In Dangerous Waters, a young woman and her long-widowed mother, Rose and Alma, accompany Alma’s new boyfriend, Derek, on his ship for a boozy Bermudan journey. Rose works long hours at a hotel, living out a working class existence without her father, who died serving overseas. She doesn’t want to go on this boat trip, but she wants her mother to be happy. She also doesn’t really trust Derek; why does a retired cop have an AK-47 on his boat? When pirates ambush them on the open water, Rose and Derek will have to figure out a way to survive.

Odeya Rush thoughtfully plays Rose as one of those many people in life that the world seems to want to crush, and she responds with a melancholic resilience and manipulative skill, refusing to stay down. Eric Dane is clever and intimidating as Derek, a big guy with stepdad vibes and dark, dirty secrets. Ray Liotta makes a surprising, mesmerizing appearance in his final filmed scene before he tragically passed away during the production. John Barr’s film is a great swan song for him, though. Rush and Dane spoke with MovieWeb about the film.

Eric Dane Makes Bad People Likable
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Seeing as Dane and Rush are essentially the only actors for about an hour of the film, it was important that they had a good understanding of each other and a nice give-and-take process. “Odeya and I worked really well together,” explained Dane. “I think we both had a pretty deep understanding of what the assignment was. It was on the page. And John [Barr] was great at helping us navigate some of those moments. The most important part of the two performances was that they tracked throughout, and I think we achieved that.”

“I think Eric’s a really good actor, so I just had to react,” smiled Rush. Dane (a far cry from his roles in Charmed and Grey’s Anatomy here) is sneaky here in the best of ways, and the audience, like Rose, never knows how much of him to trust. There are nasty truths, though, hidden beneath Derek’s disposition, but like most good actors, Dane doesn’t just ‘play a villain.’

“You’re approaching an antagonist — or any character — without judgment. It’s not for me to determine whether I’m good or I’m bad,” explained Dane. “You know, it felt as if he were justified in his actions, I think Derek felt like he was justified in his actions, because if ‘everybody’s doing it,’ then everybody’s doing it. So I think that’s, at the end of the day, the narrative he created so he could go to sleep at night.” The psychological complexity of an antagonist like that was what attracted Dane in the first place:

“I like the challenge of making bad people likable. I like playing an antagonist, because you get to do and say all the things everybody wants to do without experiencing real world consequences. And it’s fun to be bad. But there were other levels and layers to this character other than just a human being who is ‘the opposite of good.’ Like I said before, he feels justified and without judgment. And the challenge for me was to see if I could make this person acceptable to an audience.”

Remembering Ray Liotta
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Dane’s character had a different path at the beginning of Dangerous Waters’ production, and Ray Liotta was intended to have a larger presence in the film as The Captain, a haunting criminal leader. Of course, the world lost a legend when Liotta passed away, and the production halted before finishing in a different direction. Dane earlier said, “The most important part of the two performances was that they tracked throughout,” but how was that achieved when the script had to be adjusted?

Well, my character had always been set up to be sort of a red herring antagonist, and the antagonist for two thirds of the film, the primary antagonist. So the joining of the two worlds, that before and after, I think were brought together pretty seamlessly. But yeah, respect to a legend.

“Yeah, I think Ray’s approach to filmmaking came from so much passion and respect, so when we had to continue, that’s just something that was always on the front of our minds for everyone, just to honor him and remember him,” said Rush. “For me, he’s just remembered as someone that would care so much and cared so deeply, and was such a pleasure to work with. So it was about continuing that as well.”

“I think obviously the acting community will miss him,” added Dane, “but I also think that the writing and directing communities will miss him as well. I think he was somebody that people enjoyed working with. He was a dynamic actor and a force on screen.”

Related: Best Ray Liotta Movies, Ranked

His final scene is honestly one of the best of the year, a tense shot-reverse-shot conversation between The Captain and Rose, and the roles of predator and prey, confidence and desperation, oscillate in this expert little power struggle. Liotta is unforgettable, disturbing, sad, and intense, but Rush goes toe-to-toe with him, tapping into the manipulative talents needed for an outmatched young woman to survive. Rush explained the scene:

“So what’s interesting is, I felt like on my coverage, what Ray was doing was giving me even more of that. And he was just we did that scene. We took an entire day to do that scene. And I think the scene just got better and better as it went on. And I feel like everything he brought, I was just absorbing that and reacting to that. So yeah, that was a really special day, and I felt like I was there to react is incredible work that he had done. It felt very real.”

Odeya Rush Gets Dangerous
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You may recognize Rush from Umma, Cha Cha Real Smooth, or Goosebumps (2015), but Dangerous Waters gives her a lot of room to breathe (a whole ocean, in fact). It’s a small cast, and she’s front and center most of the time, with or without Dane. It’s also a tough role that requires some action badassery. For her, that was enticing.

“I think when I heard the cast list, Eric and Ray were already attached, so I was just so excited to read it,” she explained. “It was also the day after I’d seen Eric’s iconic scene in Euphoria. I’m like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s funny, me and my friends were just talking about how much he ate in that scene.'” If you haven’t seen Euphoria, Rush isn’t discussing a pie-eating contest. “‘Ate’ is a Gen Z thing,” she clarified, providing a definition for the old folks. “We were blown away. And then I get a call from my agent about a movie with him. And I just was so excited to read it.” She added:

“So I think for me, it was the story, the character, the opportunity to play a heroine.I’ve never done an action movie, so to tackle that and to tackle the emotional rollercoaster she goes on and what it means, the kind of hero she is, and the fact that she’s saving women at the end of the day — it meant a lot to me. So there were just a lot of good reasons to say yes.”

Turning Green and Dramamine
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Unfortunately, Rush had a little problem. “I didn’t know I get seasick,” said Rush. “They kept telling me, ‘Let’s try it out. Let’s go out there. You sure you don’t get seasick?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m fine. This isn’t a real thing.’ First day, my face is green.”

“There were like seven people simultaneously getting seasick,” added Dane.

“We had our stunt coordinators holding back my hair,” continued Rush. “And from that day, I learned what Dramamine was, and it actually helped me sleep so well. So as long as I was taking Dramamine, it was really nice. It was good […] But the Dominican Republic was amazing. You know, I just fell in love with our crew. We had the sweetest, sweetest crew. And we would go out and have dinners, and that’s nice, you don’t always bond like that. And that’s what’s nice about indie filmmaking. We still talk we talk all the time.”

Related: Best Movies About Being Stranded at Sea

“It was like Gilligan’s Island,” added Dane. “I mean, we were all shipwrecked on an island, together.” Filming on the water is notoriously difficult, and Dane didn’t mince words. “Well, Matt, I’m not gonna lie. Shooting on a 44-foot boat with a crew of people is not for everyone. That’s all I’ll say.”

Becoming an Action Heroine
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Rush proves herself in Dangerous Waters as not just a talented young actor, but a potential action star, a kind of younger Gal Gadot. She does an excellent job here. “I did a lot of work on her backstory, and I think also her physicality. You know, I have different parts of me, and I grew up with all brothers so I have a part of me that’s very tomboyish. And so I tried, just the way she sits down, the way she walks, all of that stuff, those were things that I thought about,” explained Rush, who continued:

“Also, something that helped is that we shot it pretty much chronologically, and we were kind of losing people in the film, and we were losing people as we played my role. We were losing people as the story went on. And I felt like I was getting physically stronger as we were filming, and emotionally stronger. And it’s a very intense shoot, so I feel like that that also helped me with the journey of the character.”

You can see Rose and the talented actor who plays her in Dangerous Waters, which is in theaters and on demand today, Oct. 13, from Brainstorm Media.