Het inmiddels alweer twee jaar oude Rocky Spin-off Creed heeft ondertussen wereldwijd $173 miljoen opgebracht en dat is ook de reden dat er een vervolg gaat komen. Hier in keert niemand minder dan Dolph Lundgren terug in zijn rol van Ivan Drago. Ter gelegenheid hier van ha de website Coming Soon een interview met deze cult held en daar van kan je nu hier onder een stukje lezen. Creed 2 is overigens vanaf 29 november in de Nederlandse bioscopen te zien.

CS: In "Rocky IV" Drago had the entire country of Russia at his disposal and all of this high tech equipment. 30-years later you're in exile and the training with your son is very down and dirty, much the way Rocky's was when he trained to fight you. Can you talk about Team Drago being the underdog this time and having just as much, if not more at stake than Creed does?

Lundgren: I think I wasn't sure if I wanted to make the picture for that reason, when I heard about it, because I was afraid it was going to be another Russian one-dimensional bad guy. But when I read the script I realized that Steven Caple and his co-writer and Stallone as well had crafted this really interesting character study of somebody who has lost everything and who has nothing. It's the bottom of the barrel, me and my son. I think the combination of a father/son relationship, and like you said, you have nothing, all to win and nothing to lose makes for really good stakes dramatically. He gave me a chance to play somebody who is a complex character, who has a lot of anger and hate and thirst for revenge, but he's not a bad father. He actually loves his kid, but he just doesn't know it until later in the film when he starts realizing what's important in life. I thought it was really satisfying to do that, because my dad was really hard on me and I had a tough relationship with him. It's sort of been haunting me for many, many years, but in the last five years or so I went into therapy to get rid of some of the trauma and things that were impacting on my life. I think it went full circle because once I freed myself of that, it's almost like I am ready to do these types of roles now, and before I really wasn't for some reason. It was like it was holding me back.

CS: That father/son bond definitely carries over in the movie because you and Florian had this very cold, silent communication between each other. You're both men of few words, but how did you and him work with each as actors off-set to create that unspoken bond?

Lundgren: As soon as I started to make the picture and I'd read the script and met Steven Caple, I knew that there was going to be a lot of stuff between us. There was no dialogue, and also a lot of things in Russian. I wanted to spend as much time with this guy as I could. So fortunately, he was up for it and I texted him and I met him for like three minutes at MGM. Then I texted him and asked him to come work out. He came to the gym with my trainer, and I met him and we trained together for weeks. We did Russian lessons. I really got to know him, and I think Florian was sort of looking up to me because I've been in the business longer than he has. That shows as well, because there is that kind of pit-bull mentality of him, where he does whatwhat his dad tells him. I think it built a lot of trust between us, not just for the acting, but also for those unspoken moments where the lens picks that stuff up. It's like an answering machine: If you think it, the lens picks it up. It's kind of magical in that way.