With AL:VH being released into theaters this weekend, new interviews have come online with Mary discussing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. First, here’s some of her interview with Screen Crush. Click the link to read the full interview:
How much did you know about Mary Todd Lincoln prior coming onto this project?
I knew a little bit but probably not any more than what you hear in grade school and what you hear just sort of casually. So what I knew the most about her was that she was the one first lady who ended up institutionalized and she seems to be regarded as having been somewhat crazy. So I was very curious to know if she was going to be portrayed that way in the script and how that was going to be handled. And it wasn’t really touched on so much. When I researched her more I realized that there is so much more to her than that and that the way she was portrayed in the script was pretty accurate for who she was for the majority of her life.
Was there anything you learned about her and her relationship to Lincoln that really surprised you?
There were a lot of surprises. I was surprised to learn that she actually was, in real life, engaged to Stephen Douglas (played by Alan Tudyk in the film) which I thought was something they just created for the film because it seemed so convenient for his political rival to have been her former fiancé. But that was actually completely true. And she really dumped him, this guy who had money and status and all of that, for Abraham Lincoln who at the time was a poor lawyer who didn’t have anything to his name. So, that to me said a lot about her and really made me want to know more about who she was. And their relationship was really fascinating. I mean they were both kind of emotionally troubled people in different ways but they were good for each other and I think that they had a really strong bond but it wasn’t always lighthearted. They definitely had a lot of really dark moments together and you can see some of that in the later years which I was glad got into the film.
And here’s a bit of her interview with RamaScreen:
RS: You got to shoot a vampire in this film, did you have any weapons training at all and what type of weapon did you use in that scene?
MEW: “It was a musket and I didn’t really have to do many training, I had like a little 5 minute training session with a guy on set who showed me how to use it, it was a lot of fun, I got to load it. It was cool, I didn’t want to put it down.”