The Fault in Our Stars has been a huge hit and rightly so. We have an interview with the two stars Shailene Woodley & Ansel Elgort. If you haven’t seen it yet, or read the book it is based on, do it now.
Q: Shailene, you emailed John Green about the role. Did he respond in a nicer way than Van Houton?
SW: He did. He was like I’m not the casting director so I actually can’t cast you but thank you for your kind words.
Q: Was it difficult to have that lightness in your performance of sick kids?
AE: Um, no. I think that the way that the book is written is that the characters do have that lightness. And then once also we spent time with kids who actually had the diseases or had been through them we realized that that lightness is present in those individuals. And that it was totally correct to have them present in our characters. Without the lightness it would be a shit movie. It’d be unrealistic and it’d be depressing and I don’t know what the point would be.
I think it’s all about the lightness and all about the fact that they’re real human beings who just happen to have something. The cancer in the story’s just the variable that makes the clock tick. And that makes the love even more important because it’s the last that you’ll have.
Q: Did it make it easier or harder that you’d worked together before?
SW: It made things definitely easier. I mean, we already knew each other; we’re already comfortable around each other. And we already loved each other. We already had a deep sense of admiration for one another. Which I think translated into this film.
Q: How was the atmosphere on set?
SW: Oh it was so much fun. I mean movie sets are really fun regardless of what you do when the camera rolls. But one of the things that’s so beautiful about this movie is it shows you that cancer doesn’t define you. And just like on the set we met a lot of people who did have cancer. A lot of young people and they don’t live their lives like this walking around you know, somber. They live their lives like this and be like yeah, I have this and it sucks. But it’s just what it is. And that’s sort of how our set was. We were dealing with heavy subject matters but you don’t sort of just wallow in the subject matter. You find ways to be light about it.
Q: Did you improvise on the relationship on set?
AE: A lot of those scenes set the stage for the relationship are like word for word from the book. A lot of them. Like the scene in the beginning where Gus talks about how he fears oblivion and Hazel speaks about if that’s what he’s scared of then she suggests he forget it. The metaphor scene down in the basement, those scenes are so important. You’re right. Because so many movies just have two pretty people and I mean they put them together. Yeah they’re supposed to kiss and fall in love right? But I love that this story really takes it’s time and has those scenes. It’s almost like a play. Because it’s so much about the relationship that there’s time for those things to happen. So important. Really lets the relationship develop.
The Fault in Our Stars is available here.
themselves, and you can clearly see that struggle to try balance the two. Though it does work for the most part and it’s all down to McConaughey being cast as the lead. He has certainly been having a huge career change and this film is no exception. If Mud, Dallas Buyers Club and True Detective proved anything, it is that he can be just as involving as he is likeable in his rom-com days. His craving to venture to the unknown is pretty much anyone’s curiosity and makes his motivation to help his family (and the human race) somewhat relatable. Even McConaughey delivers an incredibly emotional performance in one particular scene as he’s watching video messages of his children growing older. If Gravity showed that working in space is no fun and games, Interstellar shows us that space travel is not all that fun as Star Trek likes to make us believe (or wants us to). Especially dealing with relativity; every hour they spend, 7 years have passed on Earth (similar to The Forever War). The stand-out performance has to be character of Murph, played brilliantly by Mackenzie Foy and Jessica Chastain. She is the emotional core of the movie and drives the narrative forward.
