Interview With ‘LUMINA’ Stars Eleanor Williams and Andrea Tivadar, Director Gino McKoy

An alien sci-fi thriller that doubles as a love story? Count us in! On July 12, Lumina, directed and written by Gino McKoy, is hitting theaters, putting a unique spin on the extraterrestrial genre.

Tatiana (Eleanor Williams, Halo: Nightfall 2014) and Alex (Rupert Lazarus, Requiem 2018) seem to have it all: a fairytale romance, gorgeous house and great friends, including their free-spirited Nubian hippie roommate Patricia (Sidney Nicole Rogers, Maya 2023). There’s also Delilah (Andrea Tivadar, Safe Inside 2019), Alex’s old girlfriend who is on a vicious quest to get her man back. However, Delilah is the least of their worries. One night, Tatiana materializes into thin air, captured by an otherworldly force and taken to a DUMB (Deep Underground Military Base). Now, it’s up to Alex, Patricia, Delilah (begrudgingly) and conspiracy theorist George (Ken Lawson, Malibu’s Most Wanted 2003) to find Tatiana, battle whomever (or whatever) took her, and get her home.

Ahead of the premiere of Lumina, PopHorror chatted with Williams, Tivadar and McKoy about bringing the film to life in the shooting location of Morocco, how it sheds light on real world alien encounters and more.

PopHorror: I watched the movie last night and I loved it. It was so much fun!

Andrea Tivadar: Yay!

PopHorror: A lot of plot twists. You never kind of knew where it was going, which I really enjoyed.

Gino McKoy: We try to keep it interesting. We don’t want anyone to get that space where they’re bored. I get bored very easily.

PopHorror: To start, what about this movie, the script, the characters, made you all say, “Yes, I want to do this project.”?

Andrea Tivadar: Well, for me, it was a no brainer. It was the genre. I love sci-fi. I always have. And then I read the script and I thought, “Oh my goodness, this is gonna be fun.” So it felt like a beautiful adventure and I wanted to be part of it.

Eleanor Williams: Yeah, I feel very similarly actually. I think for me it was that it’s not only a sci-fi movie, but you have the elements of action and thriller, there’s romance and there’s this strong kind of comedy thread that I think revealed itself on set actually, when people like Sidney Nicole Rogers and Ken Lawson were cast in the more comedic parts, that, I think, was really the standout for me. Also that it was filmed in Morocco. Like, I’m not going to say no to that.

Andrea Tivadar: Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you, Eleanor. I think you have the mixture and the beauty that has been revealed whilst we were on set, you know, these different nuances from the performances. And this is what happens, for me personally, when you work with great actors, when I have great scene partners and colleagues. And Gino, he’s our captain. He put us together.

Gino McKoy: I think the movie, when I wrote it, it’s really a journey for people to become attached to the characters and really get to know the characters in the story arc and the character arc. And it’s really an underlying love story, you’re going after the person you love and you’re trying to save them from these supernatural events. And it brings together a group of friends with very complex stories interwoven together and they have to try to figure it out.

PopHorror: Eleanor, you touched on one of my other questions. So it was actually filmed in Morocco! What was that filming experience like?

Eleanor Williams: Yeah, it was, it was totally filmed in Morocco. Even the bits that we sort of cheated for LA. And it was amazing. I’d never been before and we went in the middle of the pandemic, so we didn’t quite experience I guess normal Morocco. But yeah, it just felt surreal, driving all the way through the set, past the souk in order to get to where you’re going. It just totally added to the experience. It was an adventure from beginning to end.

Andrea Tivadar: Actually that was my favorite, well, one of my favorite parts of filming Lumina, it was the backdrop. Morocco certainly had its special light, the colors. But yeah, the people I’ve met, I think that’s my No. 1.

PopHorror: Andrea, I have to ask you about Delilah. She is something else.

Gino McKoy: She’s a firecracker, isn’t she?

PopHorror: Yes! What was it like getting to play her? Would you say there are any redeeming qualities to her?

Andrea Tivadar: Oh, it was a lot of fun to play Delilah. She’s a fun character. She’s definitely quirky and confident, and I think she wants to test her limits and wants to test the limits of the people around her. So I thought that was cool and brought some conflict in the relationships. That, and she’s an adventurer, as you’re gonna be able to see the film.

PopHorror: And Eleanor, you get captured early on in the film, but when you do return, it’s basically nonstop action. You guys are running, you have that big car chase on the other planet. What was it like filming those final sequences?

Eleanor Williams: It was exhausting, I’m not gonna lie. Gino, you put us through our paces, you really did. But it was great because we were all together. It was such an ensemble moment for the cast to be together, going through these things, the cool costumes, going across all these amazing sets that were built in the middle of the desert. I was slightly worried because the gym at the hotel wasn’t open, so I was doing squats and star jumps in my room to be like, “Am I gonna be able to run around after sitting around during COVID?” But yeah, we did it, it was very good fun.

PopHorror: Gino, I enjoyed at the end how there’s a message that’s put up about how there are so many alien encounters over the years, but these people aren’t actually believed. Can you speak to that and your stance on everything?

Gino McKoy: I wanted to bring some reality to the situation because there’s a lot of people that are ridiculed for their experience with this type of phenomenon. And speaking to foreign military and Navy and Marines that have been on reconnaissance missions and experienced this type of phenomenon, and people that have claimed to be abducted and experienced this, I wanted to let the audience know that this stuff is real. It happens to people. The government talked about it, the new congressional hearings talked about it recently. I was speaking to people and there have been normal individuals that have gone through this experience. So I wanted the audience to know, “Well, yes, we’re doing a Hollywood movie and stuff like that. Yeah, it’s a lot of action. But underneath it, there’s a real message that this stuff could happen. If it could happen to me, it could happen to you, it could happen to anybody.” So that’s what I wanted to convey.

PopHorror: The government, they essentially confirmed that there is some kind of nonhuman life out there, and everyone was just like, “Yeah, whatever, I still have to pay off my student loans.” The public didn’t seem fazed.

Gino McKoy: If you watch the US congressional hearings of David Grusch and the two other former military and Navy guys, they’re very credible. I have friends that have dealt with them, that know them personally, and they’re in that UFO community, the conspiracy community, and they’re stand up guys. They’re telling you what they experienced while being in the military. I think that this movie itself is bringing people’s stories to the forefront. And if you check social media, you see a lot of people talking about their experiences. They’re coming out and talking about it because some people, like I said before, have been ridiculed. They basically didn’t want to talk about it. Now they’re becoming a lot more open to speak about this experience.

PopHorror: Are you guys able to talk about the special effects that were used in Lumina? What went into bringing these creatures to life, and what it was like seeing that finished product?

Gino McKoy: We started early artist renditions and conceptions with my team out of Vancouver and LA, and when we put together the creature suit. We had special effects on set with the explosions and everything else, and we had creature effects with the actual alien, and then we had visual effects that went into the post production. So really our process was, “Let’s try the practical aliens and everything else, and then we do enhancements afterwards with the FX.” And from a practical effects point of view, when I was creating the story, I wanted the audience to experience all the different effects, because in Predator, for example, you have practical effects with John McTiernan and Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Terminator 1984) on set, and the original Predator was Jean-Claude Van Damme (Double Impact 1991), actually. And then he left set and, my friend was doing the creature effects with John McTiernan, they replaced him with another actor because he was too small for the suit.

So it’s a lot of moving and a lot of shifting and readjusting when you do creature effects on set, putting someone in an actual creature suit, but in the post production process, you still have to do visual effects and there’s still a lot of practical effects that go into that, like rigging the suit, explosions, everything else, and having actual laser guns and stuff like that and do visual effects with that. So my whole methodology behind that was trying to get the audience fully immersed into the effects of the movie because you wanna go to a movie and believe it at the same time. You don’t want to go to a movie and be like, “Oh, this is terrible.” So we spent a lot of time in concepts and everything else prior to the movie, prior to going to the pre production, and thank God it came out really well. I hope you enjoyed it. A lot of people did. A lot of time went into creating that space.

Andrea Tivadar: I was surprised by the size of creature. It was massive, they did a great job. And then, the other people who are living inside, our stunt men, are real human creatures inside the creature.

Eleanor Williams: It was amazing to behold, and if I remember correctly, Gino, you didn’t let us see any of the photos of it or the planning of it, and kind of would keep us away from it on set, so that when you said, “Action,” there was no acting required because it was really scary. But you were sort of caught between being terrified, but also so impressed and wanting to get up close to it and be like, “How is this real? How am I seeing this?.”

Gino McKoy: Oh, yeah, definitely. I didn’t want any of the actors to see any of the aliens. I got that
from my friend who shot a lot with Paul Greengrass on Bourne and Captain Phillips. I took that part with Paul Greengrass in Captain Phillips where Tom Hanks meets the pirate (Barkhad Abdi [Eye in the Sky 2015]). Paul Greengrass would never let Tom Hanks meet him before [filming] because he wanted that visceral moment when he walks in with the semiautomatic into the captain’s room. So for me, the way I applied it was, I don’t want my actors to see these aliens. They have to have that moment when they first see them, that, “OK, you’re shocked.” And that’s the reason why I went about that. So I didn’t want them to see it. I wanted them to have that initial shock of seeing it for the first time.

PopHorror: Did you guys have any final words on why should people come see the movie?

Andrea Tivadar: Go watch the movie because it’s fun. It’s a fun ride.

Gino McKoy: Watch the movie because you get to see some great actors and actresses and it’s gonna be their breakout roles, and they’re gonna go on to do amazing things. Come and see it because aliens are real, abductions are real, they happen and we’re dealing with a lot of stories, and also, situations in our society right now that are relevant to this movie. I think people should go and watch the movie because it’s fun, it’s exciting and you get to see some really, really big aliens.

Thanks for speaking with us, Eleanor, Andrea and Gino! Lumina is in theaters everywhere July 12.

Photos by Goldove Entertainment.