ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with The Bricklayer star Nina Dobrev about the intense action movie. The actress discussed her chemistry with co-star Aaron Eckhart, her character, and much more. The film is now available digitally and through video-on-demand platforms.
“The Bricklayer follows a rogue insurgent blackmailing the CIA by assassinating foreign journalists and making it appear the agency is responsible,” reads the movie‘s synopsis. “As other nations begin turning against the U.S., the CIA must lure Steve Vail (Eckhart) – their most brilliant and rebellious operative – out of retirement. With an elite and deadly skill set, Vail is tasked with helping clear the agency’s name, forcing him to confront his checkered past while unraveling an international conspiracy.”
Tyler Treese: Congrats on The Bricklayer. I really like that your character, Kate, is very capable. She’s on this mission, but she’s not a damsel in distress or anything. She’s moving the plot along. What did you like most about this character?
Nina Dobrev: Thank you for saying that. Yeah, the film is exciting, it’s action-packed. It’s one of those movies that’s pure entertainment and it’s pure fun. I was personally drawn to Kate as a character for a lot of reasons. One of the main ones is that I haven’t gotten to play a character like this before. I call it my ‘big girl role’ ’cause she’s a young professional. She is similar to me in a lot of ways. I am very meticulous. I like rules, I like schedules, and I like having a plan kinda like Kate does.
So it was fun for me to explore and play around with the dynamic of putting this like very OCD sort of anal retentive kind of rule follower with a maverick rule breaker. I thought that dynamic was really interesting. And I also loved the arc. She starts off as one person and then throughout her journey, really by the end of the film is a completely different person. And you’re sort of surprised by the decision that she makes at the end. .
There is a lot of action in The Bricklayer. But it also lets the story breathe, and there are some really good character moments spread throughout. What did you like most about that kind of combination?
Renny Harlan is a master at his craft. He’s a very prolific action film director and shot this really beautifully. The editing’s really good. It, it flows, it moves. But like you said, it’s not just explosion after explosion to the point where you’re just nauseous and numb to it. That’s the other thing I didn’t notice until we finished the film. We get really beat up. Like, we’re real people. Aaron is a retired CIA operative of a certain age, and he gets hurt in the movie. We show that, and we see the cuts, and the bruises, and then he has a limp.
In the next scene, he’s like a little bit slower than the last fight. ’cause he had a little bit less energy. And so, it feels more grounded than most action movies I’ve seen. It’s not a Marvel movie where they just bounce back really fast, and then you get desensitized. You really follow these characters, and you can see yourself going through their journey. They feel more like real people in a lot of ways.
It’s my character’s first time in the field. She’s not like gonna be like a Lara Croft action connoisseur. She’s actually fighting and freezes at one point. She doesn’t do what she was trained to do in the real moment.
I love how you and Aaron Eckhart don’t get along very well at first. Then you wind up pretending to be a husband and wife for a section. What stood out about just working with him and playing off that?
Yeah, it was really fun to sort of have that tension between the two characters. As I mentioned, that’s one of the main reasons why I was sort of drawn to the character. I’ve been a fan from afar for a really long time. So I was really excited at the opportunity to get to work with him and to sort of watch these two characters. Like you said, they don’t get along at the beginning and grow to appreciate and respect one another in their own weird way. By the end of the film are quite fond of each other.
I’m always curious to hear about prep because it differs so greatly from actor to actor. And this is based on a novel by Paul Lindsay. I was curious if you did read the book or if you just prefer to go off what’s there in the script?
I definitely read the books. I also read another book, because I just wanted a little bit more context into the young woman who enters the CIA. There’s another woman, Amarillo Fox, who wrote about her real-life experience of being recruited at a very young age, right out of college. I felt like Kate had a lot of similarities, a lot of parallels, to that experience. So it was sort of like a mishmash for me between the two novels.
In 2012, you were in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Over time, that film has just gotten such a bigger audience, and people really appreciate it. How has it felt to see people flock to the film and it becoming more popular as time passes?
It’s pretty wild. I get a lot of people that approach me about that movie. The story’s so universal, and whether you’re an adult, an older person, or a teen, we all went through puberty and had our coming-of-age moment. That’s what the movie’s about — sort of becoming a young adult and making that transition. It just deals with so many different themes. It’s a really great adaptation of a novel because the writer and director both captured the essence, the energy, and the beauty of the book and really translated it into the screen.
One of your earliest roles was in Degrassi: The Next Generation. Getting that much screen time and that much experience at 17 and 18, how do you feel that kind of really set you up for success? You’ve had such a great career since then, and it’s unusual to get that much time early on.
I was very naive and didn’t really realize how lucky I was at the time. But it was kind of like a mini bootcamp in a way. I was so green, I was so new. I really didn’t know what a mark was, or where to stand, or what eyelines were, where to look… how to do anything, really!
I learned everything on that show. It taught me and gave me that foundation — and that experience — on set that I needed to later lead a show of my own. I don’t think I would’ve been able to do it or do it as well as I did. I think I would’ve been a lot more overwhelmed if I hadn’t had that prior experience.
