Kate Beckinsale plays a reporter jailed for refusing to disclose her source in the dramatic film Nothing But the Truth. Directed by Rod Lurie (Resurrecting the Champ), Nothing But the Truth sounds like a story straight off the front page of recent newspapers and was in fact inspired by true events. In the timely film, Beckinsale stars as [fictional] political journalist Rachel Armstrong, an investigative reporter who breaks a story exposing a Washington D.C. resident as a CIA agent and the author of a top secret report advising the President against taking action against a foreign country. When Rachel remains steadfast in her refusal to hand over the name(s) of her source(s), a special government prosecutor drags her in front of a judge who orders her jailed until she breaks her silence.
On Researching Her Role:
Kate Beckinsale: "I went to the Los Angeles Times and was allowed to follow around two female reporters there and they were really helpful. They were great and I got to sit in on their editorial meeting and take my little notes and it was really, really helpful. I mean it’s helpful having Rod because Rod has a big experience of all that anyway, so he’s super accurate on that stuff. But for me, I wanted to, I just wanted to talk about, just the really prosaic stuff about what it’s like juggling being a woman and a mother and a reporter, and it’s really similar to being an actress. I was kind of bummed actually to find it wasn’t…I didn't have to be such a chameleon to understand it because the similarities were quite intense."
On the Similarities Between Being an Actress and Being a Journalist:
Kate Beckinsale: "Well, from what I was talking to with the women at the LA Times I think if you want to be an actor or you want to be a journalist it’s not just like, 'Oh I’ll fall into it.' Like, you really want to do it as a vocational job a lot of the time, for those two anyway it was, and they spent a lot of their free time thinking about it. They don’t just punch their clock and go home and they never think about anything to do with the news ever again. They're absolutely thinking like that, and on their evenings they're talking to their partner who's very often a journalist themselves. It’s like we go home and talk to our filmmaking husbands about our stuff."
"And, you know, that slightly sort of competitive thing as well where I go, 'Is it like who’s your Kate Winslet or Cate Blanchett? Like, who’s your woman you go god damn, she gets her thing on the front page just from writing it?' You know what I mean? Like, 'Who is that person that kind of either inspires you or makes you feel like, God, it’s not fair? Is there somebody also that's not like those two people that you don’t think is particularly talented but seems to be getting their story on the front page?' They went, 'Oh yes, absolutely.' It’s really similar. We have like all that stuff in our business, too, and having to be prepared to leave the country at a moment’s notice and have understanding partners and friends who don’t think that you're flaky if you don’t call for a couple weeks and all that stuff that I thought was just entirely specific to our profession."
On the Controversial Issues and What Audiences Can Take Away from Nothing But the Truth:
Kate Beckinsale: "I always find this question really hard. Like, 'I've made this movie and I want you to take this thing home from it.' That's because I'm British. I’m sorry if I have a hard time with that. I don't know. I know that, I do think that just in terms of the whole question of the freedom of the press, I think that's a very important thing that people think about and have currently running in their mind because it’s happening. It is actually happening. People are going to jail over stuff like this. And I think it’s important for people to know about it and therefore have an opinion about it, so that when it comes to voting on bills they get their sh-t together and know what to do. You know what I mean?"
"But also for me, I think it’s very difficult to play somebody who is an emblem of the First Amendment. I don’t think that's going to be very interesting to watch somebody trying to appear heroic about constitutional issues. So in terms of what they take away from it, I hope they feel connected to the story of a woman who starts out a very ordinary person who finds herself having to pull on all of her resources and take risks and make mistakes. And I like to see people doing that in films, so I hope people respond to that."
On Stunts and the Prison Fight Scene:
Kate Beckinsale: "I did. Did Rod tell you? He was in a tailspin about this. I was so surprised because, you know, I've done that before a few times now and nobody seems to really be that bothered about whether I get hurt or not. But on this movie I arrived and there was this huge array of kneepads and butt pads and elbow pads, and normally I can't wear anything like that because I’m wearing skintight latex. So I've never had a pad in my life, and Rod was really panicked. And Rod usually is very calm and easygoing and was terrified that I was going to get properly beaten up. It was a really short fight scene, you know, to me. It wasn't really that big of a deal but that was the one day I was having to turn around and go, 'Oh, it’s okay. Don’t worry.'"
