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Nick Lyon On Directing His Latest Film Cruel Love, Working With Bai Ling
Image Credit: Nick Lyon
The 411 Interview: Nick Lyon
Nick Lyon is a writer, producer, and director who has been making movies, according to his IMDb page, since at least the year 2000. Lyon has directed such movies as Species: The Awakening (2007), Zombie Apocalypse (2011), Bullet (2014), Christmas in Vienna (2019), On Fire (2023) (check out my review of On Fire here), and President Down (2025) (check out my review of President Down here). Lyon’s latest movie as a director is the low-budget thriller Cruel Love, starring Christian Oliver, Elisabeth Harnois, Bai Ling, and Ken Davitian and which is now available to rent via Amazon Prime and Apple TV and to watch for free on the Fawesome streaming service. In this interview, Lyon talks with this writer about making Cruel Love, making a thriller, and working with star and co-producer Christian Oliver in what would tragically be his last movie.
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Bryan Kristopowitz: How did Cruel Love become your next movie as a director?
Nick Lyon: Christian Oliver and I had already made four movies together, and for years we’d talked about producing something of our own. Cruel Love was going to be the first one where we were both stepping in as co-producers.
So, it was more personal than another film I was hired to direct. We were building something together, and the plan was for it to be the first of several per year.
BK: Was “Cruel Love” always the title, or did that come later?
NL: It was originally called Forever Hold Your Peace. I liked the phrase, but it felt a little too familiar, and I kept coming back to Cruel Love.
Even while we were shooting, I kept thinking about how cruel the whole thing is. Love is supposed to be a good thing. In this story it becomes something that can be manipulated and weaponized. Cruel Love just felt right.
BK: Where was Cruel Love filmed? How many real locations did you use?
NL: Almost entirely in Los Angeles, with the mansion scenes in Bakersfield.
Everything you see is a real location except the hospital and jail, which was a standing set we rented for a day. Real hospitals are nearly impossible to shoot in on a micro-budget film, so a standing set was the practical call.
I love shooting in real locations. They give you textures and imperfections you can’t fake.
BK: Talk about working with screenwriter Ron Peer.
NL: Ron and I go all the way back to my first feature. I directed a script of his called I Love You Baby (2000), originally titled Family Reunion, which he wrote, and we shot in Germany and Mallorca. A neo-noir about a billionaire searching for his lost son, full of twists. He corrupted me with his new-noir twist and turn plots at a young age!
I brought Ron on to write Cruel Love because I love his sensibilities. He peels a story back a layer at a time and lets you discover what’s actually going on. You think you’re watching one kind of movie, and little by little it turns into something else.
BK: How did you cast the film?
NL: Christian and I spent a lot of time talking about what kind of actors the film needed. Most of the cast were people we already knew and could talk to directly.
We went straight to Elisabeth Harnois, Bai Ling, Matt Pohlkamp, Johnny Pacar, Ken Davitian, and Ricco Ross, and the rest we worked with the casting director Darya Belyura to fill.
Christian and Elisabeth had done a Christmas movie with me in Austria, so I knew how they played together. Elisabeth was also right for Julia because it’s a demanding part. You have to care about her and stay with her even as the story gets complicated. A lot of the supporting cast came out of relationships built over years of making movies, and that gave the set a very comfortable atmosphere.
BK: What was it like working with Christian Oliver, who plays Ivan?
NL: Christian was a wonderful actor and a very good friend, so the work was always fun. He took it seriously without making the set serious. He was also completely devoted to it. We shot in the middle of winter, and the nights were freezing in Bakersfield (30 degrees!). There was a scene where his character goes into the lake, and Christian insisted on doing it himself. No hesitation. That was him. He’d get in cold water at night if that’s what the character needed.
I remember our last regular day of shooting clearly. We were on top of a skyscraper in Los Angeles, and afterward we took photographs together. He was ecstatic. So was I. We were both very happy with what we’d done. Looking at those photographs now means something different.
BK: What was it like working with Elisabeth Harnois, who plays Julia?
NL: Elisabeth is a real pro. She’s been acting since she was a kid, and her career goes back further than I realized. One night my wife and I got sucked into a couple of reruns of Highway to Heaven (1984). There was a young girl in those episodes we both thought was terrific, and then it hit me. That’s Elisabeth. I had no idea.
She has strong instincts about her characters. I think of actors as heads of their own departments. I’m there to guide, throw ideas around, watch everything and step in when something isn’t working, but I want them to own the character. With Elisabeth you could see she already knew internally where Julia was in every moment of the film. As a director that’s a gift, because you’re not manufacturing a performance. You’re shaping something that’s already alive.
BK: What was it like working with Bai Ling, who plays Mei Li?
NL: Bai Ling is a force of nature. Funny, wildly creative, and a very good actress. She came in with specific ideas for Mei Li and transformed herself. The limp was hers. Her character is from Kazakhstan and gets hired as a housekeeper, and Bai built an entire physicality and history for her that wasn’t on the page. She knew exactly what she wanted, committed all the way, and played it beautifully.
BK: What was it like working with Ken Davitian, who plays Harry?
NL: Ken is funny without trying hard to be funny. I remember him in Borat (2006), and that sequence is still one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. It works because he isn’t performing the joke. He plays it completely straight. I love that in a character actor. If you can make people laugh without going slapstick or signaling that you’re being funny, that’s a huge plus for me.
BK: How long did it take to make Cruel Love, from script through post?
NL: Ron wrote the first version in about a month to a month-and- a-half. By then it was fall, and we moved quickly into production. We started shooting in early December and wrapped principal photography on December 22, 2023. Eleven shooting days.
We had one more day planned with Christian on his sailboat, after he got back from his winter vacation. That day never happened.
BK: What was the hardest part of making the film? What was the easiest?
NL: The hardest part was losing Christian and his daughters. The day it happened I got a phone call, and I honestly can’t remember now who it was. At first I thought he was joking. He knew we were supposed to be filming with Christian the next day and was calling so we wouldn’t show up expecting him.
It took a while to take in. I was in disbelief. And then it became about telling everyone else. I was talking to friends who’d known Christian for thirty years, and in some cases I was the one delivering the news. That part was especially hard. We were all in shock. One moment you’re expecting somebody at work tomorrow, and the next you’re trying to understand that he isn’t walking through that door again.
And you still have the film.
Editing and finishing Cruel Love was strange, because in a way it’s like he was still with me, alive on the screen, and that might have actually softened the mourning, because every day in post I’m looking at Christian. Listening to his voice. Watching the same scenes again and again. As a producer and director I have the responsibility to finish what I started, and I wouldn’t dishonor him by not finishing the film we were both proud to have shot. I hope he’s up there somewhere looking down with a smile on his face. I think he’d be happy we finished it and that people are finally seeing work.
The easiest part, ironically, was shooting it. Great cast, great atmosphere, and Christian and I had worked together so many times that we had a shorthand. It was a hard production, the way independent films always are, and it was also a lot of fun.
BK: Do you have a favorite scene?
NL: Several, but there’s one between Christian and Elisabeth at dinner that puts a lump in my throat now. Something about what he says in that scene plays completely differently after what happened. Watching it today, it almost feels like he’s speaking past the scene, straight to everyone in the audience. Chills, every time.
BK: Is Cruel Love a thriller, or a drama with thriller elements?
NL: I’d call it a neo-noir thriller. I wanted the story to peel like an onion. You’re not told everything in the first ten minutes. You keep learning more, and your read on the characters keeps shifting. That’s very typical of Ron’s writing. Enough turns to keep pulling you forward. Like most films it has dramatic elements and thriller elements, but I consider it a neo-noir thriller.
I also wanted Los Angeles to be a character. There’s something fascinating about this city, because under the beautiful surface there’s an enormous and sometimes very seedy underbelly. It’s so vast you can never know everything happening around you. There could be a completely different world two blocks away and you’d never know it. I’ve always found that mysterious, and it fit this story.
BK: Any upcoming projects?
NL: I’m about to premiere my newest film, Do You Want to Play?, at FrightFest in London. It’s a horror film with Quinn Aune and Ricco Ross, about a young woman who becomes possessed after playing a Ouija-style game tied to an app called the D3M0N Board. Her boyfriend and the app’s creator have to work out what they’ve unleashed and try to get her back.
I’ve got several other things in development. The one I’m hoping to make next year is called The Vessel. Action-horror on a research ship in the Arctic. The crew pulls something out of an ancient ice core, a creature that’s been frozen for millions of years and can attach itself to the human nervous system. It doesn’t go well for them.
BK: What do you hope audiences take from Cruel Love?
NL: First, I hope they’re entertained. But there’s something real underneath it. Romance scams, online scams, pig-butchering schemes. People fall victim to them every day, and they’re sophisticated, because they’re built on earning your trust and then using your emotions against you. Cruel Love isn’t a documentary about any of that. I do hope it makes people think about how vulnerable any of us can be when we want badly to believe somebody.
BK: Any chance of a Cruel Love 2?
NL: No. It works best as a one-off. It tells the story it needs to tell.
BK: Where did you get those brightly colored couches in Julia’s office?
NL: They came with the office we rented. I thought they worked for Julia, and honestly, we wouldn’t have had the time or staff to bring in new ones if I didn’t like them. She’s a designer, so those couches tell you something about her before she says a word.
Sometimes production design comes from planning every detail, and sometimes you walk into a location and find somebody’s already done the work for you.
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A very special thanks to Nick Lyon for agreeing to participate in this interview and to david j. moore for setting it up.
Cruel Love is currently available to rent via Amazon Prime and Apple TV and is available to watch for free on the Fawesome streaming platform.
Check out my review of Cruel Love here!
Check out Nick Lyon’s official website here, official Facebook page here, official Twitter page here, official Instagram page here, and IMDb page here!
Cruel Love poster image courtesy of Mad World Creative. All other images courtesy of Nick Lyon.
