For actress Lilly Krug, who stars as April in the indie sci-fi movie April X, the attention around the movie—caused by Connor Storrie’s sudden rise to fame due to Heated Rivalry—has been a little surreal. But also, very welcome. Fangirlish had a chance to talk to Krug about the film, working with Storrie to build the relationship between April and Bax, and what she’s got coming up next.
“It’s really been wild. You make these movies because you believe in the story or in the character or something and then some of them do so well and some of them just really don’t, and you never know. And I think that’s the beauty also with commercial films though. You never know nowadays what really is going to be a hit and what people want to see and I’m so grateful and so excited for people to see this film.”
April X is basically a feminist sci-fi movie that examines the roles women play and how, more often than not, men get to dictate what they do and even how they behave. In that respect, it’s not a bad thing to get a lot of attention, particularly in this day and age.
“I think it shows how sometimes women are seen in society and what people want to reduce them to. But it’s like… that’s not the complexity of a human or a woman, and this is what happens if you try to do that and how distorted that is and how wrong. And also, how I think that trying to replicate something like that and only get a use out of it is so objectifying. But at the core of it a lot of people do try to do that in some way. So, with technology and with the push for women to get the respect they deserve and need, this is such an important film.”
The thing about Krug and April, is that they won’t be defined by what others say. “So many times it’s so easy for people to reduce women to something, and that’s what I love about April. She’s not to be put in any category. She’s wild and she’s ambitious and she just does her own thing, and I think that’s a new archetype of woman that we also need to say: no, this is sexy, because she’s herself and she’s authentic and she has that strong personality.”
April’s other half in this movie is her twin brother, Bax, played by Connor Storrie. Krug spoke about the relationship, telling us, “What I love about their dynamic is that you can tell she’s like wild and she doesn’t always have her shit together, but she really takes responsibility for Bax and she takes care of him. She really loves him, and they’re such a good team. And I think that’s the problem: when she goes missing, he’s like, ‘I feel so incomplete’ because that part of me is missing, and they balance each other out in so many ways.”
Krug and Storrie had to work on building their chemistry off-screen, particularly because the dynamic between siblings can sometimes be even trickier than that between romantic partners. “It’s based on complete trust. And I think it’s trust and vulnerability, and we got to know each other really well because we were both thrown into that environment in Romania where we knew no one, a country we didn’t really know.”
“We were really tested in that way, but got to explore it together and go through that, and it really helped that we had some rehearsals before we started shooting, because that helped us find the characters and also find what we have in common and what we don’t. We had an incredible playfulness off set, and I think that’s the thing you see in siblings, where it’s like we could really laugh together about the great things and also the shitty things we went through. I think that’s the thing that differentiates romantic from that sibling friendship.”
We’ll get into all the spoilery details of the movie once it releases. For now, with April X in the rearview mirror, Krug has some upcoming projects to be excited about. “I just wrapped my latest project, and I’m about to shoot in London next month,” she shared. “I just did a TV show, and it’s set at a ballet academy. It’s very different.”
“I got to learn ballet for that! And I did the Scorpions biopic, Wind of Change, which is coming out next month. I did another indie movie; it’s a very cool story, also based on a book that’s coming out early next year. So, there’s some cool indie stuff coming, and my actual first big TV show I just wrapped.”
Basically, we’ll be seeing a lot of Krug. You can start with April X, which will be in theaters October 2.
