Tina Kakadelis
One of Billy Zane’s most famous roles is Cal Hockley in James Cameron’s Titanic. He’s engaged to Kate Winslet’s Rose and treats her terribly. In many ways, Cal is seen as the villain of the film because of his violence toward Rose. Almost thirty years later, Zane finds himself on the other side of his famous Cal in the upcoming film, Deadly Vows. Instead of playing the abusive partner, Zane is Detective Manny, a police officer tasked with helping Darya (Shiva Negar) and her children escape from the threat of Darya’s violent ex-husband, Sam (Peter Facinelli).
With the immense, genre-sprawling career that Billy Zane has had, one might wonder what it is that excites him at the beginning of each new project. When it comes to Deadly Vows, what intrigued him was something very simple.
“True survival,” he answers. “Not physically overcoming the peril, but psychologically and with one’s own hand. By that, I mean the power of forgiveness after the fact is something you don’t see very often in vengeance. Plays which are tit for tat, an eye for an eye, we plod through these three-act structures and are somehow dragged through to the point and seduced as an audience to to feel pleasure at someone extracting equal or more pain out of a perpetrator.”
“When that occurs, there’s a kind of corrupt satisfaction. I feel dirty afterward because we’re not better for it. It’s baggage we have to process in our subconscious. When you come across a piece of material that has to go through that dark valley, but comes out into the light through a difficult thing, it’s the tough choice of releasing trauma and forgiving the perpetrator. Removing that burden from yourself so you’re not carrying it any longer.”
“I look for movies that can either deliver on that promise of advancing culture or simply make you laugh with joy at absolutely stupid stuff. We need the balance. I want The Three Stooges or this kind of heavy stuff, you know? It’s steak and cake.”
Deadly Vows is inspired by true events, and the film excels at showing the bureaucratic red tape that often feels like it helps the abuser more than the abused. Billy Zane’s Detective Manny is adamant about working within the letter of the law, but that leaves his hands fairly tied until a credible threat is made on Darya’s life. It creates an underlying sense of frustration that Zane channeled into his performance.
“The quagmire that is the judicial system and the curious protections that seem completely inverted at times. These are the checks and balances of a democracy, and it’s a lot of gray area. It was an interesting challenge to play with someone who would want to seemingly break the law to uphold it.”
“I played a fairly dark law enforcement character who couldn’t manage it and crossed into criminality in a film called Day of Reckoning. He’s convinced he had to break the law to somehow uphold it. It makes for good storytelling and neat character development, that’s for sure. Because it’s definitely a palpable dilemma.”
Deadly Vows wants to be a resource for people experiencing domestic violence. The National Institutes of Health estimates that 10 million Americans are affected by family and domestic violence yearly, and one in four women and one in nine men are victims. There’s still a stigma around those impacted, but Deadly Vows seeks to start conversations to diminish the shame felt by those affected. In working on the project, Billy Zane focused on the cyclical nature of this violence and how it impacts generations.
“Almost consistently, the violence is cyclical. If you can recognize that, it’s the gateway to understanding or forgiveness,” Zane says. “I saw a really interesting documentary about surviving members of families who sat opposite recently paroled convicts who were guilty of manslaughter. The moment of the families forgiving the paroled convicts on camera and how that catharsis was a relief for family members, how noble that gesture was. They both needed it. There’s no benefit in carrying it. As hard as that sounds, people hold on to their hate and they hold on to their pain. Some can, some can’t.”
“The most interesting part of the subject matter is the capacity to approach that level of emotional intelligence. It takes time, and sometimes that’s not going to happen in this lifetime or in that generation. It might be your children or your children’s children who have been handed this pain they’re going to have to process.”
“Generationally, we manage the triumphs and the burdens, the baggage of our ancestors. We carry it. If Deadly Vows starts a conversation about whether someone could go there or not, I hope it provides a look at how they could.”
