BAIKONUR /Kazakhstan/, October 4. /TASS/. Russian Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov has confessed that it is not easy for cosmonauts to get into their characters for the movie Challenge, which is to be filmed in outer space.
"It is somewhat difficult for us, unprofessional actors. But we are doing our best. I hope, we will do it," he told an online news conference at TASS organized jointly by Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos, TV Channel One, and the Cosmonaut Training Center.
He noted that film director Klim Shipenko alters the script now and then, which makes the job still more difficult.
"I have never done anything of the kind. It is not to learn a verse by heart, as we did at school. It is about memorizing a text in prose and performing all the time," he confessed.
The Soyuz 2.1a carrier rocket is to be launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at 11:55 Moscow time on October 5. The Soyuz MS-19 spaceship will take cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, actress Yulia Peresild and film director Klim Shipenko to the International Space Station. The backup crew are cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev, actress Alena Mordovina and cameraman Alexei Dudin.
Peresild and Shipenko are expected to film the first-ever movie in outer space. The drama under the working title Challenge is a joint project by Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos, TV Channel One, and the Yellow, Black and White studio. The film will tell a story of a doctor, who has nothing to do with space exploration but is forced to fly to outer space to save a cosmonaut’s life.