Last week's installment of Arrow introduced viewers to Konstantin Kovar, the imposing Russian government agent Oliver Queen is determined to kill in this season's flashbacks. Kovar left a pretty strong impression despite his limited screen time, due in no small part to the fact that he's played by Dolph Lundgren (Rocky IV, Universal Soldier, The Expendables), a man who knows a thing or two about playing strong, intimidating villains.
We had a chance to chat with Lundgren to learn more about how Kovar will factor into the current season and how this villain compares to the iconic Rocky foe, Ivan Drago. Scroll down to find out what he had to say.
Dolph Lundgren as Konstantin Drago.
IGN: How did this role come about for you?
Lundgren: I'd heard of the show but wasn't really watching it. But the producers wrote me a letter, and they seemed to be big fans. They came up with this character and I read the script and saw that they took the Rocky IV guy and kind of made him sophisticated and smarter and kind of playing off that persona, but in a modern way. I really thought it was interesting. And I hadn't done any dramatic TV at all, so I wanted to give it a shot.
IGN: I read somewhere that everyone on the cast and crew watched the movie Eastern Promises as homework for this Russian storyline. Is that sort of the tone you guys are shooting for?
Lundgren: I didn't hear that, but that sounds about right, yeah. That's more Russian mafia and criminal syndicates, whereas with Kovar, he's a little more like a Bond villain. He's working for some sort of government agency, but you're not quite sure if he's the government or FSB [Russia's Federal Security Service] or something in between. There is an element of that, for sure.
IGN: Eastern Promises has that famous fight sequence in the bath house. Just in terms of the action scenes, is that the approach the show is taking here, with that kind of brutal and dirty fighting?
Lundgren: It is brutal and dirty, from what I've seen. So far I've only done one little fight scene that's coming up in this next episode, but it's quite short, like 15 seconds or something. So I'm sure there's more to come. But it is quick and to the point. There's no back-flips or jumping around the walls. There's no finesse. You know, like in a real street fight, there's no time for that. You've just got to go and try to put the other guy down immediately. That's what it's like. So, yeah, they've taken that kind of energy and tried to put it into the fights.
IGN: You touched on this a little already, but it sounds like they're taking the Ivan Drago character and kind of subverting it a little. Would you say Kovar is an outright villain like Drago, or is he a little more complicated and complex than that?
Lundgren: He is an adversary, but you'll see more sides to this character. He's certainly older. Drago was a young guy, a young fighter. He was an army officer who grew up in a boxing ring. This is a guy who's a wealthy man. He's running companies. He's obviously working with Russian intelligence somehow. He's got a sophistication in the way he dresses and how he lives. You'll see a little bit of that inside his mansion. He's a different animal. But yeah, maybe Drago 30 years later survived the fall of the Soviet Union and got his hand on a bunch of money - a couple hundred million dollars - and became friends with the government. [laughs] Yeah, that's Kovar.
IGN: The characters on the show mentioned Kovar back in Season 4. Is that a sign that he's meant to be a very important character if the show has been building to him all this time?
Lundgren: That's a good point. The interesting thing about TV drama that's kind of nice is, I'm just an actor. I'm doing my role. To me, everything that happens to Kovar happens in the present day, present time. I don't really know or care that this is in the past and it's what shaped the main character. It doesn't matter to me. I guess the writers and producers are trying to figure that out, too. What is Kovar's role in all of this? Obviously, when they wrote the character they didn't know that I was going to play him. They didn't know when they came up with the name that it was me. They didn't know all the things they know now. So it's kind of a work in progress, I guess.
Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen and Dolph Lundgren as Konstantin Kovar.
IGN: Kovar is based on a DC Comics character, and he's got his own back-story involving his son and everything involving that. I'm curious if they had you read any of those old comics as research for the role and if you think they'll touch on any of that material over the course of the season.
Lundgren: No, that's a good point. No one even mentioned that. I'll have to check it out. Or maybe I shouldn't! I like the name. It's catchy. But I didn't look at anything, really. I just sort of tried to make a colorful Russian bad guy/intelligence officer/businessman.
IGN: It's interesting, because most of the characters on this show are based on comic characters, but sometimes they're very loosely based on them. It almost sounds like they didn't want you to read about Kovar, because this is a very different interpretation of the character.
Lundgren: Yeah, it is. Unless you're playing a real character based on a real person, if someone else has done it before, you're probably better off not watching it as an actor. Otherwise you end up trying to copy someone else.
IGN: In this flashback storyline so far, we've learned a lot about the Bratva and how Oliver is connected to them and what role they play in the Russian underworld. Now that Ollie has met Kovar, is he going to see another side of the Bratva and how someone like Kovar views them?
Lundgren: Yeah. When I started looking at this character, I thought of him as being, in his eyes, the good guy. He's a pseudo-government finance character, and I don't think you can operate in Russia on that level without being connected to the intelligence world. A lot of things in Russia are like that. To me, as Kovar, these Bratva folks are insurgents that are trying to hurt my nation and my people. On one hand, I'm almost like an intelligence operative trying to do some good, and then I get some business going myself. But I don't know all of those things, because I've only seen two scripts. I don't know all that stuff yet, but I can deduce that this guy is wealthy and has a lot of muscle and connections. Anybody like that in Russia would be connected to the FSB somehow.
IGN: In the past on Arrow, and this goes for pretty much any superhero project, the best villains are always those characters with a close, personal connection to the hero. As you start interacting with Stephen Amell in these episodes, are we going to see that sort of relationship form between the two characters?
Lundgren: Yeah. I've already formed some of that in my mind, because I try to find similarities and connections with him in the past, even though I don't know all the past episodes, and we've never seen anything with Kovar and Oliver before. But I think certainly, yes, there are some common elements in the past. He's kind of in the same line of work I am, a little bit. I think there's a mutual respect there. I think that Kovar wants to use this guy for something, otherwise he'd be shot in the back of the head and dumped off in a ditch somewhere. [laughs] He would never have even been brought in to see me. I gave orders to keep the guy alive for some reason.
IGN: I did want to directly touch on a Rocky-related question before we wrap up. We know that there's a Creed sequel in the works, and there's been a lot of fan speculation about what it would be like seeing Ivan Drago again. If that did happen, is it something you be interested in being a part of and revisiting that character after all this time?
Lundgren: Well, I've always said no to that, because I kind of thought that's who the character was. He only lives in that one picture back in the Soviet era. I think it would have to be a really special project for me to want to do that again. Obviously, I'm 30 years older, so it'd have to be done in a very clever way. There's only one person who could do that character, and we know who that is, so I guess we'll have to wait and see.
Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.
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