With 10 Cloverfield Lane just days away, new interviews with the cast of the film are slowly coming out. Below are two video interviews with Mary and her interview on Last Call with Carson Daly. Keep checking back throughout the week for a bunch of new photos/interviews as well as photos from the New York premiere taking place tomorrow, March 8.
Mary will be attending AOL’s Build interview series next week on Tuesday, March 8 at 3pm est in New York City. There are still tickets available for you to attend, so if you want to see Mary in person, click here to grab some tickets before the event gets full.
Mary will be speaking about 10 Cloverfield Lane and more.
For those that don’t know, BUILD is a live interview series like no other—a chance for fans to sit inches away from some of today’s biggest names in entertainment, tech, fashion and business as they share the stories behind their projects and passions.
Stay tuned for photos and video!
Slashfilm has debuted a brand new IMAX poster, set to hit theaters on March 11. The site has done a brief interview with the artist, which you can read below. Head to the gallery to check out the full-sized photo.
Peter: Were you a fan of the original Matt Reeves film Cloverfield?
Ape Meets Girl: Huge fan! I’m a sucker for a giant monster, and I thought Cloverfield nailed it. I just got back from New York yesterday and I had to scope out a few locations while I was there!
Peter: How did you get involved in creating this 10 Cloverfield Lane poster?
Ape Meets Girl: I was contacted by IMAX and then Dan. They explained they were looking for something to promote the IMAX screenings and wanted to know if I was interested. Dan told me J.J. had seen my work and loved it, so I was sold at that point (as if I needed convincing!)
Peter: I know you love to hide Easter eggs in your art, what can you tell us about the Easter eggs in this print? Did they come out of a collaboration between you and Dan?
Ape Meets Girl: Haha. Well, there are some obvious ones, like in the grass, and anyone who is following the Alternate Reality Game will be familiar with the name that appears in the post. As for the others, there are nods to the film, subtle nods, that really just appear to be part of the mailbox and the background, but once you’ve seen the film, you’ll realise their relevance. Some of them I added myself, but others were Dan’s idea, in particular he was keen to incorporate The Totally Rad Show into the image somewhere.
During a press day in New York for 10 Cloverfield Lane, Mary did tons of interview for the film which will be released on March 11. Below are some highlights she did with Film Ink. Click the link to read the interview in full:
On the secrecy of the film: “They sent me the script, but it was this very secretive way of doing it,” Winstead explains. “I got one link, that I could open one time on my laptop, and then as soon as I was finished with the script, it would delete automatically. A lot of times, I read things a couple of times, and really figure out how I feel about it, but this was like one chance. I read it once. Even my agents didn’t get to read it. It was really all on that one read, but I fell absolutely in love with the story, and the characters, and in particular the character of Michelle.”
On preparing for the movie: “I read a couple of biographies about women who had been kidnapped, and held captive in small spaces, just to get an idea of what that would feel like, even though that’s not exactly happening to Michelle,” Winstead says, “or at least she doesn’t quite know what’s happening to her. I wanted to understand what that would feel like to be held somewhere and not to be able to get out, and to be suddenly taken away from everything that you know. So I did a little bit of research like that, just to get in her headspace just a little bit, even though this obviously isn’t a true crime film. But it was good to get a little of that perspective.”
On being called Mary Elizabeth or Mary: “It was a SAG [Screen Actors Guild] thing, but I didn’t need to do it, I just wanted to,” the actress replies. “I joined SAG at twelve, and I just wanted to sound fancy. That’s really what it was about. If I got in trouble, I’d be called Mary Elizabeth, but on a day to day basis, it’s really just Mary. But as a kid, I thought, like all kids do, that my name was so boring. Mary Winstead sounded so boring to me, so I threw the Elizabeth in, just for good measure.”
MovieHole recently caught up with Mary last month to discuss 10 Cloverfield Lane, directorial aspirations, who she wants to work with next, and more! Be sure to click on the link above to read the entire interview. Below are highlights:
What’s the deal with 10 Cloverfield Lane? Sequel, remake, prequel?
The idea that it’s spiritually connected is I think a really good way to put it. It’s very much in the same spirit. It’s very much a bad robot, JJ Abrams mystery box kind of production, they’re very unified in that sense.
Cloverfield really brought the monster movie to a new place and a very human, personal level the way it was shot and acted, and I think this does the same kind of thing. It’s a monster movie in this very small space and reinvents that genre in the same way Cloverfield did.
You’re on screen a lot in the film, what were the challenges of that?
It was very challenging. I mean, thankfully it was the loveliest group of people and the most laid back environment, because when we were actually shooting it was just so intense, both emotionally and physically.There were days when I would come home and my whole body was covered in bruises and aching and exhausted because taking on this character’s experience was just a very intense thing.
There’s large sections of the movie where she’s just doing whatever she can to survive and scraping her way out of there, literally crawling and climbing and kicking and screaming, and those aren’t the kind of stunts that you bring in a double for, and sometimes those kind of stunts are more challenging because they’re so emotional.
Any directorial aspirations after all the names you’ve worked with?
I would love to. I’m not much of a writer, and my only thing is I don’t know if I could find the material that speaks to me enough that I’d want to take on the whole project.But it is something I’d like to do if I could figure that part out, if I could find a writer I connect with. Maybe I’ll start with a short film or something and see how it goes.
Any directors, genres or styles you’ve yet to tackle that you still really want to?
There’s so many. I’ve always been a huge, huge Coen brothers fan. I would die if I was in one of their films I think. Paul Thomas Anderson’s the same. Frances McDormand is a huge hero of mine. So many actresses… I love Sigourney Weaver… there’s a lot of people I would love to be in the same room with and kind of pick their brain.But there are so many actresses that have played really iconic roles that mean a lot to me, like Frances McDormand in Fargo – that’s what I mean by the sort of movies that allow you to play everything. She’s so funny in that and so real and human and, she’s pregnant but she’s also physical. That’s one of those roles that’s just, to me, perfection.
A bunch of new 10 Cloverfield Lane interviews have come online now that the film is TWO weeks away (aaahhh!! How exciting!) Below are highlights from Fandango, EW and Empire Magazine that Mary as well as producer JJ Abrams gave. Click on the appropriate links to read all the interviews in full. Additionally, Mary also comments how she’d love to have her own Die Hard film!
Mary on how Cloverfield Lane is connected to 2008’s Cloverfield: “I loved Cloverfield. I love how it sort of flipped the script on the monster movie and made it so personal. In that sense that’s how [both films] are spiritually connected, in that this is another take on a very big idea told in a very small, human, personal way.” [x]
On taking the role of Lucy McClane again:
Winstead didn’t reveal whether Lucy McClane has a role in the new Die Hard movie or not, but says she’s game to get her own Die Hard film.
“Hey, I’ve always wanted to take over the McClane name. I’m more than ready!”
JJ on casting Mary: I was a huge Mary Elizabeth Winstead fan from Scott Pilgrim. She’s got such strength, I really believe her. She’s beautiful but she doesn’t look like someone that you’d never meet in life. The things that Michelle, her character, has to go through in this movie required an actress who could do everything. She needed to be as vulnerable as she is, she needed to be as terrified as she is, she needed to be really calculated, she needed to be spontaneous even through her terror, she needed to be resourceful, she needed to be strong, she needed to be defiant and believable in all these insane obstacles that are thrown at her. She was fantastic. [x]
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How does an original script you acquired get to be a movie under the Cloverfield banner?
This script came in and had an incredibly strong central conceit. It was a very powerful Twilight Zone idea. We began developing the story, and we came upon some things where it became clear to us, that we were in a very interesting place, because the story was wholly original, a very different situation, different characters from anything we’ve done. But the spirit of it, the genre of it, the heart of it, the fear factor, the comedy factor, the weirdness factor — there were so many elements that felt like the DNA of this story were of the same place that Cloverfield was born out of. It just became clear that as we were working on the movie, this could be something that is not the sequel that anyone might expect. It’s not the continuation of the story that people might think of, but it was so clearly associated. There was such a clear Venn diagram of these two things, it felt like if we were literal about connections to the first movie but in no way that people might expect us to be, it could be it’s own thing. We very intentionally didn’t call this movie Cloverfield 2, but we realized that there was enough of a connection, and the movie was good enough that it warranted this association in a way that we think is justified and exciting.
Entertainment Weekly has a bunch of new info on Dan Trachtenberg’s upcoming 10 Cloverfield Lane, a “blood relative” to 2008’s Cloverfield. Producer JJ Abrams had some news to share:
On whether 10 Cloverfield Lane is a sequel:
“I think that would be presumptuous, because we’re talking about this movie and comparing it to Cloverfield, but I would be lying if I didn’t say there was something else that, if we’re lucky enough to do it, could be really cool that connects some stories.” Abrams’ only clue is that there is a “larger conceit” at play here. “This is just this movie, and it’s only two films that we’re talking about right now.”
There is also a separate article on how JJ and Bad Robot managed to keep the film under secrecy for so long:
Even though the scale of 10 Cloverfield Lane kept the cast small, producers were still cautious about who got to know what. When John Gallagher, Jr., auditioned and Skyped with Trachtenberg, he only received a partial script and didn’t find out about the Clover-verse plans until partway through filming. “Maybe this was the idea from the beginning and I was late to the equation,” Gallagher says.
During the 36-day shoot in New Orleans, Valencia got the full Bad Robot treatment. Physical scripts were printed on red paper — just like those for Star Wars: The Force Awakens — and any digital links were sent with a limitied viewing window, after which they’d deactivate. “You don’t want this getting out,” Mary Elizabeth Winstead says. “That was very clear to me from the get-go.”
“We kept it quiet because we knew we wanted to try something unusual,” Abrams says. “Something unusual doesn’t always work, but at least it’s unusual.”
The new issue of Entertainment Weekly hits stands TOMORROW. Additionally, head to the gallery to check out the newest still.
Amanda Crew, Mary’s best friend for over 10 years and Final Destination 3 co-star recently did a gorgeous photo shoot with Mary as well as a new interview for her web site Frank Be Frank. In it, Mary talks about her early career, meeting Riley, her favorite music, and more. Be sure to visit the website to read the interview in full. Below are some highlights:
On turning down a role in A Cinderella Story (starring Hilary Duff):
It was a huge studio movie and I had not done a studio movie at that time. I had only done TV work and was really trying to break into movies but I had scheduled this cruise with my best friend who was banking on going on this celebratory senior trip cruise with me. We had just graduated high school and it was this big decision for me. Do I go shoot this movie or do I go on this cruise? But I really wanted to go on the cruise and I wasn’t that excited about the movie, even though I knew it would be good in terms of getting my foot in the door. So I decided to go on the cruise and ended up meeting my future husband.
On quitting Twitter: I know. I did it so randomly. I was sitting on the couch and I was just like, “I don’t want to do this.” I felt bad because I felt that people assumed that it was because I was being antagonized or something and it wasn’t that at all. I have very little of that and I can handle the little bit that I do get. I was just like, “I don’t know what I’m doing with this” or “What am I saying?” and I didn’t know what I was bringing to the table. And there’s also so much antagonism of other people, even more so than my own personal antagonism of people saying mean things to me. It was more just seeing fighting of other people on Twitter a lot. A lot of arguing amongst people who agree with each other, which was exhausting for me to read.
On the nude hacking scandal in 2014: As I was seeing all the media and stuff about it I was just becoming more and more angry and more and more disgusted and sickened. And that was when I had to get off Twitter too. Again it was one of those things that was just so much worse when you see it happening to people that you respect. And that you admire. Because when the stuff was directed towards me, yes it was awful, but it was also like, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I know who I am so it can’t really be that hurtful to me when it’s just trolls attacking me. The scope of it was so disgusting to me. And such a large scale attack on women as a whole.
Mary looked pretty in pink while attending Entertainment Weekly’s Celebration Honoring The Screen Actors Guild Nominees in Los Angeles last night. Head to the gallery to check out all the pics! I also added candid shots of her leaving the party with Riley.
“There is this veil of secrecy to it from the very beginning. We were making this movie in this little bubble where nobody else knew what we were doing and there’s really only three actors in the whole thing, so it kind of felt like this really intimate experience. Now that it’s about to come out, it’s sort of crazy — like, ‘Oh yeah, people are excited to see this movie.’ I forgot that that was going to happen.”
She also went on to explain that she liked working with such a small cast, which includes herself, John Goodman and John Gallagher Jr:
“It’s so much about just the actors interacting with each other and that tension that builds, just all wondering if they are who they say the are, if they’re telling the truth or not, and really wondering what’s outside,”
Aaron Tveit, who will be co-starring with Mary in CBS’ upcoming show BrainDead, recently gave an interview with The Hollywood Reporter and how excited he is to work with Mary. Below is what he had to say:
You worked with the the Kings before on The Good Wife, but what was it specifically about this script?
They’re billing it as The West Wing meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers and I’m a huge fan of [Aaron] Sorkin and The West Wing, and I love The Good Wife and their characters. The writing was really tremendous but at the same time, I think its exciting to be apart of CBS stepping into this genre thing a little bit. I knew Mary Elizabeth [Winstead] was attached and I’ve been such a fan of her’s for so long. To have the thought of having so many of my scenes opposite her, I was just so intrigued by that. And then this character, he’s not a kid. As great as Mike was, he was kind of a kid. This guy’s a chief of staff to a Republican Senator and he’s a really hard worker, but he’s already in it. So I think it’s a nice step for me to no longer be playing a kid. This is a young man who’s already in his prime so I’m excited to do that.
How effects heavy is BrainDead going to be since it’s sci-fi?
I’m not exactly sure. I think it’s going to be more suggested. I mean there will be effects. I may not be the one to speak about this, but as much as I know, it’s not going to be over-the-top effects, it’s going to be very subtle-y done.
You can read the full interview by clicking the link above. Aaron worked on USA Network’s Graceland and will next be seen in Grease! Live on Fox this upcoming Sunday, January 31 in the role of Danny Zuko.