‘Dark Match’ Stars Ayisha Issa and Steven Ogg Talk Love and Wrestling
Writer and director Lowell Dean took his lifelong love of professional wrestling and made it into the new cult horror movie Dark Match, which is out now on Shudder! Starring Ayisha Issa, Steven Ogg, and Chris Jericho, this is a horror movie for wrestling fans, a nostalgic bloodbath that isn’t afraid to get a little nasty.
In the new wrestling horror film:
A small-time wrestling company accepts a well-paying but too-good-to-be-true gig in a backwoods town only to learn, too late, that the community is run by a mysterious cult leader… and their event is now a pay-per-view fight to the death.
We spoke with Issa and Ogg about their lifelong loves of wrestling, bonding over the freezing cold, and the magic of live pro wrestling.
Dread Central: So you’ve probably been asked this question 33,000 times, so I apologize, but what were your familiarities with wrestling before starring in Dark Match?
Ayisha Issa: First of all, I’d love the fact that you were like, I know you’ve been asked this question before, but let’s do it. So I just appreciate the fact that you know that and it’s totally fair. Sometimes it feels like I need to feel like I need to come up with a new way of answering it! But it’s pretty straightforward. I used to watch wrestling on Saturday mornings with my cousins. There were three boys and I was the baby. So I was just jumping off the back of the couch, which was supposed to be the top row and I was just totally sucked into all of it. Yeah, I could run you off a list of different wrestler names.
DC: That’s so cool!
AI: I think that it’s that idea of that physicality and being drawn in by the physicality of it is what made jujitsu so attractive. I don’t want to call it the real version, but it’s kind of like the sports version of wrestling. I think it made me very open to the idea.
DC: That’s so cool. And Steven, what about you? What was your relationship with wrestling?
Steven Ogg: Well, actually, I mean, it’s almost kind of an exclusive really, because a lot of people didn’t know that I was in the same room as Ayisha watching wrestling. We grew up together. [Laughs]
DC: It’s an exclusive! [Laughs]
AI: Don’t believe anything he says. Rule number one, rule number one.
No, but the story is similar. I mean, growing up, I grew up in Calgary with Stampede Wrestling. So that was my growing up. I went to my five-pin bowling league and then rushed home for Stampede Wrestling. And then when I couldn’t make it, there was always the good old VHS with the big block colors. I’d record it, so I was always watching it. So I grew up with it and also grew up with the Hart House as the temple in Calgary. We had Bad News Allen. Calgary growing up was as white a town as you can find. It was wonderful when Bad News Allen, one of the only Black people in Calgary at that time, would show up to our games.
So I would see Bad News Allen at basketball games and the Cuban assassin and Carrie Brown driving in the limo down Deerfoot Trail. Keith Hart, I think it was junior high or high school, was substitute teaching, and we’d be like, “Ah, wrestling’s fake.” He’s like, “Come here.” And he’d put us in a figure four leg lock. So I grew up with it. It was always something that I loved and appreciated, and to this day, I still watch.
DC: I’m watching my first Royal Rumble at my friend’s house in February. I’m very excited to get into the spectacle of watching wrestling.
SO: I’ve never been live, which is the weirdest thing I think.
DC: It looks like so much fun though!
AI: I just want to say I have been live and it is awesome. I suggest you guys do it. Well, we did one together!
SO: Oh, yeah. Oh, that’s right.
AI: I’ve been twice. So we all did one. The whole cast went out because half of our cast were actual wrestlers and half of our cast was fighting that night. People were flying out of the ring. It was insane. We were yelling our heads off.
But then in LA, I got to go see Chris [Jericho] at an AEW show in Los Angeles, which was wild. My eyes were peeled back with the energy of the space and I was watching with what I had just learned about wrestling, superimposing that on what I thought I knew about wrestling. So seeing it with those new eyes, the new understanding of what was happening. I was paying attention to other things, but just watching how they controlled the crowd and how into it they were and how protective the crowd was of certain wrestlers. It was really, really, really, really, really fascinating. It was a great time. So I suggest if you have the chance.
DC: I have a friend who is a pro wrestler in Maryland where I live, so I need to get to one of the shows now.
AI: The little one we went to, it was at a legion. Remember that?
SO: Yeah, like a community center
AI: A quarter at least, or a third of the crowd, were elderly, and they were not holding back, which was incredible. They were all about it.
DC: When the two of you met, what was it like when the two of you met? Because you have so much amazing chemistry and you obviously have a great rapport now. But what was it like when the two of you met and started developing the relationship between Joe Lean and Miss Behave?
AI: What was the first scene we shot together? Do you remember?
SO: I don’t remember.
DC How long ago did you guys shoot Dark Match, by the way?
SO: Two years ago.
DC: Oh, okay. Wow.
SO: I don’t remember last week.
AI: Yeah, same.
SO: We share wrestling as children and an inability to understand time. I mean, I don’t remember the first meeting or anything. It’s generally sometimes in the makeup trailer or saying hello. I think we, or what I recall is the biggest bond was over with the intimacy coordinator.
You need intimacy coordinators on set for obvious reasons. So we had to discuss a certain scene, and that scene had changed. So I think that for me is when I bonded most with you because we were on the same page. We both had the same idea of what that was about, what we were going to do, what you’re comfortable with, and so that for me sort of solidified this is someone who’s going to be great to work with. I don’t know when that took place, but that was certainly like, “Oh, here’s a smart, funny person.” Everything within that conversation is who Ayisha is, and that’s certainly what the whole experience was about. It was fun.
AI: Yeah, I definitely feel the same way. I still remember us, the two of us sitting side by side next to each other in this little trailer in minus 30-degree Celsius weather during our lunch break.
DC: Those little moments are always the best, bringing you together in ways you didn’t expect.
SO: We all bonded over keeping warm and not freezing.
AI: Or the van. We all bonded over the van being in that van for long periods of time.
SO: I forgot about that, but that was another nice moment. I really enjoyed the two characters in the back of the van after you [Ayisha] were sleeping. And again, it turned into this lovely little intimate moment shared between two people who are keeping this relationship kind of secret. But I’d forgotten about that until I saw the clip. I remembered that those were the moments that I found to be really wonderful in Dark Match. They’re just another added layer, and they’re somewhat unexpected.
AI: I agree, and I think it does really represent two people who deeply care for each other very intimately in a way that nobody else does. The only time we see those two characters in that level of softness is when they’re together and alone. Or sometimes you can kind of catch them when they make eye contact around everybody else. You kind of recognize that they have their own world happening all the time. So yeah, I love that about those two.
DC: That’s why I asked about that bond because, I’m sure it’s on the page too, but the way the two of you embody that and have that little shorthand with the looks, it does really add that extra intimacy to Dark Match. There’s so much we don’t know about the two of them, which is great, and there’s a history and you can feel that history between the two of you.
SO: I’m glad that came across. I know that that was an important layer in the sandwich for me to have this relationship displayed, so that’s great. If as an audience you’re getting that, it’s like you can feel that concern or care for someone.
Dark Match is out now on Shudder.
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