Filed under: Cambio News
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If you were Kristen Stewart, you might be preoccupied thinking about the release of Snow White And The Huntsman this summer. Not only is it your first big movie role apart from the same role you've played in four installments of one of the most beloved (by most teen girls, anyway) film franchises in history, but you're playing a well-known fairytale character who is known to sing songs with woodland creatures and charm everyone she meets. And then there's the added pressure of another Hollywood actress giving the same role a try a few months before your version hits theaters. Yep, if you were Kristen Stewart, you might even feel like you have something to prove.
But you're not Kristen Stewart. Because Kristen Stewart is effing awesome and we're standing three feet away from her in her trailer, along with a handful of other outlets, back in October somewhere outside of London on the set of Snow White And The Huntsman listening to her talk about the amazing character she's created for the movie.
"It's strange playing a character that you actually could never truly embody," she said. "Her spirit affects people in such a way that -- you know, I mean luckily our script is written that way, but I can't have Snow White's effect on people. I can't actually be completely selfless because nobody is and it would be strange to claim that. You can only really play a character like that in a fairytale and play it with an awful load of integrity and not have it just be like a fake character in a movie with other people that do seem real. She's very fully-formed but very farfetched-from-the-reality-that-we-live-in type of person. Everyone always thinks I just want to play strong characters, but she also is strong in a very different way that you'd expect the leading person in an action-type adventure movie to be."
Well said, Kristen. Tell us more.
"Strength [of character], yeah, but also gusto," she said. "I mean, like she's strong. She can kick ass. It hurts very much to do so and so it's not like you're watching her go take down a kingdom. You're not watching going, 'Yeah! Kill him!' Really, it's more like you're watching someone having to do something that doesn't just go against your sensibilities or something that you agree with. It's not real. It's gutting. It's physically gutting, literally."
Being the lame Twilight nerd that I am, I couldn't help but point out to Kristen that this is the second movie in which she plays a character who gets led into the woods to get some bad news. The first instance, of course, was in New Moon when Edward (Robert Pattinson) takes Bella into the forest to dump her. And in the classic telling of Snow White, she is led out into the woods to be killed (although this movie might have a twist or two in store).
"Well, it's funny," she told us when asked which is harder to play, getting dumped in the forest like Bella or finding out you're going to die as Snow White does. "I think she [Snow White] genuinely lacks that innate fear of death that we all have. She's got a serious, fierce survival... not skills, but instincts. She isn't afraid of anything. What's harder is to have dreams and hopes that you lived with your whole life sort of be just shattered in front of you. Only that hope doesn't exist anymore and you've got so much in you and you can explain to people that it's so worth fighting for and blah, blah, blah. So, basically you see the degradation of the people that basically... it's like she's a voodoo doll. If they're in pain, she's in pain. And so when she gets out of those walls, it's actually like it's a blow to the stomach, with almost every step, every new discovery of how sh** things have gotten."
Universal
She continued, "I think, probably, it's totally impossible to compare the two because the leading out [into the woods] and being broken up with thing, especially in that context, was one of the hardest things I've ever had to play and I built that moment up in my head, not that I'm talking about Twilight now," she smiles, hoping to keep the conversation on Snow White. "You can't compare them. And I know that doesn't make sense, but I kind of can't compare."
But don't cry fellow nerds, she does offer up a comparison.
"Bella and Snow White are slightly... they both come to find that they're leaders," she said. "I mean, that's definitely a similarity. They're different. They're very, very, very different people. Also, I guess in a very sort of righteous way as well, it's all very like, everyone's telling them 'No.' And both of them, I guess, see the light. Both of them are sort of a little more intuitive and spiritually for whatever reason connected and their gut is always sort of dead right."
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Come back to Cambio over the next two weeks as editor Stacy Hinojosa shares more stories from her trip to the Snow White and the Huntsman set including interviews with Kristen and other members of the film's cast and crew. Click here for full coverage.