ABC Family’s The Cutting Edge: Fire & Ice Conference Call With Francia Raisa and Brendan Fehr Part 3

March 12, 2010 | by Disney Dreaming

Recently, we were involved in a conference call with the stars of the upcoming ABC Family Original Movie “The Cutting Edge: Fire & Ice” Francia Raisa and Brendan Fehr. You can read part 2 of the interview here.

The Cutting Edge: Fire & Ice airs on ABC Family on March 16th.

Q: Brendan, so you went from hockey in your personal life to figure skating with this movie. What was the level of difficulty for you?

Brendan: Pretty much as high as it gets, I suppose. Hockey is about getting low, lowering your center of gravity and getting wide so you can’t be knocked down or knocked off the puck. You don’t have to be graceful to be effective. Figure skating is just exactly the complete opposite. It’s get lean, get tall – and it’s not what I’m built to do. I don’t think I’ve done anything beautifully or gracefully in my entire life. That’s just not one of the skills or talents I was born with. Everything I do, it gets done, but not necessarily with an element of grace.

So the level of difficulty was pretty high and having absolutely no rhythm as well, as Francia can attest to, upped the stakes there for me. You do what you can. You work hard and you pointers and you get tips and you train and you do what you can. Then, the rest, you obviously leave up to editing and music and stunt doubles. But, you just have fun with it and you do the best you can with what you got and the time you have and then you hope the people in the editing room really like you and are interested in making you look good, which I think they actually did. I think I actually look like I know what I’m doing out there.

Q: Francia, you mentioned you ice skated before. What’s the toughest trick or jump that you can still do on ice?

Francia: I was 11 years old and at that time, and I was fearless. They told me to do a jump and I was thinking, “Okay, I’m going to do the highest jump I can do. I’m going to try to do it three hundred million times.” I was so fearless and the older I got, I don’t know what happened, the more fear I grew, I guess. So, when it came back to going on the ice, I was able to do the mechanics, but I did not even want to attempt to try to do the actual things. I was pretty much at the beginner level, still at the kiddie level, but I can do mechanics of some other stuff like, what was it Brendan, toe loops and—

Brendan: Toe loops and axles. I still don’t know the difference between some of them. I know what a toe loop is, but I still don’t know the different between an axel and sow cow.

Francia: Well, axel, I think I know the mechanics, but I can’t really do it. It’s more me standing up and doing it in place, rather than skating because then I got scared.

Brendan: The waltz jump, that’s the only one that I can distinguish for the most part—the toe loop and the waltz jump—

Francia: Believe it or not, Brendan was better at doing a toe loop than I was.

Brendan: Yes, I can do a toe loop—it doesn’t look good, but it’s a toe loop.

Francia: I fell on the toe loop.

Q: Francia, since you play the bad girl on Secret Life, what was it like having your costar be labeled the bad boy?

Francia: It was nice for a change. It was because I got to be the good girl, but I missed it a bit. But, I got to have my little attitude, too, so it wasn’t that different. It was nice to have someone actually fight back with me and argue with me like Brendan’s character did. But, they didn’t let my tough side down too much in this character, so I was able to fight back. I guess considering the fact that he’s a bad boy and I am good girl, I’d be the favorite, but I don’t know. It was just fun and he did a good job at it.

Q: Brendan, I wanted to know what would attract a non-figure skating fan to this film?

Brendan: You obviously sell it on figure skating. It’s in the franchise of the Cutting Edge and that’s obviously where you’re going to end up is that some sort of championship and that’s what we’re geared towards. But ultimately this one—its legs are truly the relationship between James and Alex’s character. The figure skating almost serves as a backdrop to these two coming together, learning about each other, coming from different backgrounds and just figuring that out. It’s more about the relationship between the two and there are some great moments and there are some funny moments and there are some down and sad moments.

I think that’s what I enjoyed the most. The figure skating element is definitely there, but I think you’ll get a lot more out of it. It’s more about the banter between us two and there’s some pretty good banter in there. I think it would be if you enjoy that male, female, those differences and then obviously the differences you find in a partnership or a team sport, if you can in any way relate to those things, I think this is something you would enjoy. There’s definitely some funny moments in terms of miscommunication. I think there are some enjoyable moments and most of them take place outside of the actual figure skating.

Q: One more quick thing for you, you mentioned that it was tough getting into the figure skating. I just wanted to know about the scenes in the film where you’re learning to figure skate, how much of that is acting and how much of it is going to be real?

Francia: Our work is fairly real, but when it came to the stunts, the doubles took care of that.

Brendan: Yes, obviously, me and Francia are both okay, we can stand up on skates and skate backwards and do the turns. There’s a lot of general skating around the rink, getting prepared before doing jumps. That’s mostly us. We had done a lot of our training beforehand and got comfortable with that. Anything that has a significant element of skill involved is probably not us.

Q: Brendan, will we be seeing you on Bones again this season?

Brendan: I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening with my character, actually. I haven’t been told. It’s kind of the same situation I had with CSI in the sense that if the storyline happens to come about, they just give me a call a month in advance and say are you available and this is what we have going on. It comes out of the blue, so I haven’t been made aware of any future storylines, but I hope that would be the case. Hart Hanson has always told me that any time he can and any time it makes sense, he would love to have me on it. But it’s a two-hander. It’s definitely Bones and Booth and that’s what the show really is about, so it has to make sense to interject other characters in there. Hopefully they come across a storyline that makes sense, because I’d love to go back.

Q: With the movie title being Fire & Ice, what are your two personalities like? Which one of you is fire and which one of you is ice?

Francia: I think we have both elements in our personalities. We have each those qualities in our characters, I believe, right, Brendan?

Brendan: Yes, but technically she’s the fire—

Francia: And he’s the ice.

Brendan: I’m the ice. “The Iceman” is my nickname in the film, so that’s what it comes down to. We definitely both have a certain amount of fire and passion for what we do and we both have the ability to turn up the ice and ignore or show some attitude towards the other person. Yes, definitely both elements there.

Q: What’s coming up next for both of you, in terms of projects we should look our for?

Francia: I’m currently filming Secret Life, so the new season will be coming back in July and Secret Life is going to be taking up the rest of my year, so more of that coming.

Brendan: For me nothing that I know of yet. Right now, I’m just pounding the pavement like the other gazillion actors out there.

Source: ABC Family