Anyway, during our twenty minute conversation we covered all the usual subjects as well as what she’s working on next, the challenges of filming an action film just after giving birth, and how she’s going to be on Broadway for the first time. Of course a lot more is talked about… so if you’re a fan of Jennifer you’ll dig the interview.
And if you missed the movie clips I previously posted, you might want to watch them before reading the interview. Also, here’s the synopsis in case you don’t know what the movies about:
When a terrorist bomb detonates inside a Western housing compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, an international incident is ignited. While diplomats slowly debate equations of territorialism, FBI Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Foxx) quickly assembles an elite team (Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) and negotiates a secret five-day trip into Saudi Arabia to locate the madman behind the bombing.
Upon landing in the desert kingdom, however, Fleury and his team discover Saudi authoritiessuspicious and unwelcoming of American interlopers into what they consider a local matter. Hamstrung by protocol—and with the clock ticking on their five days—theFBI agents find their expertise worthless without the trust of their Saudicounterparts, who want to locate the terrorist in their homeland on their own terms.
Fleury’s crew finds a like-minded partner in Saudi Police Captain Al-Ghazi (Ashraf Barhoum), who helps them navigate royal politics and unlock the secrets of the crime scene and the workings of an extremist cell bent on further destruction. With these unlikely allies sharing a propulsive commitment to crack the case, the team is led to the killer’s front door in a blistering do-or-die confrontation. Now in a fight for their own lives, strangers united by one mission won’t stop until justice is found in The Kingdom.
“The Kingdom†opens at theaters tomorrow.
Jennifer: Who am I following? In this cast, it’s tough ‘cause everyone is funny,
Q: The Israeli guy. Have you seen Ben’s movie?
Jennifer: Yeah, I have. I’m really proud of it. It’s great.
Q: People cheer at your fight scene in this movie. You’ve done a lot of amazing fight work but this may be your best. How did you feel about the intense fight scene at the end of the movie?
Jennifer: Well, to be honest, I thought it wasn’t going to be much of anything. I kept saying to my stunt double Shauna Duggins who I’ve worked with for six years, who’s really my partner in crime and one of my best friends, I said to her ‘when are we gonna have rehearsal for this fight scene?’ We go in a hundred and ten percent prepared. I could still do the fights from Daredevil in my sleep and a bunch of the Alias ones. Those went by like that [she snaps fingers]. I kept saying, ‘where are we gonna rehearse? I’m getting nervous. Isn’t there a fight?’ And she kept saying to me, ‘we don’t need to rehearse’ and that day, I showed up and her eyes were this big and her hair was out to here and she had just learned the fight and she said, ‘this is unlike anything we’ve ever, every done. Get ready. We’re just going to try to beat the shit out of each other’. Which is so Pete Berg. Pete Berg was a guest star on Alias the first season and he and I had a fight and his idea of doing a fight was to improvise. I’m a girl. I don’t really want to be punched and he thought, ‘hey, once we get in it, let’s just see what happens’. He started trying to actually hit me so I shouldn’t have been surprised. They yanked me out of that fight scene so fast. I remember my camera guys were just like ‘we’re gonna kill him. If he hits you again, we’ll kill him’. They put Shauna in who takes all my bruises and she was in there biting Pete Berg. So, I should not have been surprised when she said to me, ‘this is just a fight where you try to kill him and he’ll try to kill you’. So, it turned out to be an amazingly real scrabble. We loved shooting it. We had a blast. Did I answer you question or did I just talk a lot?
You did. So it was more down and dirty than choreographed?
Jennifer: It was so down and dirty that we had scratch marks that we had to cover up on my face for the next few days where he tried to grab me and pull my face off [note: Is she talking about her fight with Berg in Alias or the fight in The Kingdom? Let me know if anybody is sure]. He had a scab on his ear ‘cause I bit his ear and I just yanked and got his ear and went ‘yuk’ [she indicates spitting out part of an ear]. It was nasty. It was great.
What does your husband think when you do these fight things. Does he know how tough you are and wouldn’t mess with you in a movie?
Jennifer: I wish he felt that way about real life. He was visiting the set the day that I shot this fight scene and I thought it would have made him a little bit nervous to see him chucking me against the wall harder and harder with every take but he was a little too calm about it. Between us, I thought he could have been a little bit more, ‘my wife! You’d better be careful with her’. He was just like ‘go! Go for it, babe! Harder!’
Does motherhood determine the kinds of projects you take on and is it fun going from something like this to a Juno which is more character-based?
Jennifer: I don’t take or not take a role based on the physicality. If Shauna says something is safe, I’m gonna do it. I’m not gonna be killed for a couple of bruises. We did have a rule in the fight, because I was breast-feeding, he had to stay away from my boobs and he did. That was the one sacred kind of thing. He could go for my head. He could pull my hair, just not the boobs. So the motherhood did kind of have something to do with that but, other than that, what are a couple of bruises? She doesn’t care. She’s just a kid and I’m fine. But, there is a natural priority and there never has been before. I probably would have worked straight through this year because lots of great, fun things came up, but I can’t bear to do something that I don’t have to do because she’s so delicious.
And going from this to Juno?
Jennifer: I have to say, if actors or actresses had every kind of script in front of them at all times, maybe you would think, ‘oh, I just did this big movie. Maybe I should do a little independent’. It’s not that way. It’s part what comes to you and, a huge part, what you respond to and that’s kind of always how I’ve worked.
Did you go to the United Arab Emirates?
Jennifer: I wasn’t in those scenes so I didn’t go to Abu Dhabi.
Shooting out here in the desert, how was that?
Jennifer: Since, I’ve already discussed it, it’s not new news but I spent two nights in the hospital. That was entertaining. Out of all the stuff I’ve ever done, I had never gone down before. I’d never had to go to the hospital. I’d worked so many more hours than this and I just couldn’t believe.. I never fainted or anything like that. It was ‘Jennifer Garner collapsed on the set’. Never at all. I just was dizzy and I didn’t feel right. When we were on our way home I said, ‘I feel not right enough that I don’t know if I can pick up my child so let’s just go get me checked out’ and it turned out that, basically, after all was said and done, it was too hot and I was in the heat for too long every day to still be breast feeding for my body. So, I slipped myself into heat stroke and I wasn’t willing to give that up and my body wasn’t really that into it so I had a couple of nights where I didn’t feel so good and they gave me a [she makes a noise… indicating a shot??] and then I felt better.
I’ve just seen Gone Baby, Gone. It’s pretty fantastic?
Jennifer: It’s pretty great, right?
Are you putting in a big to star in Ben’s next movie that he’s going to direct?
Jennifer: I don’t think I would ever star in a movie that Ben directed because somebody has to raise the kids but he’d better, eventually, find a little something for me or he’ll pay for it.
Are you making your Broadway debut with Kevin Kline?
Jennifer: We talked about it. Yes, I am. I’m gonna go to New York in a week and start rehearsals and I’m freakin’ out and so excited.
And is that because your child is in bed at night and you don’t have to worry because you are on stage six nights a week?
Jennifer: No, it’s because it’s always been my absolute dream of all dreams and all of this stuff that I’ve done has been accidental. I always, always meant to be on stage. I only ended up even auditioning for television and movies because I was understudying a Turgenev play on Broadway and was so broke that, when I got a mini-series, I had to take it and was so ashamed because I was such a snob. Now, every time they talk about theater, it’s kind of like ‘welllll’ but this I couldn’t pass up; working with Kevin Kline, being in New York in the Fall, doing this role, getting to say these words.. just thinking about it, I get so excited.
Your run ends December 23rd. Any chance you would carry through to the Holidays?
Jennifer: I don’t think so. I don’t think there are any plans to, no.
What was the play you were understudying?
Jennifer: A Month in the Country with Helen Mirren and Ron Rifkin. I watched every performance. At the time, when I was living in New York, I went to everything Victor Garber did. I saw four things. I was such a fan of his and, when they told me that in Alias, it was going to be Victor and Ron, I was so nervous the first few times I met them, I couldn’t even…. Ron remembered me as being the little kid understudy who is in the bad of the theater so eager but I was so starstruck around them.
How did you prepare yourself mentally for the fight scene in this movie?
JENNIFER: I wouldn't say that I really prepared myself mentally. We prepared ourselves for the roles. And Pete was a huge help in that. Instead of having rehearsals where you're kind of faking your way through scenes that you're going to re-rehearse and re-write anyway, our rehearsals were practical. We just joined a class out of the blue with this group of FBI officers who were in evidence response training from all over the country. They were in LA learning about bombs. And we just walked into their class, me and Jamie and Jason Bateman, and they were all kind of like, "Huh? Sydney Bristow is in our bomb class?" [laughs] And it was great. We learned a ton. And because we improvised so much of the movie, it made it really easy to kind of...We all had this common dialogue of high explosive vs. low explosive vs. you know...all different kinds of detonators. And then we spent a day with them also learning about fingerprinting and all kinds of evidence response, or retrieval kinds of things. And then we did another day. Oh, we did a day with this Harry Humphries, who I'm sure you guys have heard about, who teaches actors how to use guns properly. And so we did a day with that and we ended up going through...You know, when they shoot...Oh, paint guns. We did a paint gun thing where the actors simulated the kind of mission that we would actually be on in the movie. And it terrified me. I was so grateful. I just remember, that day, being so grateful that I don't have to do that in my life, and that it's pretend. And I just couldn't believe that we send these kids over there to do that. But anyway...
Did you talk to a lot of female FBI agents?
JENNIFER: So many.
Did you learn about how they had to act in an Arab country?
JENNIFER: I talked to so many. It was great. The FBI was so incredibly helpful in the making of this movie. And the women...I mean, I would just be around them, and looking at them. What was their hair like? What was their make-up like? And saying, my main thing was, "What's in your pockets? What do you have in your pockets?" "Well, I always have these gloves, I always have one set. I always have candy for a stressful situation." So I stole that. "I always have something to write with." And so my pockets in the movie, whether I used that stuff or not in the scene, I was always going to prop guy, "Okay, I think I need some more gloves, and I think I need some more lollipops." And they were just like, "Okay, Jennifer's pockets, let's fill 'em up." But that was really fascinating. And those women are incredible. They are real women in the middle of the country that are armed and ready to go into a really hairy situation. And they have kids at home, and they go home most nights, but every now and then they have a bank robbery to deal with. And they were amazing.
Tell us about improvising.
JENNIFER: When you're talking about improvising and speaking off the cuff, you're working with the best when it comes to Jamie. And Jason Bateman, he never stays on book once. [laughs] He's incredibly deft at coming up with stuff right in the scene. So you did feel like you needed to be really prepared so the scene could kind of go anywhere, you know what I mean? But it's also Pete sitting at the monitor listening to Christina Aguilera saying, "Yo, Jen! Say this!" You know, you're just kind of like looking over, "Really, Pete?" "Yeah, say it! It's funny!" So you say it and then you see it in the movie, and he was right. It was hysterically funny. But at the beginning, on television, you don't improvise. At least, in any experience I've ever had. You stick to the script, the script is Bible. Of course, I had been trained in that stuff and I had done it a lot growing up, but it had been a while. And it was great to, bit by bit, every day, be a little more comfortable. And it was so good for me. I was really happy.
Talk about the tone, and walking the fine line involved between dealing with a real situation in the Middle East and making a big action film out of that.
JENNIFER: Well, I think another thing to throw in there is what makes this movie great to me is that it really is...You see everybody in the movie 360 degrees. Our Saudi Arabian counterparts, you see Ali's character at home helping his father kneel into prayer position. He's humanized to you. You see Ashraf's character at home with his kids and his wife, and at the end of his day, and what his life is like. And so there's no judgment put on anyone. The film very much says, "We are all the same." And that's what I loved about it. I loved that there are no solid heroes. It's not like the US is coming in there with guns blazing and "We'll take of this!" My favorite line in the movie is when Jamie Foxx says, "Look, I'm not saying the United States knows everything, but this is something we're good at." We're not pretending to be perfect. And I loved that. It kind of took the onus off of us kind of just being like, "We'll take care of it!" But we are good at investigation as a country. And so that is a fair thing to say. Did I go so off point? What was the original question?
How much research did you do about Saudi Arabia? We get that great little history lesson in the opening credits.
JENNIFER: Right. Wasn't that cool?
Yeah. Has the film sparked more curiosity in you about the Middle East? What kind of research did you do?
JENNIFER: I did read several books and do some research just to be as familiar with it as possible. But I am not a particularly outwardly political person. I leave that to the other half of my family. [laughs] And so I focused as much, if not more, on Janet Mayes, and being a forensics expert, and what it would be like for her in that circumstance as much as what our relationship is overall.
Have you lined up anything for after you wrap up on Broadway?
JENNIFER: Thanks for asking. I do have a couple little things, but I don't think they're anything I can talk about yet.
Any clue?
JENNIFER: No, but they're fun. There are no fights.
Small indie movies?
JENNIFER: Nope. No, mama's gotta go to work. [laughs]
Genre stories?
JENNIFER: Yes and no.
Peter Berg compared you to Jodie Foster as one of the few actresses who can be feminine and strong.
JENNIFER: That's nice of him.
Do you find you're typecast as the kick-butt Alias woman?
JENNIFER: I don't mean to jinx myself, but no. I don't find that. I feel like I get a wide range of things that come my way, and I'm really, really lucky for that. I would love to go back and do a great action movie as long as the story is as good as this one at some point. But I love doing other stuff, too.
Are roles with strong female characters hard to come by? And there was a
rumor they might resurrect Alias as a feature film.
JENNIFER: Yeah, I hear that, too.
Would you consider that?
JENNIFER: I don't think it's really up to me. If J.J. were writing it and directing it, then absolutely. I think we'd all sign on. I mean, it's all in his crazy brain. But I haven't heard. He certainly hasn't mentioned that to me. But I'd be there.
And strong female roles?
JENNIFER: Look, think of any movie that you see. Think of this movie. How many men are there? How many women are there? One. That is every single movie. I mean, any time an actress gets to work with another actress, it's like, "Oh, there are two of us in a movie! How are you? Let's sit in the hair chair together!" We're lonely, women. Women get screwed in this industry. But yes, it is hard to find roles at all, much less strong females.
Are you cynical about that?
JENNIFER: No. I mean, look, I'm lucky. I'm working. I've made a living for a long time. I'm not a cynical person anyway.
You're not in The Jane Austin Book Club.
JENNIFER: What is that? Where's my manager? What was that movie? Why am I not in the movie?
How are the terrible twos going? What kind of stuff is going on at home?
JENNIFER: We've seen glimpses of terrible. [laughs] But for the most part, pretty smooth. We haven't hit two yet. We are very into pretend.
What are they watching?
JENNIFER: She hasn't watched TV yet.
Nothing?
JENNIFER: No. I want all the attention! [laughs]
If J.J. were to ask you to do a bit part in Star Trek, would you?
JENNIFER: Absolutely. Anything J.J. asked me to do ever, that's a clear, don't even worry, the answer's yes.
Thanks.
JENNIFER: I owe him.
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