Interviews – Page 21 – MaryEWinstead.net

More ‘Faults’ Interviews and Stills

on March 5, 2015 by Jessica Comments Off

After posting several new interviews early yesterday afternoon with Mary talking about her film Faults and The Returned, more new interviews are also online. First is one with Rama Screen where they discuss the film and the possibility of a Scott Pilgrim sequel:

Rama’s SCREEN: This movie was your husband’s feature directorial debut and he wrote it as well, so your having worked with many directors before, did you give your husband any input or advice along the way, during the filming process?

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: “A little bit, but he knew what he was doing, which I was really impressed by, he’s kind of a natural born leader, which I think is the most important thing in a director. And he’s also spent so much time on set with me just hanging out, and he’s learned so much in just by kind of observing, so I didn’t really have to give him that much advice, which was nice, it was really wonderful to be on set and to watch him in his element doing something that he’s really good at, it was awesome.”

Rama’s SCREEN: I was rooting for you guys, “Scott Pilgrim” back in 2010, but “The Expendables” and “Eat Pray Love” came out on the same weekend and you guys got beaten by those two films. So do you think Edgar Wright will come call you and say ‘Hey, let’s do SCOTT PILGRIM 2!’ or do you not see that happening at all?

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: “I don’t see that happening, I think because the film didn’t make a lot of money, I don’t really see the studio backing a sequel for that reason. But I don’t think it needs it either, I think it’s such a great movie on its own, and it will always be there, it will always exist, this great movie that we all made, and that’s certainly enough for me and I think enough for everybody involved. So ya, hopefully we’ll all get to work together again in some capacity because it was a really amazing talented group of people that I’d love to work with again someday, but I highly doubt it will be on the set of Scott Pilgrim 2.”

Next is an interview with ShockYa:

ShockYa (SY): You play Claire, a young woman whose parents are desperate to be reunited with her after she falls under the grip of a mysterious cult, in the new thriller, ‘Faults.’ What was it about the character, as well as the script, that convinced you to take on the role?

Mary Elizabeth Winstead (MEW): Well, I was a bit biased from the start, because my husband wrote the script and role for me. So I instantly knew that this was a character I was most likely going to play. It helped that I loved the script so much, and thought the role was so smart, exciting and interesting.

But I did have doubts about whether I’d be able to do the role justice, which was one of my main concerns throughout the process. I wanted to make sure I brought a lot of complexity to the role, and keep the audience engaged in the character. But once I got over those doubts and we were on the set, shooting, I knew I loved this character so much. I had so much fun playing her.

SY: Besides films, you have also starred in several short films and television series throughout your career, including the upcoming supernatural drama series, ‘The Returned.’ What is it about television that you also enjoy working on? How does it compare and contrast to making films, particularly indies like ‘Faults?’MEW: Ultimately, I like to do good material, as well as work with people I like. When I go back and look at all the things I’ve done, I typically chose my roles, based on the scripts and people involved. It doesn’t really matter what type of platform it is, whether it’s a short film, play, TV show or feature; it’s all the same to me, as long as I’m enjoying what I’m doing when I’m there.

The platforms all have their differences. TV is different, as actors are usually closer to the writers than we are on a film. We’re typically closer to directors on a movie than on television. So that’s a bit of a changeover we have to do in our minds, and get used to the different ways of working.

But at the end of the day, it all stems from the script and the material, which you have to be passionate about. That’s what really matters to me.

SY: Speaking of plays, since you’re primarily known for staring in feature films, as well as on shorts and television series, would you also be interested in performing in theater?

MEW: I would love to do theater. There have been a couple scripts that have come my way, which I have tried to get but didn’t, or have been offered to me, but I couldn’t do them because of scheduling. I’m certainly intimidated by theater, but the more people I meet, and the friends I make who are in the theater world, the less scared of it I am. They all tell me I’ll be fine, and it’s all the same, so I should give it a try. They’ve all been encouraging me to do it, so I think I will try it one of these days, whenever I can, and find the right project.

Continue reading More ‘Faults’ Interviews and Stills

Faults Interviews The Returned

Lots of New Mary Interviews; New Faults Clip and Stills

on March 5, 2015 by Jessica Comments Off

Several new interviews with Mary have come online in anticipation for her new film, FAULTS (you can pre-order it on iTunes or Vimeo), and her upcoming show The Returned, debuting on A&E Monday night at 10pm. First up is Mary’s interview with Carson Daly which aired Tuesday night:

Next is a video interview of Mary appearing on KTLA discussing her show The Returned:

Also, Indie Wire has posted a new Faults clip which you can view by clicking on the link along with some new stills which you can view in the gallery.

Finally, BadAss Digest also caught up with Mary to discuss both projects. Click on the link to read on the interview in full. Below are some highlights:

Faults is your husband’s project, but did he intend for you to play the role of Claire from the beginning?

Yeah, I think it was always this unspoken thing. He told me the idea for it and I loved the idea. And then every ten pages or so he would kind of show it to me, and for the first thirty pages or so, my character doesn’t come into it at all, but I immediately loved it. I was like, this is going to be an amazing movie and I can’t wait to see what role I’m going to be playing in it and what it’s going to be like. It was always kind of understood that I would play it, although when I started reading it I wasn’t really sure if I was the right person for it, and I would get worried about that. But I kind of just trusted him in that he trusted me, and I kind of had to have faith in him, and it all worked out.

Is it easier for you to find those roles in indie films versus bigger studio movies?

Oh definitely. I think everybody gets bogged down in what they think will sell, and for whatever reason, people have decided that movies about women don’t sell, or that women who are not exactly the perfect archetype of the girl next door don’t really sell. There’s all these sort of things that we hear all the time about what sells and what doesn’t sell, but it doesn’t really make sense to me. Obviously there’s a lot of great, female-led franchises right now with young women that are selling great and doing really well. So I think we’re all just kind of, like, wondering when that tide is really going to change, or when that dialogue is going to change because I feel like they all keep saying that, but that’s actually starting to prove to not always be correct. I’m hoping that’s eventually going to change.

Were you a fan of the original series before you signed on for the U.S. version?

I had heard of it and I had a lot of friends who told me about it, and I knew that it was good because those friends are people with some good taste. I was intrigued because of that, and I was sent the first two scripts and I loved them. And I loved the role and how emotional it was and how kind of haunting it was. So I’m drawn to it immediately, and I’m kind of one of those people who, if I like the material, I’m kind of hooked from that point on. I then went and watched the first episode of the original immediately and I thought it was so beautiful, and so I stopped watching it because I knew if I watched any more I would be, like, scared to do it or I would get something in my head about the way the original actress performed the part and all that stuff. So I decided not to watch it, but I went back and watched it after we finished shooting our first season. I thought it was really beautiful, but I was kind of relieved to see how different ours actually was at the end of the day.

Faults Film Reviews Interviews

New Interviews and Reviews On ‘Faults’

on March 4, 2015 by Jessica Comments Off

Today was press day for the cast of Faults which means some new interviews and reviews have come online. While more while be released within the next few days, here’s some new ones to keep you interested. First is an interview with Mary with Metro U.S.:

Cults are a fascinating issue, because they involve sometimes perfectly rational people subsuming their personalities for a crazy idea.

I think that’s the real horror. It’s scarier than thinking someone breaking into your house and grabbing you or something. To me the psychological horror of thinking that as strong or smart as you think you are, you’ll always be vulnerable to that kind of manipulation. That anybody could be vulnerable to that is really horrifying to me. [Laughs]

Some couples, even very close ones, find it difficult to make films together. How was it for you two?

We were really lucky in that we dipped our toes into it before; we’d done some short films together. We’ve been together for a really long time, so we know each other really well. I don’t think there was any way we could really surprise each other, like me suddenly realizing, “I didn’t know you were a tyrant on the set!” But at first it was a little weird, because we didn’t have to say much to each other. I’m used to being given direction and really talking about what the director wants. But he knows me and I know him, so we didn’t have to say much. At first that made me nervous — like, “Are you sure I’m doing what you want? [Laughs] You’re not just trusting me too much because I’m your wife?” I just had to make sure he wasn’t letting me slack off.

You’ve done very big films — two “Die Hard”s, a “Final Destination” — but you’ve lately been doing smaller, independent films, where the roles seem more challenging. Was that a conscious move on your part or just how Hollywood rolls right now?

I’m just trying to find good roles. And lately for the most part those have been in the independent world. For me it’s hard to find good roles [in big budget Hollywood films]. I’m not a huge name, and not to say they don’t exist, but the good roles tend to go to the same handful of people, and they’re all amazing. But that does make it difficult for someone like me to get those great roles. For me, to find those great roles and do great work, I’m likely going to have to look in other places. Hopefully, eventually, one of those things will open up and I’ll be able to do that. But I’m not going to sit around and wait for it.

Also, both IndieWire and ion cinema have written their reviews which you can read in full by clicking on the appropriate links. Come back soon to check out more upcoming interviews with Mary discussing Faults and The Returned!

Faults Film Reviews Interviews

Part Two of Faults Interview

on March 3, 2015 by Jessica Comments Off

After Mary and Riley talked to The Bitter Script Reader in part one of yesterday’s interview and how Faults came to be, part two focuses on writing and performing characters with layers, and Mary’s thoughts on issues with the writing of many roles for women. Click the link to read the full interview. Highlights below:

BSR: Mary, how are you layering your performance? It would be easy to just play Claire’s deception as sincere up until the reveal, but in watching it, it feels like you were very aware of “real Claire” and “fake Claire” and letting us get a hint that she’s wearing a mask. How do you do that?

MEW: I wanted it to feel very sincere in the beginning. I kind of realized as I was doing it how much I was enjoying all of it. At first I was worried about it, like, “Should I be having this much fun doing these emotional scenes?” Then I realized that was a good thing because ultimately Claire is having fun with this whole situation. She’s just like getting a kick out of it. I was going with sincerity, but also enjoying it.

BSR: Do you often get offered roles like this, with this complexity?

MEW: No, I don’t think that kind of material comes around very often in general. Just look at the landscape of female roles out there. I just think it’s really hard to find material that’s exciting and roles that are gonna showcase everything that you can do. And I wasn’t even sure going into this if I’d be able to bring the complexity that would make this a great role for me. Not even until I saw the movie was I like, “Okay, I can take a deep breath.”

SR: Mary, I don’t feel like you’re typecast in the sort of roles you do, but do you feel like you’re typecast in the sorts of scripts you’re sent?

MEW: That’s interesting… I think it’s changing now. The past couple years it’s been different than it was before. It’s really interesting how one project can kind of shift the perception of how people see you, even in terms of looks and stuff. I used to get “the cute girl” and now I get “rough, haggard” because of Smashed.

RS: Or after The Thing where they thought of you as really tough.

MEW: You can always tell someone saw something else I did and thought “She’d be good for this.” I still get heroine roles or action roles, and then I get more indie, rough-and-tumble, kind of messy…

Also, The Dissolve has given the movie a great review as has Screen Relish who gave it 5/5 stars:

Thanks to a bunch of massively underrated, underexposed actors who are given the meaty screen time they deserve to shine, Stearns makes a flawless debut as writer-director, showcasing his ability to shock even where you may have guessed the twists. The Coen brothers-esq characterisation is so captivating that you almost feel you’re being indoctrinated into some sort of cult yourself. Thanks to fearless performances, the results are darkly humorous, disturbingly convincing, and above all, manipulative. When one character asks: ‘doesn’t it feel good just to listen instead of thinking?’, it is like being awoken from hypnosis, and you realise how easily Stearns has pulled us under.

Faults Interviews

Mary and Riley Talk ‘Faults’ in New Interview

on March 2, 2015 by Jessica Comments Off

Mary and Riley sat down with The Bitter Script Reader to discuss how the idea of Faults came to be in a two part interview. Part two will be posted tomorrow where they’ll talk about the plot twists of FAULTS and asking Mary what kind of writing it takes to interest an actress of her caliber… and what she hates seeing in scripts. For now, here’s some highlights from part 1 of the interview:

BSR: With FAULTS, did you set out deliberately to write something that was low-budget and easy to produce?

RS: Definitely. I wrote it thinking that I would have to Kickstart it, because we did that with THE CUB. We got like $5000 for THE CUB, thinking for the next thing we could get $50,000-$100,000, thinking I could do this on my own, not realizing that had I done this on my own, I wouldn’t have been able to find the motel room. [We wanted to make the motel room] its own thing. It’s very brown, and a lot of production design. If I was doing that on my own it would have been not as good.

SR: Now Mary, I had a question for you. As Riley’s writing this, I assume you know you’re gonna act in it. Were you feeding him “I’d love to play this kind of part” or “Don’t do this because I hate when I see this in scripts?”

MEW: I don’t know… I was so excited as I was getting the pages of what he was writing but I was also really scared because the character he was writing for me just seemed really, really hard. She’s sort of enigmatic and doesn’t give much away, but also has to be really complex and I was sort of like “I don’t know how to do this.” I loved Leland’s character so much, Ansel, and was like “this character’s sort of flashy and fun!”

BSR: “Can you make him a woman in his twenties?”

RS: The only thing that Mary said that influenced the script in any way was we got to a point where, like 40 pages in… she said, “Ansel’s so cool and eccentric. Can Claire have any of that?” And so the next day I wrote the scene where she does the screaming thing, just because I wanted her to do something weird, and it ended up being one of my favorite parts in the whole movie.

MEW: At that point, Claire was just doing a lot of explaining about what the cult is, so I kind of was poking him a little bit, “give me something.” And I still was scared to play the role even at the end, but then once we were doing it, it was like the most fun I’ve ever had in a role, but I didn’t know what I was going to do with it until we were really going.”

RS: What I love about that is that it is a hard part and I didn’t realize it was such a hard part. Like I knew she could do it, so I didn’t even think about it as being a difficult role, which is why it was funny to me when she read it and was like “This is really hard!”

MEW: And I was worried he was trusting me too much, even when we were shooting it–

RS: I never give her notes because it’s always what I want. I’m like, “That was perfect!”

Be sure to Pre-order FAULTS on iTunes or Vimeo. It comes out this Friday!

Alex of Venice Gallery Updates Interviews

New Alex of Venice Poster!!

on February 19, 2015 by Jessica Comments Off

A brand new poster for Mary’s upcoming film Alex of Venice, directed by ‘The Mindy Project’s’Chris Messina has hit the web via ET. Head to the gallery to check out the brand new poster! A release date has also been revealed–April 17th!

Speaking with ET, Messina had this to say about Mary’s performance in the film:

Thankfully, it seems, this time he had an incredible cast to lean on, including Winstead (Smashed, The Spectacular Now) and Don Johnson, as Alex’s father who is suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s. For the former, Messina says of her casting, “Women that age, unfortunately, there aren’t enough roles for them. We had a lot of really great people wanting to do it, but Mary came in and she’s just an extraordinary actress.”

Her turn in Alex of Venice is just as extraordinary, playing one of those flawed, complex female protagonists that cinema desperately needs more of. “I recognize myself in movies when nobody is bad or good, we’re just human,” Chris said on the subject. “You can look at me, myself, Chris, and you could say ‘Oh, he seemed OK in this interview’ and then I hang up this phone and start yelling at someone in my car. We’re just human we make mistakes and we’re complicated, and that’s what I saw in [Alex.]”

Interviews

Mary Reveals her TV Crush

on February 13, 2015 by Jessica Comments Off

Zap2It caught up with some celebrities to chat with them and discuss who their TV crushes were when they were younger. Here’s what Mary had to say:

“This is the more, I would say important, one would be Jordan Catalano [Jared Leto’s ‘My-So Called Life’ character]. That was a huge, huge crush. And it’s so funny because I’ve since rewatched that show many, many times as an adult and it’s so funny now seeing what an a**hole idiot he was. As a 10-year-old girl when I watched that show, I had no idea that that was even being insinuated, even though he does horrible things and he’s horrible to her and he’s not that smart and all this stuff. But it was smart though because it was so real. When I was in high school I had crushes on those guys, but you don’t know until you’re older how dumb that is. [laughs]

“[Before that it was] Jonathan Taylor Thomas. JTT. I remember writing ‘JTT’ all over my arms. Just ridiculous.”

Interviews Kill the Messenger

Video Interview of Mary on Today

on October 10, 2014 by Jessica Comments Off

As mentioned earlier today, Mary stopped by the Today Show in New York City to promote her new film Kill the Messenger. You can view it below. I’ve also added a video of her signing autographs at last night’s premiere.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Gallery Updates Interviews Kill the Messenger

Mary is Wind Swept in Rhapsody Magazine

on October 5, 2014 by Jessica Comments Off

Mary looks absolutely lovely in the latest issue of Rhapsody Magazine. In her interview, Mary discusses how she landed the part of Anna Simons in Kill the Messenger (Renner and director Michael Cuesta saw her work in Smashed and reached out to her), and how being known as a scream queen was “something that sort of happened”. You can read the rest of her interview and check out her stunning photo in the gallery.

Gallery Updates Got A Girl Music/News Interviews

Mary Looking Beautiful in Bello Mag

on October 1, 2014 by Jessica Comments Off

Mary is looking as lovely as ever in the latest issue of Bello Mag. In the article, Mary talks about her love for French pop and how it influenced her album and how she came to work with Dan the Automator. Also, she talks about how after one episode of watching the French version of The Returned (Les Revenants), she became “hooked after one episode” (She’s starring in the A&E remake for 2015).

Be sure to read the full interview and check out the pics in the gallery.