Carla Gugino learned many things during her first experience with an earthquake. And one of the lessons she carries with her to this day is that you probably shouldn’t sleep n-ked in California.
Gugino, who co-stars with Dwayne Johnson in the upcoming disaster thriller San Andreas, was living in Los Angeles in 1994 when the Northridge earthquake jolted the city, ultimately causing $20 billion in damage and killing 57 people.
“It was the first earthquake I had ever experienced,” Gugino said during a recent visit to Toronto to talk about San Andreas, in theatres May 29. “I was living in Pacific Palisades with my boyfriend at the time. I was dead asleep, and I feel like I started hearing things before I even felt it, like things were falling.”
Her first instinct was to flee from the house. There was just one problem.
“I was sleeping n-ked and I could not find my clothes,” Gugino said with a laugh. “I finally found a robe that was at the bottom of the bed and I went running outside. But I was ready to run out of that house (n-ked) like the day I was born.”
Though she’s now a New Yorker, Gugino has become well-versed in earthquake response. She knows that instead of running outside, it’s safer to take cover under a sturdy desk or table. And that even after the shaking has stopped, there will likely be aftershocks, especially in the wake of a major quake.
“Also, never to sleep in the buff,” she said.
In San Andreas, Gugino’s character doesn’t have the luxury of sleep. She plays Emma Gaines, the estranged wife of search and rescue helicopter pilot Ray Gaines (Johnson). When a catastrophic earthquake hits California, Ray and Emma are flung back together as they try to make their way from L.A. to San Francisco to find their missing daughter, Blake (Alexandra Daddario).
Directed by Newfoundland-born Brad Peyton (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island), San Andreas features some state-of-the-art digital effects, meaning Gugino and Johnson spent a lot of time working in front of green screens. But whenever possible, Peyton had his actors on physical sets, including a helicopter cockpit built on a contraption that could be rotated and rattled at will.
“It was in front of a green screen but it was on a gimbal, many feet up in the air, that tipped and turned and spun,” said Gugino. “We had wind machines and rain machines and all sorts of stuff. So we definitely had things we could respond to.”
Gugino is something of a visual effects veteran, having worked on CG-heavy films such as director Zack Snyder’s Watchmen and Sucker Punch, Sin City and the Spy Kids series. But she’s done a ton of more traditional drama as well, including TV’s Karen Cisco and M. Night Shyamalan’s new mystery series Wayward Pines, as well as the movies American Gangster, Righteous Kill and some highly lauded roles on Broadway.
And even though San Andreas features tumbling buildings and surging tsunamis, the movie has its quieter, heart-wrenching moments, said Gugino.
“My boyfriend, who’s a pretty tough cookie, he leaned over and was like, ‘I think I cried three times,’ ” she said. “The movie doesn’t have to have that element to deliver, but because it has that element, for me it’s a much more resonant film.”
San Andreas is also different from a lot of big-budget summer spectacles in that the disaster at the heart of the movie, while exaggerated for dramatic effect, may be inevitable. The southern portion of the San Andreas Fault is overdue for a major quake, and some scientists say it’s only a matter of when, not if.
When it comes to movie villains, “often we have aliens or dinosaurs or superheroes or monsters, and in this case it’s Mother Nature,” Gugino said. “And she’s kind of the most badass of all. You’re not going to beat her.”
Speaking of badasses, Johnson – who co-starred with Gugino in 2009’s Race to Witch Mountain – “is the embodiment of someone who is absolutely confident in what he does, but is not driven by ego, and is incredibly humble and collaborative and a great partner in crime,” Gugino said. “We have so much fun working together.”
Gugino will next be seen with Tim Robbins and Jack Black in the HBO comedy The Brink, debuting June 21. After that, she’s not sure where she’ll land. But you can bet that if she’s working in Hollywood, she won’t be napping in the n-de.
“I will make exceptions if I’m not in California,” she said. “But if I am in California, I will never sleep that way again.”
