WAMG At The MALEFICENT Press Day

MALEFICENT explores the untold story of Disney’s most iconic villain from the classic “SLEEPING BEAUTY” and the elements of her betrayal that ultimately turn her pure heart to stone. Recently, WAMG sat down with director Robert Stromberg, as well as stars Elle Fanning and Sharlto Copley in a roundtable discussion (with a small group of press) to talk about bringing the classic story to life… with a twist. Check it out below. Also, be sure to tune in Monday for my exclusive interview with actor Sam Riley.

Driven by revenge and a fierce desire to protect the moors over which she presides, Maleficent cruelly places an irrevocable curse upon the human king’s newborn infant Aurora. As the child grows, Aurora is caught in the middle of the seething conflict between the forest kingdom she has grown to love and the human kingdom that holds her legacy. Maleficentrealizes that Aurora may hold the key to peace in the land and is forced to take drastic actions that will change both worlds forever. The film stars Angelina Jolie as Maleficent, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple and Lesley Manville. “Maleficent” is produced by Joe Roth and directed by Robert Stromberg, with Angelina Jolie, Michael Vieira, Don Hahn, Palak Patel, Matt Smith and Sarah Bradshaw serving as executive producers. Linda Woolverton wrote the screenplay.

The part that resonated the most with me was the theme of female empowerment. I’m wondering what were the challenges bringing that to life. I would imagine with our modern day sensibilities, you sort of have to do that.

ROBERT STROMBERG : I was drawn to the strong female character. Maybe I picked up a little something from James Cameron because he loves the strength in female characters. We had discussions about that in the past. She is a superhero in her own right, but the strength of being a female and how to stay strong yet find the softer emotional attachment, it was a really interesting conundrum. It was fun to play with that.

We’ve seen you talk about, how as a child, you always had a dream to be a Disney princess. So what are the realities of then finally getting to be one, and it’s not just something animated.

ELLE FANNING : I know. It’s crazy. That was my dream when I was little. People would ask, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ And I would say, ‘A Disney princess.’ That’s the ultimate goal in life. And to be able to say that you actually – I’m still like pinching myself to say that I’m Aurora. It’s so weird for me. A little girl came up to me the other day because she had been seeing the trailers and stuff. And she asked, ‘Are you Aurora?’ And I’m like, ‘I guess I’m Aurora.’ It’s like crazy.

You get to own it.

ELLE FANNING :  Yeah, I get to own it [laughs]. Yeah, it was a really special thing, and also, my first meeting that I had, because I heard that there was going to be a Maleficent movie, so I was like, I know it’s going to be from the villain’s point of view, but that means there has to be a Sleeping Beauty in it. So my ears perked up, but then, Rob [Stromberg], the director, wanted me to come in for a meeting – he and Linda [Woolverton], the writer – and from there, that meeting they gave me the part, and that handed over the script. And that was kind of like handing over the crown. And I was like, ‘Oh!’ That ride home, I was reading it in the car. And I kind of got motion sickness reading, but I was still reading it. I was so excited.

This is an exciting character for you because you get to flesh out the character more than past stories have done. What was your approach to take him and build on what we’ve seen?  

SHARLTO COPLEY : I suppose I don’t like generally playing villains, which is interesting. What attracted me to this was, I suppose, the idea of playing a character that in a very female-centered form, is almost like a cautionary tale to men; I sort of saw it like that. I always have to find some sort of way in to play the character that I think is true to human nature, not just one person. So a lot of people might look at this role and go, ‘Oh, what a horrible man and really crazy!’ For me, it’s so universal what I’m actually drawing on to play him; I’m just doing it in an extreme way. So the man who works his whole life and make a hundred million dollars but has traded his wife in for someone younger and never spends any time with his kids – all he ever really gave them was money and maybe started with the best of intentions years ago of wanting to be the good husband and provide is an example of that you’ll see all around you. For me, Stefan is an extreme example of that sort of male drive and ambition and ego, if it runs away with itself, what it can do, and often actually does do.

What is it about villains that you don’t like that makes you not typically choose to play them? 

SHARLTO COPLEY : I just…I don’t know. I suppose I’m not really a naturally brooding person. As a child, I was cast as Happy in “Snow White” when I was 9 by my teacher. It’s like, ‘Which child is the happy one, is always smiling? Sharlto.’ [Laughs] I suppose my default position is more happy than brooding and interested in doing evil things. Also, I think in today’s society there’s a lot of glamorization of villains as well, which I find very strange, especially if you come from a violent place like South African like I did. It’s very easy to glamorize violence as a nation. I think in America – now getting very carried away – it’s easy to glamorize warfare in video games or in movies or whatever when you’re doing to war with Iraq. If suddenly you were going to go to war with Russia tomorrow, suddenly it would just change everything again. You’re suddenly back in a society that’s going, ‘Whoa, whoa, what?’ Society has gotten to that point of being safe and protected and not really understanding what evil and violence actually means.

What impressed you most about working with Angelina Jolie on this film? She this wonderful duality to her character.

ROBERT STROMBERG : That’s my point. When I first learned I was doing this film, she was attached. There was this visual part which is perfect – of course it works. What I was pleasantly surprised was the depth of emotion of the character that she had been preparing for a long time to bring that to this iconic image. It’s this superpower. We had talked at length about how we wanted to escape from this one dimensional character which you can argue the character is in the classic telling of this. Her character goes through so many emotions but we wanted her character to be dark but explore how to have fun with evil and then to have redemption, regret and other emotions. She did her homework. She was ready. I just had to be there to capture those moments. I always like the first takes because they feel like the most honest takes. It wasn’t too much experimenting with this.

Would you say this part hinges on her playing it?

ROBERT STROMBERG : Absolutely. There are a lot of great actresses out there. First of all, in real life, she’s a strong person and a mother – ironically with some adopted children. You can apply all of those elements to the character in the film. That’s what probably makes it very honest and something that everyone – especially her – relates to. In my opinion, it wouldn’t have been the same emotionally if it were played by someone else. I was very fortunate to have her.

What were lessons that you learned from her both as an actress and just Angelina as a person?

ELLE FANNING : I mean, I think that she’s the perfect role model. I feel like whatever she’s like wanted to do, she’s done. Now, she’s directing and being a mom. It’s like she’s done everything, and she’s still not done with doing everything she wants. It’s just so incredible. You hear that name, and it’s like, such an intense name. And you think of all the pictures that you’ve seen of her and her at events and stuff. And you find her to be very – I was kind of scared. I was like, ‘Oh, she’s going to be really intense lady.’ And then you meet her, and it’s like she’s not – she’s still like everyone walks into a room and everyone looks at her. She’s so powerful. But I got to know the side of her that was more sensitive and really playful. Like they would yell cut, and all her kids would like – they were on set all the time – they went to her. And she’d be holding Vivienne and Knox on her hip. Like to see that, and learn she’s very into the detail of things. She’s very specific like with her outfit. Like it really mattered, every little thing mattered which to me, I learned from that as this character’s going to live with her forever, in her acting career, for life. So for me, I took that away to always really pay attention to all the little details. They all come together to make the final.

Your character also has a physicality to her too. Did you go back into Disney archives and look at the Mary Costa and the dancing girl.

ELLE FANNING : Right. Well, I had seen the Sleeping Beauty ballet. I do ballet, so that was – I don’t know. I think that one of the reasons that I do dance is like because it helps with acting, and it helps your physicality of it. Even though you’re playing someone with bad posture, you know the muscles to use to kind of do that. But I did watch – I’d seen the animated one so many times, but I watched it again right before we started filming because she has certain hand gestures. Like the way she walks and her posture. So I tried to bring all of that physicality into this one because that’s what you fall in love with when you see her. You fall in love with kind of the outside because she’s kind of one-dimensional in the animated. So for ours, we tried to make her more layered and have that depth. But then on the outside, look like the character that you love.

To that point, given the name of the title character and the legacy she carries from Sleeping Beauty, were you happy to see the PG approach here – that it’s not necessarily about the evil but about the second chance and righting a wrong?

SHARLTO COPLEY : I think fairy tales over ages have interesting messages. I resonate with the idea of love saving you from pain and darkness, which is does. So in the story, it saves Maleficent from that, but it doesn’t save Stefan – he’s too far gone. The way I played him and certainly how I saw it was that he always loved her, the whole way through, but he had compromised something that he could never come back from; the guilt of that drove him literally crazy. All he could do now was hang on to that typical go at power; he couldn’t allow himself to be wrong and go back and let love same him, basically. That was attractive to me; the idea of that message in the tale was interesting to me.

It must be interesting in general to play opposite Angelina Jolie, but to see her in the horns and costume – tell me about the sheer fun of doing those scenes with her. 

SHARLTO COPLEY : What was interesting to me was that Angie has, I think, an enormous range as an actress to play very soft and vulnerable if she wants, or very hard and like,’ leave me a long, I don’t need you,’ as a woman. There are very few actresses who can do that whole range. And there’s fewer, still, movie star actresses who are known and loved by people that will choose a role where they are going to say, ‘I hate you,’ to a baby and know that they can come back from that and know that the audience will know there’s still heart there. I think when I first met her, one of the things she had said, ‘I hope we work together one day,’ she had spoken about what I did with my character Wikus (from District 9) as well, where you’re playing with those layers of constant vulnerability and toughness, and incompetence or competence, these different aspects we have as actors. So to do that with her, to know that she’s going through that, my character is going to explore the opposite of what I did with Wikus – he’s going to start nice and end badly. There was a lot of back story with the characters that doesn’t make it into the cut of the film in the end which was a lot of fun, which was the degradation of their relationship whereas he’s getting older and suddenly he’s feeling inadequate because he doesn’t have wings and he wants to be the man in this relationship and she doesn’t understand that as a human he wants to build things – what’s wrong with wanting to build castles and what’s wrong with ambition? I don’t have magic; I need to chop trees down to burn wood to stay warm – it’s not magic! What’s wrong with that? So we had a lot of fun, playful, off-camera all the time arguing from the position of our characters, me arguing on behalf of humans and men, and her [for] magical creatures and women. It was pretty fun.

I’m wondering what the breakdown of practical versus CG was like? Did you have a preference?

ROBERT STROMBERG : AVATAR was pretty much all motion capture. ALICE IN WONDERLAND was all green screen. When I did OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL, I wanted to reintroduce set. It was only after learning the importance of scene by scene what should be built and what shouldn’t. I brought all of that knowledge into this film and realized that, we have a lot of visual scenes, but we had a lot of emotional scenes. I wanted actors to physically touch things and go through real leaves and walk on grass. It helped them. It helped me in terms of blocking scenes. It became crucial in that we didn’t have a lot of things that weren’t actually there. Again, pulling from the experience on those other films what’s going to be there and creating things so you can get an honest, emotional performance talking to a tennis ball.

How was Angelina able to handle the physical nature of her role – flying and such?

ROBERT STROMBERG : She was gung-ho to do everything. There are limitations. There’s a point where we realize some things have to be either a stunt person or CGI – not just for the obvious reasons of danger but so we can do some things we can do with the character that would take her into that superhero quality to it. There are some of the fight scenes she did a lot of it. But then you get into some shots that require almost acrobatic-like moves, we had to talk about other ways to accomplish that.

I’m curious because there is a definite difference between 14 and 16. Do you enjoy looking back on the film now as kind of a time capsule, or is it kind of slightly awkward in your youth too?

ELLE FANNING : It’s funny because movies that I’ve looked back on now, that maybe when I did them I was too young to see. And it’s kind of looking at it like baby albums. You’re like whoa. You get to – and it also like captures the way you were in that time. So it’s fun for me to look back at them and I like it. I kind of enjoy it. Like that’s little me. But now, I look at this, and I think I look younger. I feel like whoa, even though it doesn’t feel like that long ago, but I guess it kind of was. It’s like a documenting each stage of life, yeah.

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MALEFICENT enchants theaters May 30