richard: We became bros during the whole thing. We had this 'bromance' going in.

Scott: Yeah, bromance. Carla wanted to join in but we said no.

Richard Herrera played James in "Selfie".

Scott Burden played Paul in "Selfie".

It must have been fun filming it then? Or was it too intensive as it was an intense psychological movie?

Scott: The filming was really intensive. We weren't all there at the same time, watching all the different scenes being filmed. So piecing it all together in our heads, we relied a lot on the script. But visual aspects work better. It's pretty intense I would say.

Previously Mikael told us everyone would have a different interpretation of "Selfie", care to share what's yours?

Richard: I think movies are best when everyone is confused, including the actors. It's good when you come out of a film, you turn to your friend and go "what just happened?" That's sort of like how we filmed it, because we had to do certain parts way out of order. So we had no idea how we think it would be assembled at the end. This was the first for us seeing it, it sort of makes sense now. Not 100 percent but I think, we'll go back and watch it again and maybe pick up some things that we missed before.

Scott: I think the main premise is supposed to be you don't know who the killer is, because you're taking selfies, which is a vain act about yourself so when you focus too much on yourself, things happen to you.

Richard: I like what Mikael tried to do with it, telling a story of how we are as a society now and how this thing of self-obsession really warps our whole society in a way. Sometimes we have a hard time separating reality from fantasy a lot.

The Singaporean produced movie, "Selfie", played in Cambodian cinemas last June and will be showing in Malaysian cinemas this 27 August.