Would you have done "Assault on Precinct 13" if it was just a remake of the original?
I don’t think about stuff like that, you know? People asked me a lot of questions [in previous interviews such as], “What about all of these remakes that are being done?” And I said, “What remakes?” You know, I don’t know. For me, I just read the script and either I like it or I don’t. Now in this one I felt invested in the character, and I felt that I could do something interesting with it. I decided to do it and I’m so glad that I did. Working with all of these extraordinary actors.
Was it your idea to have the character count as a way of controlling herself?
She has OCD and James DeMonaco had a bit of that in there. But I told him, “Oh no, she should go all the way! As she gets more and more stressed, she should just go out there!” When she completely loses it, the only thing she can do to stay sane is the counting. And I have a thing with my 9 multiplication tables that I constantly do over and over so you’ll see some of that in there, too. Like the scene where we are sitting in the car – I’m just doing my 9’s and 5’s over and over again.
Why do you feel that your character had to take that risk and go on the mission to get help when she was the most helpless compared to all the others?
Well, I think that when she landed into the depths of her own terror – when she really had to confront herself… In the beginning of the movie she was so staid and in control. And the thing, that cat and mouse game [she plays with Ethan Hawke’s character], she is still on top of it and in control. But when she falls apart and has to come to terms with her own helplessness, and then she faced the reality of “Yeah, I’ll probably die in this,” she has to find that ounce of courage to walk out the door. But I think it is like at the moment of if you have to jump off a cliff – do you stay or do you jump? I think she thinks, “Well I might die anyway so I might as well jump.” I don’t think there is brave moment for her where she is like, “Yes! I can do this!” It’s more like I’m going die on the cliff or I’m going to die jumping. And she decides to jump.
Have you gotten your action “jones” taken care of?
No! Actually Aisha Hinds and I got to be really good friends during the shoot - and that stuff in the car that we have when we have this kind of “Thelma and Louise” moment – we made up so much more that’s not in the movie between our relationship. We talked about doing this female “Lethal Weapon”-type of movie, she and I.
What type of stuff did you two make up that didn’t get included in the movie?
Oh, she lets it slip that she has a daughter and my character is like, “Oh wow, you have a daughter?” And she was like, “Yeah.” We did this because we were trying to humanize her. We wanted people to know that she is a woman and a wife and a mother. Not just some gang girl. You get a tiny bit of that in the film, but not everything we did is there. And then my character is like, “Oh my gosh, you have a daughter?” She says yes and asks if I have a family. I’m like, “No, but I have a cat.” So there are these little moments of humanizing.
You think that because of the part Aisha plays, she is this bad ass. But in real life she is the most girly-girl diva. The first time we met, we went to this spa in Toronto to run our lines. There we are naked, getting our nails done, and talking about how we were going to do various scenes. We just had a great time together. It’s always like that when you do a movie. You meet one or two people who stay with you for life and she is mine for this movie.
It sounds like you all had a lot of fun on the set. Was this one of your favorite set experiences?
Oh yeah. I mean there is always one person on the set who has a lot of anxiety, an actor who is really intense and has to stay in character and holds himself away from the rest of us. An you’re like, “Oh Jesus Christ.” Or a director who is really brutal and anxious. We had none of that. We would have a really intense scene and then when it was over someone was like, “Anyone want coffee and a smoke?” It was just kind of free flowing and easy. And this particular group of actors, I would work with everyday if I could.
That’s unusual to get such a good cast of characters for basically an action film.
But that is a huge credit to Jean-François. I heard great stories about him when they were trying to cast this movie. The studio had different ideas about what the characters should be. “Well, this character is white and this one is black and well this one would be 20 and ummm this one…” And Jean–Françoise (imitating Jean Francois with a French accent), “I don’t care how old they are and what color they are. We just get the right actors. This is the actor I want.” He wanted fine actors who could really elevate this story, this action movie.
PAGE 3: Maria Bello on Working with Ethan Hawke and "A History of Violence" with Viggo Mortensen"
