It wasn't so bad. I'm a pretty active person. I've played sports my whole life. I played soccer for 12 years and I'm always running around doing something. I just trained with a kick boxing instructor for about a month beforehand, and I worked with a mime for 2 weeks. Then once I knew that I was going to be doing the dance combination, I worked with a choreographer. And then once I knew I would be doing a whole ninja sequence at the end, I was like, "Ok, seriously guys." Like "Come on." Like Lucy Lui, Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz got months to prepare. I had days but then it was just a matter of they would fix everything I did in editing. It wasn't that hard. I'm a pretty fit 21 year old, so.
Were there scenes that were tough to get through without laughing and messing up your lines?
Tommy O'Haver would come up to me and [say], "Ok, now just imagine there is a snake right there, step on him and kick it." And I was like, "Imagine there's a snake right there, step on it and kick it? Ok, where are we? What movie are we making? What have I signed on to?" But for me a huge one was the ogres because [of] their butt cracks. I died every single time. And just the fact they were so big and brilliant. I knew that there were actually skinny men inside these enormous, enormous suits and they're just funny. They spent so long in make-up, it was so bad.
Did you really join Hugh Dancy on a drinking spree in Ireland when he was exploring the pubs?
It's impossible to completely match Hugh drink for drink, the guy can go, but I definitely developed a taste for Guinness when I was there, which was unusual for me. But I figure when in Rome - or Ireland.
If you weren't the princess, would you prefer to be the ogre, the elf, the giant, or the snake?
I would want to be the snake; he was the coolest character. The thing I loved about Heston was, in fairy tales particularly nowadays when people can be a little bit more cynical than maybe they would have been 30, 40, 50 years ago, Heston voices the opinion of a lot of people when they're watching it. Everything is going so well for the characters [and] he just comes out with a brilliant one-liner, just kind of cutting them down, which is nice. Which keeps it, by the way I think, within the realm of we're aware of the fact that we're making a fairy tale and we're not taking ourselves too seriously.
Did you read the book before filming?
I did. Miramax actually gave me the book to read when I was 16 years old. They said just keep it in the back of your head and it might be a fun project somewhere down the line. And I never could get it out of my head actually, after, I read it. I read it and was just floored by it and thought, “My God, I wish that I'd known about this book when I was 10.” I would have loved it and read it every night. When the ability to play Ella came up again a number of years later, I was very excited.
What do you think about the changes from the original book to the finished film?
Originally there was a script made that was closer to the way the book was and it didn't work as a film. Maybe it would have, but it wasn't necessarily a film that I wanted to make.
Why?
Just because I had already made an old-fashioned fairy tale. “Princess Diaries” - the great thing about it was the kind of feelings of nostalgia people had for it. And with “Ella,” the thing that I love about it was it makes fun of itself for being a fairy tale, the movie version. I understand that there are some people who are disappointed about that, but it's not the first time a movie has been different than a book. I think that if you love the book there is no reason to stop loving it just because the movie is a little bit different. There is no reason not to give the movie a chance because on its own merit it is, I think, a very good film.
How reticent were you about doing “Princess Diaries II?”
I was very hesitant and nervous about doing the sequel. Not because it was the sequel to the “Princess Diaries,” but just because I think sequels, in general, are such difficult waters to navigate. It took a lot to convince me that it was going to be ok. I credit most of that to Garry Marshall who held my hand through it and said, "It's ok, this won't end anything. You're not repeating anything. You're giving a fresh performance. It's all right, it's all right. People care about me." But eventually yes, it was Garry sitting me down saying, "Do you understand how happy this will make people, like little girls across the world?" He goes, "It's an extraordinary possibility that you have here to make people happy and you should really embrace that." When it was put to me in that way I was like, “Ok, it's just ego getting in the way.”
PAGE 3: Staying Grounded, Role Models, and Dating
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