My Alice Through the Looking Glass trip was all expenses paid, but all the wonder and curiosity are my own
The Alice Through the Looking Glass premiere was so much fun, and it was even more of an honor to get to interview actress Mia Wasikowska, whom plays Alice in the latest adventures in Wonderland.
Mia is reprising her role as Alice in the sequel Alice Through the Looking Glass. We were curious and curiouser about what she thought about the changes in playing Alice now that she is a little more grown up. Mia entered the room with a kind smile on her face, and was really sweet person to interview.
One of the things that hit me right away was how humble Mia is. We chatted with her about the movie, doing CGI work, and working with Sacha Baron Cohen. One of my favorite answers from her though was that she always tries to stay in contact and maintain the friendships she had before she became a big movie star. When she’s not filming her favorite thing is to head home to Australia and spend time with her friends and family.
The other thing that she mentioned that was really interesting was that there is a skewed perception about what it takes to film movies. “It’s a lot of long days,” she shared. While she absolutely loves acting, it definitely takes stamina to film the same scenes running and jumping over and over again. I knew exactly what she was talking about as far as just how much goes into filming.
When I visited the Captain America 2 film set, we were on set for three hours and the clip they filmed over and over again was less than one minute of the film. Think about how much time it would take at that rate to film a two hour film, not including the scenes that don’t make it into the movie.
Meeting Mia Wasikowska was really an honor, and it was great to hear what she loved about playing Alice again. Check out our interview with the ever talented Mia Wasikowska
Our awesome interview with Mia Wasikowska
Q : Alice has changed a bit. She’s gotten definitely more independent. How did it feel stepping back into the role with those changes, with the years that have gone by?
Mia: It was great. I really love Alice and I like seeing her journey. I think in the first film, she was kind of still a little uncomfortable and trying to bridge that gap between knowing who she is on the inside and then being able to be that on the outside. And I think that was sort of her journey in the first film. Then in this film she’s just spent two years as the captain of her own ship, and she has a really strong sense of who she is.
She comes back into this story with a really strong sense of that, and despite the fact that expectations of her are really low in her society, she manages to sort of hold on to that sense of being worth more than what people want of her, which I think is really great and important for young girls and boys everywhere.
Q: There’s so many incredible quotes associated with the movie. Is there one that resonated with you more than some of the others?
Mia: I do like the message of time. How you can’t change the past but you can learn from it, and even though we kind of know that, I think really deeply understanding that is really important. It’s the best way to live your life and be in the moment, to accept what’s happened in the past and move on into the future, not be sort of fixated on trying to change something that’s already happened, which I feel like we can get a bit caught up in.
Q: You have a lot of relationships with the other characters in the movie. Is there one that stood out more, that was your favorite?
Mia: I like a few of them. I do like the relationship with Alice and Time. I think Sacha plays like a confident idiot very well. He’s this old powerful loser in a way and, Alice is the only one that isn’t scared enough to like pull him out on how he just doesn’t make any sense at all. I like that she has no fear in approaching anyone, but especially him, because he has such a strong ego.
Q: What are some of the challenges that you faced, ’cause there is so much CGI in green screen in this film? Where there any particular challenges that you faced to stay in the role?
Mia: When you read the script and it takes like an hour and a half to read, and you’re like okay. I do a lot of running and then that translates to five months of running every day and jumping andit feels quite physical. Sustaining that level of energy and when you have quite little coming back at you in terms of the set is challenging. It’s just a big green blob of light and there’s not much. We had a few more sets on this film, which was really great, but otherwise it’s quite like an abstract experience.
Then I also really like the scenes with the Hatter. When you’re filming like this and it’s green screen for five months, you spend a lot of time running around and jumping around. Obviously the more enjoyable days were when it was those really lovely scenes between the two of us and that was really nice.
Q: Alice was such a great role model, especially for young girls or young women watching it. Is there a particular message that you’d like for girls to take away from this movie?
Mia: Alice has this innate sense of who she is and even though she’s got all these challenges and people always kind of questioning her, she manages to hold on to that really strong sense of herself. When she goes to the ball with the oriental costume and she just doesn’t’ even seem to notice the judgment coming off of everybody else. That sort of just seems to roll off her back. I guess just that sense of not caring so much about what other people think is really important.
Q: You said there was a lot of running, and I’m assuming there’s probably some wire work and stuff that you had to do. What was the training like for that?
Mia: I had a two week period before we started filming with the stunt coordinators, which is really great. They were really brilliant group of people. There’s no illusions to the fact that I did quite a lot of the physical stuff, but I had a wonderful like stunt double who did a lot of that really difficult, painful stuff. So I would come in and do like the fun, whimsy bits, and then she’d be thrown across the room.
Q: I’ve heard a lot about how, Sacha Baron Cohen is pretty funny as a person, pretty fun to work with. How is it for you to work with him? Did you have any, anything in particular that you remember from working with him on this?
Mia: Yeah, it was great. I think there’s like a six hour version of the film where he improvises a lot, and he’s quite ambitious about it. I’m not sure how he thought half of that was going to get in a Disney movie if you’re at all like familiar with his other films. It was just very entertaining. Every day was something completely different. I would say he’s very ambitious and very smart and really funny.
Mia was such a joy to interview, and I can’t wait to see what’s next in this young actress’s career. Make sure to check out all of my posts from the Alice Through the Looking Glass Red Carpet premiere here. And of course, don’t forget to go buy your Alice Through the Looking Glass tickets and go see it in theaters everywhere May 27th!
- Walking the Red Carpet at the Alice Through the Looking Premiere
- Alice Through the Looking Glass Movie Review
- Interview with Alice Through the Looking Glass Producer Suzanne Todd
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ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS Movie opens in theaters everywhere on May
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