Actress Yulia Peresild at the Chkalovsky airfield after arriving from Kazakhstan. On October 17, 2021, the film crew returned from the ISS, where filming for the feature film “The Challenge” took place. Photo: Sergey Bobylev / TASS
The Challenge was released on April 20, but is still the second-highest-grossing film of the highest-grossing weekly movies. By the way, the AST publishing house published a book by Yulia Peresild “This is space, baby!”, In which she enthusiastically paints all the details of the filming on 300 pages, from the moment she learned about the project to the moment in which the lander touched Earth and she “saw through the porthole the crimson face of Konstantin Lvovich Ernst. We chose 15 unexpected facts from the book and illustrated them with quotes.
1. Julia started smoking because of acting and was very worried about her smoking before they started checking her for spaceflight. “Damn, I’m thirty-six. I have two kids. Health? Yeah, who knows. Never checked. All my doctors are OB-GYNs. I don’t live a healthy lifestyle, sleep little, work like a horse, smoke . Why did I start smoking? Delirium. At the age of thirty-three, throwing the play “Thunderstorm”, I lit a cigarette on stage. Katerina incinerated me internally. I remember how I got out of the race, bought a pack of cigarettes and, while walking to Belorusskaya, I smoked it all. Well, I started smoking. Before that, the smell of cigarettes made me gag. I put up with it when people smoked nearby, but I couldn’t even imagine that I would take it myself. Funny. Okay, we have to tie up.”
2. His relationship with Klim Shipenko began with an insult. “In March [2021 года, еще до начала проверки здоровья. – Ред.] we had a very unpleasant phone conversation with him about my meeting with the Novitsky team. After our communication, for a long time I felt insulted as a woman and as an actress. (…) My pride and the desire to be in this fought project hurt, and for many days in a row pride won in this fight. (…) I had to choose what I really want: to show my character or connect with a person who will become very close to me for the next few months and, in general, for the rest of my life. And I had to love him…
3. And his relationship with the astronauts, too. When she came to meet them at the Cosmonaut Training Center, she went to the bathroom, brought snacks, she thought they would welcome her with open arms, but none of that.
“Why do we need this project at all?
Us:
– Well, it’s an experiment, it’s always interesting! No one has done this before us, it’s great!
We answer:
– We do not understand what is cool here, and in general it is not a fact that all this happens.
I finally realized that communication would not work when we started talking about Russian cinema. One of them said:
— I don’t like Russian cinema at all.
I speak:
– Well, I must understand that this is a stone in my garden, right?
He shrugs in response. As if he had a subtext: “We don’t know who you are and what you are doing here at all.” Words were not needed to understand this. (…)
They tell me:
We have been preparing for the flight for ten years.
– It is clear that artists also study for a long time, and good artists study all their lives.
In response, with a smile:
— Artists… And what do you study there?
That was really embarrassing.”
Fragment of the poster of the movie “El Reto”.
4. For the flight, he had to choose clothes from a special catalog for astronauts. “The fact is that you cannot take your personal belongings to the ISS. All materials from which clothing is made are tested for fire resistance to see if it releases chemicals that can poison a person. (…) It is impossible, for example, that the buttons are made of plastic… Therefore, you must choose clothes for yourself from the catalog for astronauts. You can choose the color of the clothes, ask to put your initials on it. But it is standard for everyone.
They began to choose underwear. But this is still the clothes I will appear in the frame with: I thought that Klim would probably want to film how my heroine changes clothes, and as a result, we actually had such a scene. I look at the catalog of underpants: seventy percent are flowery. I go to Klim: “What to do with shorts?” It’s funny, but we didn’t have the option to bring our underpants.
(…) In space, things are not washed: after the clothes are dirty, they are thrown away. We flew for twelve days and I had five jerseys with me.
We begin to choose shorts, socks. “How many socks are required?” – Five couples. We choose T-shirts: separately – for filming, which I will wear only in the frame, separately – for everyday life. It is desirable that there are at least two of the latter. (…) But they still allowed me to wear two extra shirts and two overalls instead of one. I flew in one, filmed in the second. I gave him a strong argument: “What if, excuse me, I vomit in flight? What am I going to do now?” They agreed with me. (…)
As a result, in my kit there were spare shorts, five T-shirts, socks, shorts, overalls. For twelve days. But on the ISS, all these things ended very quickly for me. There, in space, you sweat a lot: the season is sweltering and in some places it is cold and dusty. Fortunately, there was a supply of clothes from those guys who flew away and didn’t wear theirs. I put on someone’s T-shirts, someone’s sweaters, Oleg Novitsky shared socks with me.
5. Before the flight, he wrote big letters to his two daughters, in case of his death.
Here are small snippets of one of them.
“Ana! My favorite girl!
If you are reading this letter without me, it means that something went wrong. It means that now it will have to be without me. Do I regret something? No. This is fate. Everything is happening as it should have happened. This is a challenge. First of all, to you and Masha. My love for you is infinite. And wherever you are now, my protection, my love will protect you from everything. (…)
Julia Peresild and her children: Anna (left) and Maria (right).
Photo: Ivan MAKEEV
Don’t be sad for me for a long time. Everyone has their own path. I feel good. I am proud to have YOU. I’m happy. I have achieved a lot in this life. Live each day in happiness and love! You can be proud of me too! I’m a crazy mom, madly in love with my amazing babies.”
6. There are snakes on Baikonur. Julia ran every day, she had already reached the territory of the cosmodrome and once “she came across a worker from Baikonur who was carrying a snake on a stick! And I didn’t even look down! It turned out that you can’t relax even while jogging.”
In the second part of the article (we’ll post it tomorrow), you’ll learn how Julia managed to burn terribly on the ISS, what outrageous little ritual the astronauts had a hard time performing before flight, and why she felt like Venus Botticelli. on the ISS.
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