Two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank takes on the role of a miracle debunker in the supernatural thriller, The Reaping. Directed by Stephen Hopkins and co-starring Idris Elba, David Morrissey and AnnaSophia Robb, The Reaping follows Swank as a former missionary who devotes her time to disproving religious miracles. But when she's called to a Louisiana town to investigate what appears to be the Biblical plagues, her trust in science over religion is put to the test.
What initially attracted you to The Reaping?
“I read this two days before the Academy Awards and Joel [Silver] was like, ‘I want you to read it. I want you of sit down with me, if you feel like.’ I remember reading it on a plane and I remember it being a page turner. I remember wondering what was going to happen next. What was going to happen next? There’s a something that happens that you don’t see coming - and I didn’t see it coming.”
How is that possible with all the scripts you read?
“I don’t know. I thought, ‘How did that get me?’ I continued to think about it. I just think it’s a fun movie that makes you think. It reminds you that things aren’t always as they seem, and it’s easy to judge and easy to make judgments. It also deals with the Biblical plagues and I thought that was interesting.”
Does being an Academy Award winner change how you look at scripts?
“No, you can’t really look at things like that. You kind of have to continue to do things that challenge you or excite you, because there are a lot of different genres of movies as we know. I think as an actor I’d like to do all of them. I want to do comedy, I want to do drama, I want to do scary, I want to do thrillers. That’s the fun of mixing it up for myself and continuing to make it something enjoyable.”
You said it was a ‘fun’ movie. Was it fun to make or will it be fun for the audience?
“All around. Fun to make, fun for the audience. It’s one of those movies where you’re on the edge of your seat and you’re in for the ride. It’s suspenseful and it’s dramatic and it’s scary and with religious undertones, obviously, with the Biblical plagues so it kind of deals with a lot of different elements, which I find intriguing.”
Do you think people will find it controversial because it deals with religious elements? Will it stir up any communities?
“No, I think actually it’s not going to be controversial. It’s about the plagues, but it’s not anything like did they happen or not. It’s not about that.”
So no one should mind how the film interprets the subject matter?
“No. In fact, I think it will be interesting. It’s opening Good Friday and you know a lot of people are studying about the plagues on Good Friday it seems like. It will be interesting if they study it and go watch a movie about it, I think.”
Does the delay in the releasing The Reaping affect you at all? Are you happy it was pushed back a little bit?
“Yeah. It wasn’t actually to finish the movie it was just because, you know, Warner Brothers last year had a tougher year. I think they were wanting to save some things for next year. It was about their releases, releases of some movies and like deciding, ‘Oh, let’s keep this for this.’”
Did you do a lot of blue screen work on this film?
“There’s a lot of blue screens so there were a lot of times where you really had to trust Stephen [Hopkins], my director, and hope that what he said was right. ‘There’s going to be locusts everywhere, and you’re not going to be able to see through them.’ I was like, ‘What do you mean? Is it like a black wall of locusts?’ Acting obviously is reacting, and you can’t see what you’re reacting off of. You just have to trust that the special effects are going to come.”
Were you given anything to look at in place of the effects?
“No, it was just going back to the sandbox, kind of just playing and make believe.”
Did that test you?
“Yeah, it was great. That’s what I mean by wanting to mix it up and do something new.”
Besides what you were given in the script, how much research did you do?
“Stephen introduced me to all these… The character that I play is technically she’s a professor but of debunking myths, and there are people out there who do this. There’s these magazines and this book. I’m trying to think of the magazine… The Skeptic, and there was another one like that. It’s fascinating. There are people out there doing that.”
Were you aware of this before working on The Reaping?
“No, but see that’s the thing in life. As an actor I get to experience all these different things. And no, I had no idea there was a thing called The Skeptic and that there were these magazines out there debunking myths and miracles, and people who go and scientifically prove that they weren’t real. That’s happening. Someone says, ‘There’s this church and so and so and they found that if you throw this dust on you you’ll walk.’ And then a scientist will go and say, ‘That’s really true. It’s so and so and so that makes you think that you’re walking.’ You know, that sort of thing. I mean sure there would be people out there that would do that, but you don’t really…it doesn’t really hit you.”
Page 2: Hilary Swank on Filming in Louisiana and P S I Love You
