BuddyTV recently sat down to talk to three actors about their experience with Twilight. This is part 2 of our interview with Taylor Lautner, Rachelle Lefevre and Edi Gathegi, which includes some fan questions. In this interview, they all discuss the phenomenon of Twilight and they’re anticipation for this weekend’s opening. Just after we talked to them, the three actors were going to Southcenter mall for their first stop on the Hot Topic mall tour. It was the same day that one of the signing in San Francisco got shut down due to the mania caused over Robert Pattinson.
The interview has spoilers near the end, so don’t read the whole thing if you’re looking to be surprised at the ending.
So this is from The Twilight Lexicon. We’ve seen you walking barefoot on a carpet of leaves. How difficult was it to be barefoot in the Pacific Northwest in the winter? Any battle scars?
Rachelle Lefevre: Tell them about the sad little towels they used to put under our feet to warm us.
Edi Gathegi: It was a futile effort. It was so ridiculously cold out there and I’m sitting out there without a shirt on. I mean, just kill me now.
Rachelle Lefevre: I can’t, you won’t die.
Edi Gathegi: I won’t die. I’m made of steel. Yeah, the weather conditions were very harsh. The magic carpet was fun when we got the hang of it but it took a while to do. It’s basically like learning how to walk again. The ground is being pulled out from underneath you and you have to walk on that – what is that? – The plastic
Rachelle Lefevre: Plexiglas
Edi Gathegi: The Plexiglas people mover thing. You’d start on your knees because it’s just going so fast and as you go through your day on it, you gain the confidence to stand up. It’s a gradual process and it takes a while to learn. So you had to be sort of, like, you know, in shape. And Rachelle was in shape hanging with Cam and I. Making us proud. We were barefoot a lot but they also made these little barefoot looking booties. They sort of insulated our feet a bit, but not that much.
Rachelle Lefevre: They were really weird. They had toes painted on them. So from afar, it looked like we were barefoot. You’d look down at your own feet and sort of catch yourself off-guard because it looks really weird. You’re like “those are my little painted on toes!”
Edi Gathegi: Yeah, but it’s longer than my foot.
Was a lot of the filming done in the Pacific Northwest?
Rachelle Lefevre: Yeah, all of it.
Edi Gathegi: Oh yeah, all of it, except for some of the additional shots. There were just a few in Phoenix.
Taylor Lautner: And some hotel scenes were shot in LA. And a little Phoenix and then some of the shots from Phoenix they did in LA.
Rachelle Lefevre: The majority of the film we filmed in Portland and we went over state lines a bit to Washington.
Taylor, you filmed your beach scene there, right? In Forks?
Taylor Lautner: No, it originally was scheduled to go up there but then something happened – I don’t know what it was – and we went to Cannon Beach.
Here’s another question from Twilight Lexicon, given role gets much bigger in the upcoming movies, do you get nervous and are you nervous that you will eventually be kissing Kristen (Stewart)?
Edi Gathegi: I’m nervous for you.
Taylor Lautner: Really?
Edi Gathegi: No.
Taylor Lautner: No, I’m definitely not nervous.
Rachelle Lefevre: Bring it!
Taylor Lautner: Exactly! It’s about timing. It’s Jacob’s turn to get in there.
Rachelle Lefevre: As he brings out his Team Jacob T-shirt.
Taylor Lautner: Yeah! But no, I wouldn’t say I’m nervous. I’m excited. That’s my favorite part of Jacob. I love his two sides when he is a werewolf; it challenges me as an actor to bring both those sides to life. But I try not to think about it too much right now. I mean I still have another week and a half. I’m still waiting to see and we’ll see soon: That’s the good news.
You guys are off in the Northwest happily filming this movie and then some time goes by and you arrive at ComicCon: was that your first real fan encounter after the production of the film and what happened there?
Rachelle Lefevre: What happened there?
Taylor Lautner: I don’t know what happened there actually.
Edi Gathegi: I think that was, for many of us, the first window into what this phenomenon really is and what it could be. 6,500 fans, you know, some of them camped out overnight, they’re in this one auditorium and when each of our names are called out individually, they’re screaming like we’re a rock band. It was intense and insane. And then it sort of died down, for me personally, after that. You go back to your normal life and you forget about this huge thing. Then you do a press junket all weekend and then you do a mall tour and I have no idea what to expect in about a half an hour when we leave here (to go to the mall tour), but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
Rachelle Lefevre: It’s weird for us because the film hasn’t come out yet. There are sort of two sides to our lives right now, there’s the frenzy of the hard-core Twilight fans who love the books and who followed us every step of the way from the day we got cast and our photo was released on the internet, to filming, to ComicCon… and so there’s that side of it and then there’s the side of it of being in a movie that people haven’t seen so for the rest of the people, you aren’t recognizable and they don’t know who you are and so we go through our lives very ordinarily and basically unaccosted. So we’re all kind of living these double-lives right now and obviously we’ll just have to see what happens after the movie comes out. People say, “are you ready for your life to change?” and stuff but we don’t look at it that way because it’s hard to imagine.
Edi Gathegi: In some small way, my life has changed because this whole thing has kept me very busy with Twilight related activities. There are pending jobs and so it’s sort of exciting right now but I’m managing my expectations for when the movie comes out. I’m not putting all my eggs in any kind of basket. Just take it one day at a time and just pray for the best.
I had a question for you guys concerning the dialogue in this movie: It’s interesting because with vampire movies at one end of the continuum, you have Buffy and Joss Whedon and that certain verbiage that you associate with the Buffy lore and then on the other side, there’s a movie playing right now called Let the Right One In, which is a Swedish vampire movie that’s really quiet and there’s not a lot of dialogue. It’s not a word heavy movie vs. the Buffy style. Where would your movie fit into this spectrum?
Rachelle Lefevre: I think it’s both. I think the reason the dialogue is so important is because so much of it is stuff that Stephenie wrote. So much of it is from the book, which is really like our gospel. In that sense, there are lines like when Edward says to Bella, “You’re my particular brand of heroine.” There are these lines that are poetic that Stephenie has written that get written into the movie. Those are super important but also, I think, and I haven’t seen the finish film yet, and so you guys might be able to answer better, but what I’ve seen from the script and in our filming is that there’s so much quiet intensity in the relationships where nothing gets said yet everything gets said.
Taylor Lautner: Absolutely. You have the visual intensity with everything; with the romance, when they are just making eye contact to when the vampires show up – when you guys come in the baseball scene – there’s nothing said yet and it’s already intense and you’re just sweating. I definitely would say it’s a mixture of both.
From Bella and Edward.com, what are your favorite scenes from all of the Twilight series?
Taylor Lautner: Well my favorite scene from the movie is in the ballet studio scene, but it’s specifically after Bella has been bitten by James and his head is ripped off and he’s bye bye, Edward comes over and he has to suck the venom out of her and he’s has a hard time stopping because she just tastes so good but then he just pulls the urge out of himself and he remembers how much he’s in love with her and everything she means to him and he eventually stops. That’s by far my favorite moment in Twilight.
Edi Gathegi: In the movie, my favorite scene is the ballet studio scene. It’s just that I think all the elements come together perfectly: the music, the soundtrack, the score, the sound effects, that’s what I’m trying to say, the acting, the action, all those things come together in such and exciting way and I also really like the moment where he’s trying to suck the venom and he’s trying to resist the urge to actually kill her.
Taylor Lautner: I know, it really touched me.
Edi Gathegi: That’s really what’s happening the entire movie, him trying not to do that and now he has to do that.
Taylor Lautner: Exactly, and that was the climax, for me, of the film.
Edi Gathegi: So I love that scene and then I also love the baseball scene because that’s the beginning of this entire action sequence that works so well. But then I also have a lot of other scenes that I love in all of the other books. I forget what book it is, but there’s this moment where Bella gets pissed off at Edward and she like shuts the window or something, I can’t remember it clearly, and then she thinks about it and then she realizes she can’t really be mad at him so then she opens the window a crack so that he can come back in. I laughed out loud in that moment. I was like “I get that.”
Rachelle Lefevre: That’s awesome. For me, I think my favorite part of Twilight is… there are so many… but the thing that stands out to me right now is that there are quite a few times where Bella keeps not understanding how Edward could possibly love her. She doesn’t understand what he sees and she’s so resistant to it and she keeps saying “But I’m silly and I’m plain” and he keeps going to want to shake her and he keeps saying to her “You don’t see yourself properly. You don’t see yourself the way other people see you.” I just remembered being in high school and how I remember feeling that way and when I read it’s I’m like “Oh god, I love that. I would have loved that. Where was my Edward to come along and go ‘you don’t have to see yourself that way.’”? So every moment that he did that, I loved him for it, for doing that for her. And then, in general, in terms of me personally, I so love the action sequence in Eclipse. I keep coming back to hoping that, if you know, we get to make a second and third film, I’m really looking forward to all that stunt work.
Earlier on you guys mentioned the romance aspect of this story and the fact that clique would have it that it’s a “girl” story. But for the guys, reasons outside of bringing their dates and hopefully getting lucky after the movie, they’re still going to enjoy the movie. What’s a guy scene you think they’ll enjoy if you had to recommend one of the scenes?
Taylor Lautner: I don’t think it’s a question – it’s the ballet studio scene. I think that’s the number one scene that I think guys will like.
Edi Gathegi: They’re definitely going to like that but they’re going to get drawn in from the beginning of that entire sequence. That’s when they’re going to go “Okay, this is what I came here for” and that’s like an hour of the film.
Taylor Lautner: Yeah, right when it starts, at the baseball scene, that is when the hunt is on. That is exactly when the guys sit up and go “Okay!” and it’s non-stop action and intensity and like heart-pounding intensity until the very end. I think that’s definitely what the guys are going to love.
Rachelle Lefevre: I know I’m not a guy, but I’m going to take a stab at this anyways because I’ve actually been thinking about this. One of the things that I think is so great about what Stephenie has done and this is why I keep saying I hope so badly she’ll go back to work on Midnight Sun eventually, even though I totally respect what happened to her but she does such a great job of expressing Edward’s anxieties and Edward’s struggles, even if it is from Bella’s point of view, and I think that really comes across in the movie and Rob (Pattinson) does such a great job of portraying his frustrations, his passion and his experience in trying to be with Bella and I think the guys are going to relate to that. Guys are having experiences with relationships just like girls are and it’s equally as intense and passionate and frustrating for them and I think they have something to relate to in Rob’s portrayal.
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-Interview conducted by Kim Wetter
(image courtesy of Summit Entertainment)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
