What’s interesting, too, is that this character is a total flip side of the character you played in Cape Fear. Everyone thought you brought that character off so perfectly, and here you get to really turn the tables on that person.
Yeah, that’s what I wanted to do. Even like little stuff to follow, like in Romeo Is Bleeding, I play a girl from Queens with blonde hair, really stupid, which was really fun but I just wanted to take this to the whole other extreme. It’s viciousness. I just wanted to say that that’s why I took this cause it’s to the whole other extreme. I’m playing things I haven’t yet played before and that’s always fun. Cause playing like naive people, you can play them all differently, but they all have a thread in common and that’s that they are kind of… stupid.
How would you see your character’s attitude toward the violence compared to Woody’s? It seems like his character is more of a soldier, while yours is more like a coiled spring that is just waiting for some idiot to touch it.
Wow, I mean you haven’t even seen it, I didn’t know that came across so much in the script. But that’s exactly how it’s played, too. I have no idea, other than what it looks like, the obvious differences. I don’t know how to put that in words.
So, the cliché question: “How was it to work with Oliver Stone?”
Perfect. For me, I think that we work really good together and I told him that, and that I think we should work together more often, too. You know there’s some director you just click with or something and I think that’s Oliver. He’s pretty fun. It’s like totally limitless around here, there are no limits. It’s kind of hard to get used to. You’ve got to say, “Oh yeah, right, I should just make something up right here.” He doesn’t tell me to do that but you get the feeling of how much freedom you have and what directors like, and he gives you the freedom to do anything and then I just do that.
I know a lot of the stuff in the first act, what has been shot in New Mexico, didn’t exist in the first draft of the screenplay, when you initially got on the project. And from what I’ve been told, it really expanded your character that much more.
No, those scenes were in the draft but what happened was that we did a scene which was the just drive-in scene and had this little dialogue. We then went off the dialogue and I made up everything I said, and he just lets you do that and then there are other scenes that we just made up everything.
“It’s viciousness. I just wanted to say that that’s why I took this cause it’s to the whole other extreme.”
There’s a lot of stuff that’s off-script?
Yes, I work kind of best that way especially with this kind of character which is so unpredictable and vain…
Is she vain?
Well, I think people would say that. This scene I’m wearing like a gold-lamé coat to court…
I’ve seen Woody’s outfit. You can’t let him top you.
But the movie is that way, I don’ know “vain”… I usually don’t like the characters I play. I think she’s a total loser. I think anybody who kills people are the weakest human beings there are. Some people idealize them and think, “Wow, if only I had the guts to be able to just knock somebody off I didn’t like.” But I think it’s a weakness to not be able to get along with people. She can’t go out to dinner with people. If someone says the wrong thing or, if they are annoying, she just kills them out of being annoyed.
Because she can’t handle the circumstances?
Yeah. So I think that’s weak. I think killers aren’t something to be respected or wowed upon. They are weak.
Do you think the character of Mallory would turn on Micky? If she found some situation where she couldn’t handle him?
Uh-hmm, and that’s sort of expressed a little bit in the scene. She doesn’t kill him because he was there in the beginning. For some reason when you like somebody… it’s total aberration, is what it is, it’s not logical. She doesn’t kill him when he gets annoying, because she maybe thinks that “Well, I’d like to keep him around so he’ll be there tomorrow. I don’t know what the logic is in that, but she just doesn’t kill him.
Is there like a competition between them? Or are they more of a pure team?
They are a team. They are different, they complement each other. He’s less volatile, less explosive.
He would let a situation play out, where she would just as soon punch somebody out?
Yeah, it’s coming off that way. That’s how it’s being played. You got five hours sleep in like three days?
This is my fifth day here.
Yeah I feel that same way. That’s why I’m kind of strange. I also don’t like being an actress a lot of the time, so I get like really strange.
