Red Riding Hood is coming out at the end of this week, and HeyUGuys recently caught up with the film’s star, Amanda Seyfried to talk about her experience making the film. During the course of the interview she spoke about the script, her casting, working with Catherine Hardwicke, and how strange it was for her and Gary Oldman to be fighting make believe wolves.
She also mentioned that her favourite directors are David Lynch and Darren Aronofsky, but unfortunately our recording became somewhat garbled in that part (we blame witchcraft), so we can’t give you a full quote, but we wanted to share it with you because it’s such an awesome fact.
On the script
The script was really solid. The whodunit was exciting, because I don’t know anybody who guessed who the wolf was when they read the script. The crew wasn’t able to read past page 80, because we needed to keep it under wraps. And I think we did a good job of doing that, people saw the movie and they had no idea.
It was really well written, I thought. How else are you going to take a small story and put it on the screen in 2011? You have to add romance. You don’t have to, but we were making it for a younger audience, and I believe romance is key. I was really, and truly inspired by love and romance when I was a teen, still am; I love watching love stories.
On Catherine
She’s crazy. I don’t think we’d have got through the movie if she wasn’t.
She’s a child, she doesn’t lose energy. She never drinks caffeine, she doesn’t eat sugar, it’s just a natural energy she has. It’s very special. It’s tough to make a movie, I don’t know how she does it, but she knew what she wanted, and she’s very confident about that.
On her casting
I knew Catherine wanted me to play Red Riding Hood, which was really flattering. I met with her and she showed me all her ideas on paper, paintings, a short trailer that she had made, music; paintings her sisters had painted of animals, and paintings of Red Riding Hood in the forest with her cape over her head, and drawings and paintings of what the houses were going to look like, and what the medieval buildings were going to look like, and her idea for what the wolf was. She did a lot of it herself, she’s very talented.
I was completely drawn in. I knew I needed to do it; it’s an iconic character that lives in our psyche, no matter where you’re from. Red Riding Hood, and all of these other fairy tales are part of us. To transform it however, there’s a million ways you could have made Red Riding Hood, this is just one. It’s special in its own way, and I’m proud of it. It was really fun.
On the shoot
Nobody really felt we were given enough days for this movie. The budget was smaller than we would have liked because we needed those extra days. We were kind of rushing by every day, but we got it.
On how she Gary Oldman, fighting a pretend wolf and making a period film
I think Gary and I had the hardest task, because we had to fight and imagine there was this wolf there, and there wasn’t, so it was lots of yelling. I know he felt ridiculous at times, and so did I. So did everybody at a point, because there was so much going on all the time: horses and stunt people and flying and fake snow. He was just a really good energy to have around you.
We had a great cast, and the day Gary Oldman left it was a sad, sad day. We got on, and we pulled through , and it was very exciting because we were on a medieval set. It’s the first period movie I’ve ever done, it was so cool; getting in that costume every day really does change things a little.
