Interview With ‘Blood Drive’s’ Femme Fatale – Christina Ochoa
A few weeks ago, SYFY UK started airing one of the most bonkers, and bloody, tv shows to grace our screens in quite a long time – ‘Blood Drive‘. If you have yet to catch the show, it a Grindhouse inspired gorefest of epic proportions. Think ‘Cannonball Run’ if it was made by Tarantino…
Set in a future LA, where water is as scarce as oil, climate change keeps the temperature at a cool 45C in the shade, and crime is running rampant, we meet Arthur Bailey (Alan Ritchson – ‘Smallville’, ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire’) the last good cop among a horde of corrupt officials. He is investigating the dirtiest and meanest underground car rally in the world – The Blood Drive – so called as all the cars run on human blood!
After crashing the launch event, Arthur is forced to join the race and teamed up with Grace D’Argento (Christina Ochoa – ‘Animal Kingdom’, ‘Valor’), a femme fatale character who is determined to win at any cost.
We had a chance to pose some questions to Christina, starting on with, what on earth she thought when she first read the script? “I thought it was something truly different!“, she replied. “Unlike anything else out there! James Roland really took a risk and we were all excited to be a part of that.”
Christina’s character, Grace D’Argento, is determined to win the race, and more importantly, it’s $10 million dollar prize in order to save her sister and to change both their lives for good. Nothing is going to get in her way… and if you do, you’re most likely going to end up being fed into her engine! “Grace is unapologetic,” says Christina. “I love that! She’s at peace with her darkness and that’s a concept that’s very appealing to explore as an actress.”
The show was shot on location in South Africa, giving the cast the chance to use the wide open spaces and really let rip with the cars. I asked if Christina had been a car nut before getting the part. “I’ve become more of a fan since taking on the role of Grace,” she replied. “But as far as stunt driving, it was one of the best parts of the job and I would do as much as they would let me get away with!” The cars themselves are also pretty impressive, particularly the ‘meat grinder’ style engines, used to generate the… ahem… “fuel”… Which, surprisingly, were mainly practical effects. “Because we were a low budget grindhouse genre show, about 99% of the effects were practical,” she adds “The engines were built and pretty amazing.”
Christina was originally heading down a much different path to the one she finds herself on now. As the grand-niece of Nobel Prize winner Severo Ochoa, she thought she was heading toward a life in science, studying Oceanographic Engineering in Las Palmas University in the Canary Islands and Advanced Marine Biology in James Cook University in Australia. However, she took up acting as a hobby, and from the moment she stepped on stage she says “a void inside me that was suddenly filled.” The acting bug had got her. She still cites her wildlife encounters while working in science communication as some of her favorite experiences though. “Swimming with sharks is always at the top of the list,” she adds.
As always, we ended the interview with our 2 usual final questions – What TV shows are you watching at the moment, and if you had the opportunity to work on any show, past, present or future which should would it be? Currently watching, like the rest of the world, “Game of Thrones”, “but if I could work on anything past or present, it would be BBC’s ‘The Blue Planet’.” She might be acting now, but the Marine Biologist is clearly still in there!
‘Blood Drive‘ is currently airing, Thursdays at 10pm on SYFY UK.
