MoviesOnline sat down with Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and Michael Sheen to talk about their new movie, Alice in Wonderland. Directed by Tim Burton, the epic 3D fantasy adventure is based on Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” originally published in 1865 which changed forever the course of children’s literature.
Helena Bonham Carter plays Iracebeth, The Red Queen and tyrannical monarch of Underland, an amalgam of the Queen of Hearts from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and the Red Queen from “Through the Looking-Glass.” With her oversized head, fiery temper and propensity to scream for people’s heads to be chopped off, she rules her subjects through fear. “She’s got emotional problems,” says Bonham Carter. “It takes nothing, practically, for her to lose her temper. Her tantrums are that of a two-year-old.”
Anne Hathaway plays Mirana, The White Queen, and younger sister of the Red Queen, who has designs on the throne and crown that Iracebeth once stole from her. While she appears to be all sweetness and light, beneath the surface there’s a hint of darkness to her character. “She comes from the same gene pool as the Red Queen,” says Hathaway. “She really likes the dark side, but she’s so scared of going too far into it that she’s made everything appear very light and happy. But she’s living in that place out of fear that she won’t be able to control herself.” When Alice returns to Underland, the WhiteQueen takes her under her wing, offering her protection, although her motives aren’t completely altruistic.
Michael Sheen voices the character of McTwisp, The White Rabbit, who is always worried about being late, always in a hurry, always rushing about. Charged with finding Alice and bringing her back to Underland so that she can fulfill her destiny, he shows up at her garden party in an effort to lure her back down the rabbit hole. “He’s a warm character,” says Sheen, “but, at the same time, he can be quite fussy and quite strict with Alice as well. He has an edge to him, a nervous energy, always feeling like he’s behind time, time is very important to him. But he’s quite brave when called upon.”
Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and Michael Sheen talked to us about their roles, what it was like to play such wildly imaginative and iconic characters, and the challenge of acting in front of a green screen in a film that was shot almost entirely in a virtual environment.
Q: Helena, that was a terrific performance. I hope that doesn’t make your head bigger when I say that.
HELENA: Thank you. I wanted to do it. That’s why Tim gave me the job. I’m one of the few actresses that can blow up their head.
Q: Can you talk about the challenge of acting in front of a green screen?
HELENA: It was all green. When you’re acting, you have to kind of imagine anyway. The unsung heroes of it are these various green people that gave us their lines off. We had real proper actors who would dress in leotards and didn’t look that good at their best. For instance, I’ve only met Michael Sheen in the last 12 hours. I met him the night before but he wasn’t there [when I was filming]. I just had a 12-inch drawing of a rabbit. But then, behind him, was thisgreen screen, green actor. That’s what we had to act opposite.
MICHAEL: It’s because I don’t like being around other actors. It’s in my contract.
HELENA: I would’ve appreciated if you had come in your bunny outfit once. But he didn’t.
MICHAEL: I used to stand outside. You didn’t see. I was outside the studio with my nose up against the glass in a rabbit costume going “Please let me in, Helena. Please.”
HELENA: I wish. But it was no, no, he only acts by himself. And then, Matt (Lucas) had to be always hunched over or on the floor to give lines. Whenever I’d look at Matt, he was always in deep discomfort because he had to try and make himself smaller. This actress (referring to Anne) is the one who does her own special effects, but she didn’t have anything special done to her. She does her own gliding. Crispin, I don’t know how he did it. He was on crutches and had no eye and somehow managed to remain upright. I don’t know how he did that. We all have to act opposite tennis balls and bits of tape, but you do that anyway. And actually, tennis balls and bits of tape can be good actors. You know, they’re minimal.
Q: Anne, what was it like to play the opposite of Helena’s character?
ANNE: I’m so much more interested in what Helena has to say about it. One of the most fun parts about my character was this freedom that Tim gave me from the first conversation we had. He said, “In Wonderland, I don’t want anything to be all good or all bad, so I don’t want it to be the RedQueen is the bad one and you’re like the nice benevolent one who’s all good.” He said, “Have fun exploring the relationship between the two of them. They come from the same place.” I thought, oh how fun if my character has a sort of hidden psychosis.
HELENA: It’s not that hidden.
ANNE: Now it’s not. [Laughs] She’s dangerous and is interested in knives and things like that and is kind of adorable on the outside and has tried very hard to become this good, almost over the top, positive creature. But underneath, she has a murderous streak that comes out when she’s around weaponry. So, it wasn’t necessarily that they were opposites. They were just sisters who were different.
MICHAEL: I watched it for the first time the other night and the thing that struck me the most was the thing I liked most about the RedQueen [which] was her vulnerability, and the thing I liked most about the White Queen was how sinister she was. That worked brilliantly for me. It’s tragic when she says, “It is better to be feared than loved.” That’s a tragic line really. It’s beautiful. In my case, I thought it was better to be furred than loved and I slightly misheard it.
Q: Michael, being just a voice in the film, were you ever jealous that you couldn’t actually be there on set?
MICHAEL: I would have given anything, literally, to put the ears and the tail on, and jump around.
HELENA: You can still do it.
MICHAEL: I do. I would have loved to have done that. One of the things I loved about the film most is that the animals really do look like animals. They’re not humanized, in any way. When a horse suddenly turns around to the Knave of Hearts and says something disparaging about dogs, you really don’t expect it. It’s really effective. So, I can understand exactly why they went with the idea of really going for the animal thing. But, I still look very cute with a little bunny nose, so maybe I can be in there, if there’s a sequel or something. So, I did a couple of sessions with Tim, and just had him all to myself, in London and in America. I was filmed with just a basic camera, so when I saw it, I was amazed at how much all my hand movements were there. Tim said, “Really perform it. Don’t just do the voice. Move and do as much performing as you can. Twitch your nose as much as you can.” So, I really recognized my hands. It was really funny. I didn’t think I’d recognize any of that. See, I lived with rabbits for 6 months beforehand and I did a lot of yoga to build up my legs so I could get my leg up and scratch my ear like a bunny.
Q: Helena, you spent hours in the makeup chair each day, what was the challenge?
HELENA: Speak to my husband. It wasn’t that long. I just said hours for the sympathy effect, but it was only 2-1/2 hours. I did exaggerate it, I guess. They had to get rid of my hairline so you put a bald cap on. That takes about 2-1/2 hours and then they have to paint it and then they put my beauty makeup on. That took some time. And, my huge wig. But they didn’t blow my head up every morning. They did that on camera. I had this one camera. There are two cameras in the world that do this and they just blow your head up. That’s all it does. And I had this huge camera dedicated to me, which was fine by me.
MICHAEL: Was it called bon cam?
HELENA: [Laughs] Bonnie cam. He likes to put makeup on me. He likes to deform me. I love it that he likes to. I always like looking as different as I can.
Q: What was your first experience with Alice in Wonderland, growing up?
ANNE: When I was in 5th grade, I had a teacher and he made the entire class memorize Jabberwocky and perform it. So, during the battle sequence, I made Tim let me recite the poem and he literally looked at me and said, “Well it’s not going to be in the film.” And I said, “I know, but just for my own sense of completion in my life, please let me do this.” [Laughs] I didn’t read Alice until I was in college. I was reading a lot of (Vladimir) Nabokov and actually one of his big inspirations was Lewis Carroll, so I thought before I get too deep into him I’ll read Lewis Carroll, then I never went back to Nabokov. That’s when I read it and I was really moved by it. She’s a very emotional character and a lot of people feel a kind of confused 19. [It’s about] who they think they are vs. who they want to be. You struggle with a sense of identity then and at other times in your life. I really read the book from that perspective as a girl who’s trying to find her identity, which is great because that’s what the movie really focuses on. Which Alice are you? So, that was my experience.
MICHAEL: As most people, I think I knew the characters before I ever read the book. They’re just ingrained into the Western consciousness. For me, the allure of the story is that we all live in this illusion that we’re civilized and that everything makes sense and everything has a place, and Alice in Wonderland shows you that actually it’s a very thin film between sanity and insanity, and total wildness, chaos and fear. Somehow, that seems to be the most true expression of what it’s like to be a child, where things are both familiar and strange, at the same time, and when you think you know what something is, it suddenly shifts and becomes something else. We grow up and forget the truth of that, or buy into the illusion that that’s not the case. We’re drawn back to Alice in Wonderland all the time because it somehow reminds us, as all great Greek drama does, of what the actual truth about life is.
Q: Helena, what do you think is an appropriate age for children to see this film?
HELENA: Tim always has this theory that it’s us that have got the problem, that we impose fears on our kids and the kids are actually quite robust. But it depends on your kid. We haven’t shown it to Billy yet just because it wasn’t finished until a few days ago. I don’t know. You know, there was that 3D thing. We were trying to find a nursery school for our son, Bill. Apparently, according to the Montessori method, they can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy until age 6. They had recommended no fairytales so that’s why we didn’t send Bill to Montessori because having Tim Burton and fairytales and his world of ideas. Oh! Okay!
MICHAEL: I still have difficulty with that. Someone told me once, and I don’t know if it’s true, that there’s a part of our brain that, when we’re acting and something traumatic is going on, believes that it is actually true. So, part of us is traumatized from it, as actors, which probably explains why actors are the way they are.
HELENA: We’re fucked up.
MICHAEL: Other actors, not me. That’s why I don’t like to act with other actors. [Laughs]
Q: Anne, your character reminds me of a punk rock vegan passivist. Why is that?
ANNE: The passivist thing was in the script. My character has taken a vow of non-violence. But, it was also in the script that when she talks about that, she hits a bug and enjoys killing it. So, I thought about it. That kind of gave me the idea that she’s taken this vow against her will, that she recognizes that her sister is sick and believes that a means to an end is cutting people’s heads off, and it’s kind of her default setting. I’m like I don’t want her to be in charge so I guess I have to be in charge. But, I like the idea that my character probably, left to her own devices, might not have wanted to be Queen. Then I started to think about who she was in her ‘off-Queen’ time and I realized she spends a lot of time in the kitchen and there’s the non-violence thing and her being a vegan, and then I just imagined her in mosh pits – not really punching anyone but really butting against people very hard.
Q: You said you were inspired by Blondie and Greta Garbo, can you talk about that?
ANNE: I like Blondie so I thought, you know, she’s blonde so that was kind of obvious. But I still wanted her to have a regal thing so I watched…there’s a Greta Garbo movie. I watched a lot of her silent films because I still think no one has ever quite moved on film the way she did. Her whole body just looks like it’s breathing and it was a time where acting was very stylized to be very over the top and she’s utterly real in it. I don’t remember. I think it’s called The Loose Woman or The Temptress (she means The Flesh and The Devil). She arrives on a train and she’s beautiful.
Q: How do you feel about being CGI’d or do you prefer playing a real person?
ANNE: Honestly, I would do anything if Tim asked. I’m fond of saying that I would have played a mushroom in this if that’s the way he saw me in it. So, I would have happily donned my green onesie and been up in stilts. I would have just done anything to be in Wonderland. But, it’s nice to be a real person as well. I have no preference. I’m sorry, I don’t.
Q: Helena, what was your family’s reaction when they first saw you as the character in full makeup and costume?
HELENA: Well my little daughter, who was only 1, just said “Mommy!” It was bizarre. But my son is slightly frailer or sensitive. He just didn’t want to look at me.
Q: Michael, what does your daughter think of you being the White Rabbit?
MICHAEL: My daughter is still living off the fact that I’m in New Moon. Now that I’m in Alice in Wonderland as well, it’s just gone stratospheric. At school, I’m treated like royalty now. But, everyone is convinced that I have red eyes because that’s two characters now with them.
Q: Have you ever dreamed the impossible, in your own life?
MICHAEL: If I had only ever done what I believed was possible, I probably never would have left my bedroom. I am, by nature, quite an anxious, fearful person, I’ve realized. Just to go out into the world can be quite a scary thing. And so, if I was left to my own devices, I probably wouldn’t do anything. I’ve learned, over time, that you’re only limited by your own beliefs about what’s possible, and they can be quite narrow. I’ve now given myself a rule, which is that I can’t say no to anything, if the reason why I want to say no is because it’s scary. I can say no for other things. And, that has led me to do incredibly frightening things that were very fulfilling afterwards, and I would never have believed that was possible.
Q: Helena, you seem to go seamlessly between playing a beautiful sex symbol to a frightening villain, do you gravitate toward one type more than the other?
HELENA: Ah, this is the frightening sex symbol one, I guess. Somebody did actually propose to me in the lift today because in the light they found me attractive with a big head. No, you know what? Because I’m older, I only get villains. Look, whatever is well written and has somebody behind the camera that knows what they’re doing and is a really good storyteller. You know what was good actually is he did apply it to my waist. Did anyone notice that? Because they go on about my head, but my waist is digitalized. He told me that right at the beginning. He said, “Don’t worry. You’re going to have it obviously. Don’t go for the full pull-in with the corset every morning.” And so, I didn’t. And then, halfway through, he said, “You know, the waist is going to cost too much.” So then, halfway through, suddenly I went for the pull and then luckily at the end somebody just told me “No, we did. We could do the waist.”
Alice in Wonderland opens in theaters on March 5th.
As previously reported, tonight was the Royal premiere of Anne Hathaway's latest film Alice In Wonderland (which hits theatres next Friday). The event was held at Odeon Leicester Square in London.
