I feel SO sorry for Kristen Stewart, to be caught in a love triangle between buffed Taylor Lautner and swoon-worthy Robert Pattinson. Must have been difficult to drag herself to the set. Actually, one journalist during the press conference asked her if the slate were wiped clean, would Bella have gone for Jacob instead of Edward since Jacob is just too damn fine, to which Stewart replied, “I know, trust me. I feel you completely.” I’m sure she does; whether Stewart and Pattinson have the hots for each other in real life or not, you can’t deny Lautner’s appeal as Jacob. Personally, if I were Bella, I might go for Jacob just in looks alone – I like dark-haired guys – but once Edward kissed me, I’d buckle. If I were Bella, that is. Let’s just say, it looks like he knows what he is doing.
But I digress (apparently into my own personal la-la land in which I’M the star of the movie. What is WRONG with me?) Here’s what the girls have to say about their continuing Twilight experiences (and by the way, those Cullen babes have way too much fun):
Step 1: Did we mention how fine Taylor Lautner is as Jacob?
Kristen Stewart: “He becomes a man. There’s an entire [thing]. It’s not just a physical transformation. He really becomes an adult. I mean, I always knew that Taylor could do that but we just needed to make sure because it was so important. So once he actually proved himself, which wasn’t hard to do, even seeing him walk around on set was like a different experience. He’s literally become a different person. He’s just grown up. He’s so confident and the nicest guy that I’ve ever met. I know that I’m using this grammatically incorrect, but he’s the funnest guy I’ve ever hung out with. So he’s great. I’m so proud of him.”
Melissa Rosenberg [Screenwriter]: “I wish I could take credit for the moments of Jacob pulling off his shirt and Edward pulling off his shirt. They are in the book and it seemed unwise to leave them out.”
Step 2: Enjoy being part of the Twilight saga
Stewart: “I think my favorite thing about this is the fact that I can keep it personal. It’s still something that if the saga didn’t become a franchise, and it was literally was just a series of movies that I had done, they would mean just as much to me. That’s also the best part of it, the fact that it isn’t like that, the fact that so many people are affected by it and are invested in it just as much as me if not more. Like I said about [director] Chris [Weitz], if you don’t like people and if you don’t want to make movies because you care about people then you probably are just wanting to be just rich and famous. So the fact that this is so important to so many people makes me so happy. That’s it. I think that’s it.”
Ashley Greene [who plays Alice Cullen]: “I think this go-around we were all a little bit more prepared, which was nice. In the first film, we were kind of all going, ‘What’s going on? What’s happening?’ And you know we had the support of the fans behind us. In the first one, again, we were going, ‘Oh, God, we hope they don’t hate us.’ And they completely embraced us, so going into the second one, I think it was a much more fun, relaxed experience, at least for me.”
Rosenberg: “… the objective is you have to take the audience on the same emotional journey they had in the book. That’s the primary objective and, in order to take them on that journey, there’s certain plot points you have to hit. You have to have, obviously, Edward breaking up with Bella. You have to Bella discover the wolves. You have to have Edward attempting to kill himself – all the things that are crucial in the book. So you start with those scenes and then you condense and expand on some things.”
Step 3: Breaking up is indeed hard to do, especially if you’re Bella and Edward
Stewart: “That was the scariest thing. I was almost as worried about messing it up than I was about what I actually should have been thinking about which was the issues that Bella is dealing with. Reading it, it’s so iconic. I know what’s it like to get broken up with, but I don’t know what it’s like to get broken up with by a vampire who I’ve now been physically and chemically altered by. Suddenly, you take an addict, you take whatever they’re addicted to away from them and there’s withdrawal. So that was the most intimidating scene in the entire movie. I don’t know how to explain how I did it. Chris really helped me out. I mean, the breakup scene [itself], that’s not where I was intimidated. That was still, like she doesn’t even believe it yet. It’s when he goes, the absence of him, that I was scared of. I was like, ‘How am I going to be by myself in the woods with a hundred guys standing around me, filming me, die?’ Basically, literally having the equivalent of like a death scene but stay alive and get up and keep walking. It was hard. I still don’t know. I’ve seen the movie. I really like the movie, but I don’t know if anyone ever really would’ve been able to bring that to life the way that Stephenie [Meyer] writes it.”
Robert Pattinson [on his take of the breakup scene]: “There’s something weird about it. One of the main things I felt doing that and what really helped was people’s anticipation of the movie, and the fans of the series’ idea about what Bella and Edward’s relationship is and what it represents to them. It’s some kind of ideal for a relationship. And so, just playing a scene where you’re breaking up the ideal relationship, I felt a lot of the weight behind that. Also, it took away a fear of melodrama. It felt seismic, even when we were doing it. It was very much like the stepping out into the sunlight scene, at the end. You could really feel the audience watching, as you’re doing it. It was a strange one to do.”
Step 4: To be immortal or not to be immortal, that is the question
Stewart: “I can only relate to that as Bella can because she is still human. I think that’s an interesting question for any one of the vampires because they actually [deal with that]. The way that I consider immortality from both my perspective as Kristen and my perspective as Bella is that it’s so completely unknown but that given the right motivating factor I’d be willing to explore it. She’s very willing to acknowledge that she doesn’t know but that she’s willing to give it a chance because of Edward, because she’s willing to sacrifice anything for him basically. A big thing for Bella is change. She’s so terrified of change because she’s been thrust into this world. It’s not a necessarily healthy way of looking at things … Immortality is almost more scary in our story than mortality. To live forever seems on the surface like a really cool thing, but in our story it’s terrifying and means taking your soul – or at least it does to Edward. Like the lines of personal belief and literally theology and your faith, what you think is going to happen after you die, these are things that we think about incessantly in the movie and things that Edward and Bella even argue about. I know that was really everywhere but there you go.”
Step 5: Tap into your own eeeevilness
Dakota Fanning [who plays Volturi member Jane]: “I think the highlight of playing Jane was getting to wear that costume and to have the red contact lenses — I was really excited about that – and getting to play an evil character.
Michael Sheen [who plays Volturi leader Aro]: “We had to tone Dakota down. She was too evil. Her natural personality is too evil and we had to tone the volume down on the evil.”
Fanning: [Laughs] “Yeah. It was fun to get to play a feared character, you know, something different than what I’ve done before. And also, she uses her power not for good, which was another thing that was kind of interesting to me.”
Step 6: Remember those crazy Twihard fans again
Stewart: “The funniest thing in the world just happened to me in Brazil. I’ve had a lot of really varying experiences. Some absolutely touching and overwhelming and daunting. Some just like crazy. Then sometimes they’re really funny. I was in Brazil with Taylor, and Rob was in Japan. That’s just how it goes sometimes. We’re sent all over. This guy was chasing after us. There was a huge crowd anyway, but this one very persistent fella was like, ‘Where is Robert!? Where is Robert?!’ I couldn’t stop laughing and I felt really bad because he was distraught and emotional, and I was like, ‘It’s just Robert.’ It was really funny.”
Step 7: Remember your own crazy obsessions
Fanning: “I’m obsessed with baby names, with what people name their children. Just like friends, anybody. I know a lot of people’s baby names. [Laughs] But I just love names in general. I’ve been planning my children’s names since I was like four. I have lists of girls, boys, and I have them from all different ages. It’s really fun.”
Nikki Reed [who plays Rosalie Hale]: “I loved the Spice Girls. No, I’m serious. When I was 11, my brother told me if we took a bus, we would find the Spice Girls. And this is a true story. In Culver City. And we got on the bus with a suitcase, my brother and I, who was a year older than I, and we took the bus all the way down to the beach. And the Spice Girls weren’t there. But he was watching the news or something and it said they were on some highway and he thought he could put it together. My mom found us. That didn’t work out.”
Greene: “I just pretended to be a Spice Girl in high school. Or not high school, middle school. Oh, God.”
Kellan Lutz [who plays Emmet Cullen]: “I’m just obsessed with candy and animals. I love safaris now; I can’t go to a zoo. When I was in Africa I went to a safari and giant white lions and tigers were walking right by our place. Baboons just, you know, trying to break in our car and steal my candy, which isn’t nice. But no, I’m a huge animal advocate. And I just love animals.”
Elizabeth Reaser [who plays Esme Cullen]: “I don’t know, I’m currently obsessed with Jay-Z [laughs] If that makes sense. That’s all I can listen to.”
Step 8: What the Cullens do at night
Greene: “Alice plans parties. Alice plans lots of parties.”
Reed: “I look at myself all night.” [lots of laughter among them]
Reaser: “I think Esme goes out and like tears apart a mountain lion every other night.”
Reed: “We hunt together. We don’t speak. We hunt.”
Reaser: “Yeah, like we don’t have all this chitchat. Like I think Alice and I hang out and we maybe go shopping and do all this girly stuff. This one and I, we just hunt.”
Step 9: Hug a Cullen babe, if you dare
Reed: “Seriously, the scenes that we’re in, like, they’re lacking warmth. I mean, for obvious reasons, but it’s nice when you see like the wolf pack come in because it’s needed. You need it. They wrestle around like a bunch of kids and you want that. It doesn’t feel natural like to watch all of us [Cullens]. Just know that it is intentional and we’re not retards. Like the fact that we don’t touch in the scenes and we’re all like we don’t touch ourselves. I mean, we’ve got white makeup from here to here [indicating arm from elbow to fingertips]. It’s a skill on its own to learn how to function in our hair and makeup and also knowing that we’re like cold stones. You know what I mean? I just want a hug all the time.”
Step 10: Tell us more about the third installment, Eclipse
Stewart: “Yeah, Eclipse … Just as soon as you think you’re going to get the same story, it’s sort all of a sudden completely changes. Bella is much more back to herself. She’s content now. She’s comfortable and self-assured in a way that she wasn’t in New Moon. I think what I really love about Eclipse, what was interesting for me to explore, was different levels of love and acknowledging that the ideals that you maybe had a little while ago aren’t true. Bella is innately honest. That’s something that I feel she is. In Eclipse, she lies to herself and she lies to everyone around her about the fact that she’s in love with Jacob, just not as much. It’s not that extra thing that you can’t really even describe. I loved watching the three of them. I loved playing with the three characters together. There’s literally a scene where Edward and Jacob who are mortal enemies are in a tent with a sleeping Bella in between them. It’s a ridiculous circumstance to find yourself in. We had so much to work with. Then the FX as well were even more. There’s a big battle that happens and that was more than we had to deal with on New Moon. So it was cool. I’ve always gotten to do things for really short periods of time. To follow a character this long surprises me every time. I can’t wait to do the fourth one because I’m sure that I’m going to come in and say that everything I said this time was wrong, that I actually know Bella more now. And actually we have such established dynamics. The way that I know Bella deals with Edward, you sort of can’t mess with that. I know how she deals with him. I know how she deals with Jacob. I know how she deals with Charlie, her dad, and to have people come in and help that process out is only cooler. You always get a different perspective. So working with David [Slade] was like, ‘Okay, lets see what you’ve got,’ because he came up with a lot of stuff that I would’ve never thought of, and he’s quite good at the whole technical aspect of movie making, which is so completely over my head. So I got to feel safe that he had that handled and me and Rob and Taylor just sort of did our thing.”
Step 11: Go from playing Bella to rocker Joan Jett
Stewart: “… I got to know Joan not only as her now, but I feel like through footage and just through the script and the story, everything, I feel like I got to know who she was in such a whole way. I was really concerned about details being right, gestures and stuff. I really wanted to do a good impersonation, but I also didn’t want it to be imitation. I wanted it to be natural. Playing Joan Jett had nothing to do with Bella. It was a small period of time that I had to do it, but it was an opportunity that I jumped on. I would’ve liked more time [between movies], but like I said about walking on set, seeing all the characters and Rob and Taylor, it’s instantly easy to get right back into the right mindset. That’s vague but I what I do is so vague. Literally, what I do is so oddly ambiguous.”