Kristian Bruun tells why Ready or Not is one of his favorite roles

Ready or Not shows a bloody different side to Kristian Bruun, and he revealed to Hidden Remote why the horror flick became one of his favorite roles.

Kristian Bruun is the best friend everyone loves in WGN America‘s Carter—but in Ready or Not, his character Fitch Bradley is the in-law you definitely don’t want. It’s a total 180 for the actor, but one that’s a lot of fun to watch.

Kristian spoke to Hidden Remote about filming the over-the-top horror movie and why he’d consider it one of the best experiences of his career. He also gave us some dish on Carter season 2, as we wait for the Jerry O’Connell comedy to come back to WGN in the new year.

Catch up with Kristian Bruun in our interview below, then check him out when you catch Ready or Not in your local movie theater.

Hidden Remote: What was it about Ready or Not that made you say yes?

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Kristian Bruun: I really, really love horror movies. I really love comedies, and I love dark comedies. And I love them when they mash them all together and this is one of those hybrid films. It’s a horror, comedy, action thriller all in one. I got the tone right away as soon as I read it, and I just knew I wanted to be a part of it.

It’s a very bloody, crazy film; I just knew it was going to be so much fun to film, and as long as the cast was great and everyone was fun to work with, it was going to be a hit.

So they had me with the genre alone, and when I read the audition scene—just the scene, not even the full script—I could tell it was going to be amazing. That it was going to be right up my wheelhouse and exactly what I’d love to work on. I was not disappointed at all.

How much were you told about Fitch Bradley when you started? Did you have a clue how he was going to fit into all the mayhem?

The character description, I kind of knew what they were going for right away and I had a few examples in my own life of a similar type of person I could draw on. It’s like a hybrid of a couple people. I knew exactly what they wanted to go for, and I knew I could throw my experience of people like that in there, but also enjoy humor in it as well.

It wasn’t the deepest character in the world, but at the same time that’s my job, to go further with it—and we were able to find a lot of fun stuff. Melanie Scrofano’s character and myself do some comedic lifting in it, and everybody does their job in this film. When we were filming we were like, are we in different movies? What’s going on here? I hope this all works out.

But at the same time, we knew there were different levels of character going on throughout the cast, and that would tie in together nicely, and it did. The directors [Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett] did a great job pulling it together and making it all make sense.

Is there anything particular in Ready or Not that was especially memorable for you?

It’s a really fun movie. The whole film is just over 90 minutes long. The whole thing just flies, and that’s what I love about it…This is like a 90-minute late summer action romp, and there’s no moment where you want to get up and go to the bathroom. You’re going to want to fly through this thing with the rest of the audience.

You’ve done a few thrillers in your career, so where does Ready or Not rank amongst the other movies you’ve been in?

This is one of my favorites. Hands down, one of my favorites. I’m really proud of it, I feel so lucky that I got to be a part of it. The people I met doing this job have become really good friends; we hang out still and we have a chat thread going, and we’re constantly sending each other pictures and behind the scenes stuff that we can’t post because they’re all spoilers. We love hanging out and we get together for dinner and stuff like that.

It was one of those dream jobs where, as soon as we were done, we were like do we have to stop? Because this is too much fun, can we keep going? Those don’t come around too often, so it was such a joy to work on.

On TV, we’ll get to see you in Carter season 2. Is there anything you can say about what Dave is going to be into next season?

We’ve already wrapped it. It’s in post [production] and we’re doing a bit of fill in the audio gaps right now, but we spent three and a half months in Ontario filming the second season with a new co-showrunner, Andy Berman, and the scripts are super funny this year. It’s changed the tone of the show and moved towards comedy more, whereas before it was more dramatic procedural with comedic elements.

Now it’s straight-up comedy for an hour, which is rare in a procedural. We decided to lean on some of the fun things we can do with our cast, and that includes a lot of banter and improv and just really goofy physical comedy. There’s a tone shift that I’m really excited for people to see and enjoy, because it’s way funnier this year.

You also had a role in the first season of YouTube’s Impulse, which is an incredibly underrated show. How was that experience?

That was a blast. Working with Doug Liman is a dream, because it’s Doug Liman and he’s done so much and so many films that I’ve absolutely loved and adored, and he’s just ruling the producer game in terms of television.

I did the first episode and the second episode, and there’s a year [between] filming the pilot and then starting the series, so I had already moved to Los Angeles at that point and the producers knew that. So I kind of got written off the show, which I totally understood the logistics of flying back and forth would have been crazy.

But it was a lot of fun. Maddie [Hasson] is super talented, so amazing and super cool to work with, and everyone is really fun on that one—producers and behind the scenes, everybody. It was just a blast to work on. It was quick but I loved working on it. Really cool show, really cool project and a feather in the cap for YouTube.

Between that, Carter and Ready or Not you’ve been doing very different projects over a relatively short period of time. How have the last couple months been from going character to character?

It’s a total joy. I love it. I like the idea of being one of those “character actors.” I like being able to change my look and really make it suit a character. I don’t want to look the same in every role I do. I want to switch it up. I want to have fun with a character’s background.

I’ve been so lucky with all the different types of characters I’ve gotten to play in the last five, six years and I hope that continues because I really enjoy being people from different backgrounds, different paths, and different backstories.

The work you get to do is fascinating. The research part of a role is one of the most fun parts, because you learn something that you didn’t know about. That’s part of acting that I really dig, is the researching and finding all this backstory that seeps into your character when you step on the set.

So then what’s next for Kristian Bruun? Any other surprises around the corner?

Carter is going to come out in the U.S. on WGN in January. I’m in a mini-series that’s already played in the U.K., we shot it in Toronto and it’s called Departure. It’s a fun six-part thriller about a plane crash investigation. A plane goes down in the Atlantic and there’s a crazy investigation all around it so I’m a part of that. That’s a really fun series that will come out late fall or early winter.

I have a film at TIFF this year, Tammy’s Always Dying, which was directed by Amy Jo Johnson of Power Rangers fame but also Felicity and Flashpoint. I was in her earlier film Space Between. This is her second feature film and that’s going to be at TIFF.

Ready or Not is in movie theaters now. Carter season 2 will return on WGN America in January 2020.