Category: Movies

Paige has posted a bunch of new interviews Mary recently did for 10 Cloverfield Lane, and I’ve added a few more which you can check out below. After the cut, you can hear a podcast Mary did with Joshua Horowitz and some other video interviews, including her interview with AOL Build:

Time.com Interview:

What kind of physical training did you do to prepare to play a total badass?

What I started to do in my off-hours was to put in a little time at the gym, because I’m not particularly a gym rat. Nothing crazy—a bit of weightlifting and cardio just to make sure I didn’t collapse halfway through shooting. I knew that once I was there, it needed to feel like this real girl who doesn’t have any special skills. She’s not a martial artist, she doesn’t come from any background where she would be more capable physically than anyone else, other than the fact that she’s just a tough girl.

How often do you read parts where you think, “That woman is a total badass?”

Very, very rarely. It’s rare to read parts with female leads in general when it comes to more mainstream fare, so that in and of itself was a rarity. When you get a script and it’s a female lead, you’re just hoping for the best—“Please let this be good, please don’t let this be stereotypical”—but you’re expecting those things because you’re so used to reading that kind of stuff. With this, every page was like, “She’s so cool, she’s still really cool, she’s smart, she’s interesting, she’s mysterious!”

The Wrap:

 What was your audition process like?
The casting came through my agents but it was a bit different. They called me, and they were like, “we don’t know anything about it, we are not allowed to read the script, nobody is allowed to read it.” It was this super-mysterious thing, they were just like, “someone is going to send you the script from Paramount and you are going to get this link and you are going to read it and as soon as you read it, it’s going to delete itself, so after reading it once you have to decide if you want to do this thing.” I read it and immediately loved it, but obviously wanted to meet with J.J. and Dan and talk about it. Once I met with them, I was completely on board. I loved that my agents were like, “we don’t get to have an opinion in this!”

Continue reading More 10 Cloverfield Lane Interviews Round 2

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: From Mercy Street to Cloverfield Lane – Interview Magazine

BROWN: When get a script, would you normally have your agent read it? Or would you talk to your family or friends?

WINSTEAD: Normally it’s just the agent and we have the conversation. Sometimes I open it up if I want a bit more of an opinion—sometimes my husband will read it, my mom will read it, my sister will read it. But usually it’s after the fact. Once I’ve accepted a role, I’ll let my parents and my sisters read it because they find it entertaining. If you let too many cooks in the kitchen it could cloud your vision of what you want to do.

Why 10 Cloverfield Lane Star Mary Elizabeth Winstead Is No Damsel In Distress – Bustle

Playing a well-rounded character like Michelle was a unique and welcome experience for Winstead, who describes the female characters she typically sees as being unrealistically strong or “a total mess.” But taking on the part of Michelle wasn’t all roses; the role required quite a bit of stunt work, as Michelle fights for her freedom, and, while the character is, without a doubt, a badass female heroine, she’s no superhero. “I ended up with a lot of bumps and bruises that I wouldn’t have on other films because I was just trying to play it very real,” Winstead explains.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: Horror is a great place for strong female leads – Metro

When I do those films I’ve always try not to be exploited in any way, or play characters that go against anything I have within me in terms of my feminist nature. This was a script when I read it I knew immediately it was something I could take on. There were a couple of things in the script that in the wrong hands could go in a way I wouldn’t be comfortable with. But after talking to Dan [Trachtenberg, director], I realized he was someone looking at the story from her perspective. He’s not looking at it like she’s this girl in peril. He’s seeing himself in her as a person. She’s an everyperson. She’s not a damsel in distress. She’s an anybody in distress. She’s behaving in a way any of us would, as opposed to a certain type of woman.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Spring’s Coolest Shades – Harpers Bazaar

How did you handle being interrogated on your press day?

I had a couple of people who were really playing hardball. I can admittedly get really sucked into a conversation before I realize that people are just trying to get things out of me. A lot of people were casually asking, “So what are you looking at in the end of the trailer?” And you answer and then think, “Wait! Did they just catch me? Did I just let that slip?” We were all interviewed separately—J.J., the director Dan Trachtenberg, John Gallagher Jr., and me. Afterwards, we all huddled together to recap. “What did they ask you?” “What did you say?

Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Melanie Lynskey for The Talkhouse Film Podcast

On the latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast, filmmaker, actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead marks the release of her new movie, 10 Cloverfield Lane, by sitting down with Togetherness star Melanie Lynskey. Over the course of a frank and entertaining conversation, the two discuss everything from the inevitable insecurities that come from watching yourself on screen, to improvisation, their beginnings in the film business, the perils of making audition tapes, and their differing approaches to timekeeping.

’10 Cloverfield Lane’s’ Winstead Cracks Open the Bad Robot Mystery Box – Spinoff

The scenes we’ve seen with you and John Goodman are so intense — was it an intense sort of filming experience?
Continue reading Interview Roundup

I have added two new 10 Cloverfield Lane TV spots as well as a new interview done by Joblo.com. Check back soon for new photos from her AOL Build interview and the New York red carpet premiere.

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!

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.