"They wrote the character as a Brit from the very beginning and Brad [Silberling] had always seen it like that," explained Friel at the LA press day for Land of the Lost. "I don't know why because a lot of things change, doesn’t it? Because she was 14, the character in the Danny McBride plays was 15 or 16 and they were brother and sister. And I think just to move it on, they thought they needed different relationships. But mine was not to wonder or question why."
"I read the script as was and wasn't familiar with the original series when I went to meet Brad, first of all. And he said, 'Well just hold off until you read the script and then we’ll educate you with that.' I knew HR Pufnstuf, we’d had that in England and I was a huge fan, and he brought me the big DVD box set and we watched and my daughter now is an avid fan as well. She just loves it. I'm like, 'Do you want Willy Wonka or Mary Poppins or Land of the Lost?' And she's like, 'I want Land of the Lost.' She loves it."
Friel added, "She's had the opportunity to come to the set and powder the Sleestaks. She kept calling Jorma [Taccone], who’s Chaka, dirty. She’s like, 'I think you need a good bath,' and she’d say it all the time. And just normally the Brits coming here to work, either you have an American accent or you speak with an RP which is a lot more bath, grass, love, instead of bath, grass, love - I think maybe because the translation doesn’t go over. And at my audition both Will and Brad said, 'No, no, we want you to speak in the way you do because we like the sound of it and it gives you a gruff butchness to it maybe.' So that was nice. It was quite scary, to be honest, speaking in my own accent because I usually hide...not hide behind it but you kind of, it totally separates you from the character you're playing because you don't hear yourself. So at first it was quite vulnerable-making and then I settled into it and found it actually quite liberating and free."
Brits and Americans don't always find the same things funny, but Friel said when Ferrell and McBride were improvising she was totally into it and laughing along with them. The real differences came in just the names of certain items. "It’s funny when you're in America for such a long time because you do find there's lots of little different words. Like tin, I kept asking for tin foil and they're like, 'What do you mean you want tin foil?' I'm like, 'Tin foil, you know, so my sandwiches don't go off. I've just eaten my lunch and I want to keep it warm.' 'Aluminum foil.' 'Oh aluminum, is that what you call it?' You know, but there was lots of different words like that. But [Will and Danny were] pretty easy to understand. Danny just kept making British jokes all the way through. Like it was literally the butt of every joke and he’d pretend that he had never met an English person and he was like, 'Do they really exist? I thought I only met them in history books.' And I'm like, 'Yes, all right, that's enough. Thanks a lot guys.'"
Being that she wasn't familiar with the TV series, watching it on DVD helped Friel understand what Sleestaks are and who Chaka is, and just really helped her understand the premise of the show. Friel didn't really take away much about her character as Holly in the series is completely different from Friel's Holly in the feature film. "If you're going to do remakes, then you either don't do it or you change it so you move it on," explained Friel. "And Land of the Lost, the film version is a 2009 film version and they've found the comedy in it. But I think - I really do after watching the series - they've remained very, very true to the main premise of it. They kept the Sleestaks. Chaka does not look like a guy from Planet of the Apes - he still looks like a boy in a costume - and, you know, the dinosaurs. I love Grumpy. I love the idea of giving a dinosaur expression."
"But with my character exactly... I didn’t write the script. I read and saw how Holly fitted in and it was how to be a girl that had this inexplicable crush on his man, and I had to make this reason again. 'But why does she love him when she's a really good scientist from Cambridge? Why?' And my reasoning was always that she thinks that this genius is just hidden with all these mad eccentricities. So, 'Oh, he’s doing that but that's a real genius behind that,' or something. And just to play it very literal and to try and be endearing and empathetic, but will also have surprising balls. And it was always that Brad had always said she was a secret football hooligan. And I met the girl that it was based on, the character at the La Brea Tar Pits and sat and talked to her a lot about it. And it’s really hard not to fall in love with Will. I think he’s such a charming and warm guy, and as is Danny."
