Questions: There was the conversation in this about loving a man for his virtue. Do you think that nice guys get a bad rap?

Watts: They sort of do.

Curran: Yes, they do.

Watts: You're not a nice guy.

Curran: I wasn't putting myself in there.

Watts: Yeah. I think that's true from women who are self-destructive. But hopefully a woman gets to place where she can wake up and can see that a nice man is kind of what you need in this world.

Questions: Was the love scene hard to do?

Watts: Not really. I mean, you find yourself anticipating them a lot and you get in your head and you think, 'Oh, how do we see this? How are we going to play it and how much am I going to show?' but once you're there you're there. With the love scene between Walter and Kitty it was great because it's such a pivotal point and it's almost animalistic, the hunger and the desperation to just connect with a human being and all of that tension, but then I really fought for not just that, but to then have a tender moment and that finally that they were able to be gentle and accept and receive. So that was important, to have both of those because I think it expresses a lot.

Questions: Can you talk the sets and the locations and the experience of traveling in the China of today while shooting the China of the past?

Curran: I went there on the assumption of it being like here where there is a database of location stills that you can sit in a room and look at, but that doesn't exist. So it was a matter of flying via word of mouth and whatever books we could get to different places that could get to and look at them. I was looking for something that was distinctly Chinese and that mountain region even though it's one small part of China you're not going to find that anywhere else. So that's where we sort of focused our search.

Questions: I'm interested in how you see Kitty as a character, and how also your work as a producer on the film was?

Watts: I loved Kitty from the moment that I first read the script. She just kind of leapt off of the page. She was sort of ahead of her time, or at least she thought that she was and refused to conform to conventions and just sort of swept up in this frivolous world of who's who and how one should look. She can't stand her family sort of breathing down her neck and constantly saying, 'You've got to do something and you have to be married.' She was sort of enjoying just floating by and the attention of many rather than focusing on just one person. So when she gets this proposal it's a form of escape. It's like, 'Please, let me just get out of here.' The fact that he's going to an exotic place sounds even more exciting. Then when she has the affair and just continues to be a self-destructive person and when he starts punishing her when they get to the new place, I just loved her transformation there. I thought that it was important to commit to these flaws in her so that the transformation is that much greater and her journey is more powerful. In terms of being a producer on this, I think, that this was a long journey and it took a long time to find it's feet and there were many obstacles along the way. By getting onboard as a producer it was really just to show my passions for it and quite often you're attached to something and if it doesn't get up and go soon it can loose it's shine, if you will, and get a little bit lackluster if no one else is jumping onboard. But this never lost it's shine and Edward and I championed it and then we found John and I had worked with John before, and I knew that he'd be able to handle this material brilliantly because of his ability to understand the relationships and the conflict within that and without judgment, even putting humor in the most awkward of places. Really, again, creating that collaborative workspace was good, and sometimes when you fight for what you believe is right for your character you don't want to come across as seemingly being an actor who's trying to buy more screen time or something. You want to have the voice from a point of view that is thinking of the whole film. I think that for me it was important that the back story was there, that she was running away from something and that we didn't get straight into the love story and that there were temptations there to get the story moving at times and really slimming down that beginning part of the story. I really felt that it was important for that to happen.

Questions: You have a strong passion for style. Do the period clothes define a character like this and do you have much input in finding what you're going to wear in a film like this?

Watts: Well, really, with a period film you kind of leave it up to the experts, but I mean you want to know that someone isn't going to put orange on me because I can't wear orange. My skin just is going to look disgusting, but I really think that's a period that celebrates women and I think that Ruth did an incredible job. She knows period like no one. The Flapper in the '20's just started showing the knees and it's very rebellious and the short haircut showing the neck – those are all things that help you get closer to the character and I do love clothes for that reason in film.

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