Yesterday, Mary attended the New York City SAG-AFTRA screening of her film All About Nina, which is in theaters TODAY in select cities in New York as well as Los Angeles. Head to the gallery to check out the new photos.
Now that Mary has landed the role of The Huntress in DC’s Birds of Prey opposite Margot Robbie, Mary is able to talk a little about playing the character of Helena Berinelli. Here is what she dished to The Wrap:
“I’m going to start training, and I’ll be learning how to shoot a bow and arrow, too — which is new for me.” She continued:
“I can’t say that I was a huge comic book reader. But when I met with Cathy Yan, who’s directing the film, and learned kind of the back story of the character, I was really interested,” added the actress. “It’s a really strong, kind of emotional place to start from for a superhero character. I won’t go into too much detail now, but I think it’s interesting and an opportunity to do something cool with this kind of character,” she said.
The film will be directed by Cathy Yan with a screenplay by Christina Hodson, who is also writing “Batgirl” and Winstead is happy to be on a set that will be more female driven: “It’s really exciting, and even the process of going through getting the role and everything was a very different experience than I’ve typically been through,” Winstead said. “Being with the other actresses and a female director and just the whole energy behind this is so unique, so I’m really happy about that.”
Mary also spoke with The Observer about how the film could change the superhero genre:
“I think it opens it up to a new perspective and artistic energy that I think is needed in that world,” she said. “That’s not to say that the films that have already come along aren’t good or valid or worthy in their own way. But I think more perspectives in every aspect are needed.” She continued… “I think the perspective is really interesting and different for a superhero film in that sense…And the idea of suiting up into a superhero suit and it being from the female gaze is really interesting.”
EW has debuted a brand new clip of Mary in writer/director Eva Vives’ All About Nina, hitting select theaters in New York and Los Angeles tomorrow. Additionally, Entertainment Weekly talked to Eva about how she turned her real life trauma into this film, which is loosely based on her.
There’s a distinct rage coursing throughout Nina and the film, too. I don’t mean to probe into your past, but is that what inspired the script: a personal rage from a similar experience?
I wouldn’t say it was the rage that sparked me wanting to tell it, but I certainly didn’t want to shy away from the rage…. Until very recently it wasn’t really allowed in women, but that doesn’t mean we don’t feel it. We’re certainly feeling it a lot more in the last year — specifically this week. I’m incredibly triggered by what’s going on with the Kavanaugh hearings and how Dr. Ford is being treated. I’m upset that it feels like she’s being bullied into testifying and it’s a bunch of white, straight men trying to overpower her and not believe her! I was, funnily enough, trying to write a movie that’s somewhat hopeful for survivors. At the end of the day, she’s somebody who has a passion and does what she does well, and hopefully by the end of the movie you feel like she will at least be able to open herself up to love. I also didn’t want that to mean she wasn’t in touch with her anger and her rage. Keeping that stuff down is really hurtful.You’re a survivor as well?
It’s very much my story, except I’ve never done stand-up comedy. Everything else is very much taken out of my life. Definitely in terms of everything she says on stage during her breakdown is me. I was abused by my father for eight years.Was writing Nina’s liberation liberating for you?
The liberation happened already; that’s why I was able to write about it because I didn’t have to create that much. She’s similar to how I was in my twenties. I’ve calmed down since…. The bulk of my recovery — not that it ever ends — was 10-12 years of living in New York, exhibiting [destructive] behaviors Nina does…. I was able to write this with some distance because I’d recovered and healed enough. I also had a son five years ago, and becoming a parent gave me that kind of power. I want to be strong and good for him in the way my parents weren’t able to be for me, and that gave me strength and security.It was more empowering to write in the sense that I don’t really think about my father anymore. As Nina also says in the movie, he committed suicide years ago, so he was already not part of my life. For me, maybe it will be liberating soon enough…. We’ll see what happens when it comes out. It was empowering to at least have some say on how I told the story, because for so long he defined me, what he did to me or what he was how I had to live.
Mary was in New York today to attend the AOL Build Series to talk about her new film All About Nina. While there, they also tried to get some info out of her about landing the role of The Huntress in DC’s Birds of Prey, but she just said she was very excited. Be sure to head to the gallery to see new candid shots of her arriving at the studio!
AOL Build portrait
Yesterday I posted four interviews of Mary promoting her new film ‘All About Nina’ and as previously mentioned, more interviews with her have been released. As I always do, I will add excerpts, but be sure to click on the links to read them all in full.
Variety also interviewed Mary, where she talked about potentially doing stand-up before filming:
“We talked a lot about how Nina is so confident onstage. I knew how to do that as a character in front of a camera because I know how to tap into that confidence,” she says. “But strip all that away from me and put me at an open mic night somewhere, I just would have bombed. I would have been terrible.” It helped to have comics in the film, such as Jay Mohr, and Jamie Loftus, who served as comedy consultant. “I was nervous, I would come in early on the days we shot those scenes and work with Jamie,” Winstead says. “By the end, it actually started to be really fun.”
Front Row Features also had a really in-depth interview with her where they talked a lot about the film Some highlights:
Q: Did you go to comedy clubs to watch comedians on stage?
Winstead: A little bit. I signed onto the movie and then I went to shoot (the TV series) “Fargo” almost immediately. Then I came back and we shot the movie almost immediately so there wasn’t a lot of time in terms of preparation. Also, I was so nervous and so nervous and so overwhelmed that I started trying to go to as many shows as I could. I was trying to find that one person who was going to be my inspiration. At a certain point, I had to sit back and figure out who this person is and let the comedy come out of that because if I try to copy somebody else then it’s not going to feel authentic to me. So, I had to take a step away from all that stuff and focus on Nina.
Q: Was your stand up act all scripted or did you improvise or create some of your dialogue?
Winstead: It was a bit of both. The structure of it, the majority of it that’s in the film, is scripted. We would come in early and work on it on the days that we shot the stand up routines. We had this comedian named Jamie Loftus who was our stand up consultant. So, the three of us—Eva, Jamie and I—would get together and we’d go over it and I’d say it for them. We’d talk about which things were working, which things could be better, and we’d just riff. We’d take things out and add things in and mix things up and make them feel how they needed to feel for me to feel confident. It also was really fun to be riffing and improvising raunchy comedy with a couple of other women. Typically, in any comedic space I’ve been in, it’s always been only men. So, it was a totally new experience and I loved it.
Q: Did you relate to Nina as a performer coming to L.A. from somewhere else to realize your dream?
Winstead: My experience was so different because Nina’s coming from New York. I came from Utah when I was a kid, so I had a much more wide-eyed point of view. I did have that slow falling in love with L.A. It took me a long time to do. I loved working here and I loved that I was able to do what I loved but as a city, I didn’t really get it or figure that I fit in. But now I really love it. I had to surrender to it in some way which I kind of see Nina do in the movie.
Mary looks absolutely lovely in a new feature for WWD! Aside from a new photo shoot, Mary discussed her new film All About Nina and how she chooses her projects. Be sure to head to the gallery to check out the pics. The photos were taken by Dan Doperalski. Also, a huge thanks to Eden for the additional photos!
“The three of us would get together in the mornings any day that I was doing a stand-up scene and we would go over it, collaborate and come up with new stuff, and rework old stuff,” says Winstead. “The little bit of comedy that I’ve done has always been mostly with men, so this was a really fun way to do comedy where you’re just sitting with two other women and there’s no feeling of, ‘oh well, good try, you’re not as funny as the guys.’ Which is usually what you feel in a room full of guys when you’re trying to be funny. So it was really liberating to be working on comedy with women only.”
On how the film fits into the #MeToo movement:
“It’s interesting in some ways because we did have some jokes and things in there initially that we had to take out because they’ve kind of been blown apart by what is in the news — like I actually did a bit about Louis C.K.,” Winstead says. “At the time that we shot it, it was really sort of scary because no one had actually come out; there had been a little talk and rumors about him but the articles and the exposé about him hadn’t come out yet. Ultimately Eva took it out because now we’re not really saying anything new by doing a joke about Louis C.K. So certain things like that; it was interesting how much changed from the time we shot it to the time now that the movie’s coming out.”
On choosing projects:
Either a story grabs me or it doesn’t. It’s pretty simple. And I think beyond that, I’m also looking at the types of people I want to work with and the types of stories I want to tell, and if there’s something that is needed or valid in our time at the moment — I think it’s important for me not to just make things for no reason,” she says. “I think I’m just trying to find stories to tell that mean something to me, and mean something to the people making it, and then will hopefully mean something to the people watching it.”
Just a week ago, Mary was reported to have screen tested for the role of Huntress in the upcoming DC film Birds of Prey opposite Margot Robbie, who’d be reprising her role of Harley Quinn from 2016’s Suicide Squad. Now it has been confirmed that she has landed the role and will star with Margot as well as Underground‘s Jurnee Smollett-Bell, who will take on the role of Black Canary.
In the upcoming film, Huntress is a former mafia princess, who like Batman, saw her family killed at a young age, hence why she became a vigilante. In the movie, the team will fight a Gotham crime lord who has yet to be unveiled though it is rumored to be a character by the name of Black Mask.
Production is scheduled to begin in January and will have a release date of February 7, 2020.
HUGE CONGRATS to Mary on landing this role! I’ve wanted to see her in a superhero film for ages and this is so exciting! She’s going to be fantastic. I’m thrilled for her.
Mary recently completed two days worth of press for her film All About Nina and brand new interviews with her, co-star Common as well as writer/director Eva Vives have hit the web. Be sure to check out the film in New York and Los Angeles this weekend if you’re able to. You can check to see if the film is playing in a theater near you by going here. In related news, Mary will be at the AMC Empire 25 in NYC this Friday at 7:30pm participating in a Q&A for the film. Be sure to check back for even more interviews in the coming days!
Mary also did an interview with Awards Circuit. I’ve added parts of some of the Q&As below, but be sure to click the link to read it in full since it is a great read.
JM: What made this part attractive to you? There’s a lot of stuff that people seem interested in you for. At the same time, you don’t sign on to a lot. So, you definitely have an idea of what you want to do. What made this something that sounded like a good way to spend six months of your life?
MEW: Yeah. This one, you know, because these movies are so fast and furious, we shot this one in 21 days. It was a much shorter time spent in the character, but a much more intense time than most others, you know? But, it just was, from the first page, so intriguing to me. It opens with this huge, long, stand up monologue. I don’t get that many scripts that open with just one woman talking for three pages, you know? Right off the bat, I was curious about it, at the very least, since playing a stand up comedian seemed like such an incredible challenge.
JM: Has working with Eva made you think about directing?
MEW: I think, for a few years now I’ve thought about the possibility of directing. It might be something that I could be good at. Of course, it’s something you don’t really know about until you try. Hopefully one day I’ll find the time and the people who want to work with me, because I’d love to try it. But I don’t know. It would all have to come together in the right way. We’ll see. But I hope that it does!
JM: What do you look for going forward? Between great work on television, “All About Nina,” which deserves awards attention for you, and how every few weeks you’re rumored to be up for a blockbuster, does it impact what strikes your fancy when looking at potential gigs?
MEW: Well, I mean, I kind of just go with my gut feeling on whatever I do. Usually, I’m just looking for something that I think will feel good to do. Usually that is based on the material and the people and the story we’re telling. That means for me that character is complex, that we’re trying to say something with it that’s going to make us feel good and stand behind at the end of the day. So, that’s kind of what I look for. If it’s not saying anything, if it won’t make me feel good, I’m not interested. But, if it is, if it has a point of view that’s interesting to me, or if we’re trying to say something that might matter at the end of the day, that could capture my interest.
JM: Luckily, that’s starting to include certain large scale projects too now.
MEW: It is! It’s exciting. It opens things up for me a little more. More diversity of storytelling, in all facets of filmmaking, is really exciting.
Additionally, Mary spoke with Entertainment Tonight about the film which you can read after the cut:
Continue reading Four New ‘All About Nina’ Interviews
People has debuted a brand new clip of Mary from her upcoming film ‘All About Nina‘. In it, Mary’s character Nina does different celebrities ordering smoothies including Bjork, Kristen Stewart and Shakira.
“Coming up with the impressions for this film was so fun, and performing them was pretty scary,” Winstead tells PEOPLE. “I’ve never done impressions in my life, but I realized that there are certain voices I do just in conversation or when I’m joking around with friends — like Bjork and Kristen Stewart, so Eva [Vives, the writer/director] and I kind of jumpstarted it from there. I made a list of people I thought I could imitate and Eva decided it would be funny to see all these random people ordering smoothies and it somehow made it all flow quite easily.”
As Winstead reveals there were a few that didn’t make the final cut including a Britney Spears impression that she “enjoyed quite a bit.”
“Maybe I’ll break that one out one of these days!” she teases.
All About Nina, costarring Common, opens in select theaters Sept. 28
I have added over 50 photos of Mary attending the Los Angeles Film Festival premiere of All About Nina last night. She walked the carpet with her co-star Common and director Eva Vives. Mary looked so pretty! Love how effortless her look is. Head to the gallery to check out all the pics. Also, stay tuned for lots more interviews with her as Mary completed a press day for the film. 🙂
