Screenrant People were very skeptical when Kristen Stewart was initially cast in this film. But now seeing the trailer and all the footage, you really get why she’s perfect casting.
Rupert Sanders: “Yeah, I think we were looking for someone who was obviously a great actor first and foremost but also someone who’s incredibly physical. Everyone thinks she is Bella from Twilight. I think she’s such a good actor that she encompassed that role so well that people think that’s how she is. When you meet Kristen, she’s so far away from that character. I’d first seen her in ‘Into the Wild’ and I was really blown away. I remembered that she was the girl from ‘Panic Room,’ ‘Welcome to the Rileys,’ ‘The Runaways,’ and now ‘On the Road.’ She’s one those actors who does these smaller films and then she does these big movies and she’s really managed her career so well in that way. She’s incredibly spirited and very kind of wild and also she’s got this kind of this alchemy to her. You’re not quite sure what it is about her but on screen she’s just incredible. And when you see her act you realize why she is such a huge movie star and why she’s going to continue to get bigger.”
LA Times/And Kristen Stewart is your Snow White.
Rupert Sanders: She’s quite stunning. She’s really good. First thing I saw her in was probably “Panic Room,” and then I saw her in “The Runaways” and “Into the Wild.” She’s an incredibly talented actor. I think a lot of people think that she’s Bella Swan because she played that part so well, and she really epitomized that character from the books. She was really strict with herself that she’d wear brown contacts, which is hard to act with those things in, because so much is coming from the eyes, but that’s what Bella Swan had. She’s very serious about what she does, and she’s incredibly gifted, and she’s incredibly intuitive, and she’ll just try different things. It was great to work with her.
Collider: After showing some new footage of Universal’s upcoming dark and action-packed tale Snow White and the Huntsman at WonderCon 2012 (read our recap here), director Rupert Sanders met with press to talk about his take on the familiar story. In this re-imagining, the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) is ordered to take Snow White (Kristen Stewart) into the woods to be killed, but instead becomes her protector and mentor in a quest to vanquish the Evil Queen (Charlize Theron).
During the interview, Rupert Sanders talked about his decision to tackle such a huge film for his feature directorial debut, the discoveries he made about Kristen Stewart as an actress, developing the right accent for her character, her fearlessness in the horse riding and sword fighting, what Charlize Theron brings to the role of the Evil Queen, the decision to have eight dwarves instead of seven, his perspective on Tarsem’s take on Snow White with Mirror, Mirror, and the aspects of the fairy tale that resonated with him the most.
Question: What made you decide to tackle such a huge film, right out of the box?
RUPERT SANDERS: I came straight from the Mattel factory into the director’s chair. Yeah, it is a big film. I couldn’t get a small film, ironically. It’s much harder to get a small film off the ground than it is to get a big film off the ground. But, the high stakes gamble on the roulette table is that, if it doesn’t fall on your color, you’re in a small prison in Burbank, for the rest of your movie-making days. Hopefully, that would happen.
Because you do such big-scale commercials, don’t you feel like that helped prepare you?
SANDERS: Yeah, if you think of the money we spend on a minute, I’m actually making a fairly low-budget film. I’ve definitely loved doing commercials. I’ve had so much fun. I’ve traveled the world and I’ve gotten to really take on a lot of challenging projects. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s not dissimilar. It’s like riding a bike. Once you’ve learned how to ride a bike, then you can get on a motorbike. It gives you confidence, knowing that you can work with a thousand extras or a massive fight sequence with 600 horses on a beach or whatever it is. I wouldn’t have done it, if I’d been wetting myself every morning, going in there scared. But, life is about taking those risks. It was a high-stakes risk, for myself and for the studio, who very kindly wrote a large check to me to get it done. And they weren’t there, whipping me into line, which was great. I was really expecting to be shuttered in, but they were great. They trusted what we were doing and they let us go, which is all you can really ask for, in a partnership with a studio.
As you got to know her and work with her, what were the discoveries you made about Kristen Stewart, as an actress, especially with how people perceive her from the Twilight Saga movies?
SANDERS: I think what I realized is that she’s such a good actor that everyone thinks she’s Bella Swan. They believe that that’s her. Obviously, an actor is playing a role. She is nothing like Bella. And, I got on really well with Kristen. It was great. As I was writing stuff, she was there. We had a lot of conversations, seeing through her eyes. We really hard on developing that character together. I was just amazed at her talent, really. She’s incredibly good at her craft. She’s incredibly instinctive. She’s incredibly intuitive. She will overcome fear, like no one I’ve met, when it comes to it. She didn’t really want to ride a horse. She had a bad horse-riding accident, as a kid. When you’re riding fast on a horse, with 200 others soldiers on horses riding behind you, through surf on a beach, that’s terrifying. She really went there. She crafted the accent, and it’s flawless. She’s a stunning actor. I saw her first in Panic Room. Then, I saw her again in Into the Wild. I loved her in The Runaways. I loved her in Welcome to the Rileys. I think she’s going to be incredible in On the Road. She’s a great actor, and people just go, “Twilight girl,” which is a testament to her. She’s kept this pipeline of interesting projects going on the side, so she’s not just going to be that girl, forever more. She’s a great actor and she’s made incredibly shrewd decisions for someone who’s half my age.
Considering that, what were the challenges in ensuring that your film didn’t get distracted by the fact that this is the girl that so many people see as Bella Swan?
SANDERS: I’ve never seen the Twilight movies, so I didn’t really care that much. I met her, I really got on with her, she’s a great actor, and she was right for the character. That’s it. It was as simple as that, for me.
People haven’t gotten to see too much of her Snow White in the trailer footage thus far. Is that indicative of the movie, or are you just being really selective about how much you show?
SANDERS: No, she’s the lead. I’m not a marketing expert, but the way it’s positioned, I think we’re starting to bring her in, more and more. We don’t want to give too much away. We just want to say, “Here’s the bad person, and here’s someone who’s trying to get to her.” We’ve only done teaser trailers. The more stuff people see, the more they’ll see of her and the more they’ll be pretty blown away by what she did.
Charlie Theron is known as being a great actress. What did she bring to the role of the Evil Queen, which could have ended up being camp, in the wrong hands?
SANDERS: When you’re playing an Evil Queen, you can go into pantomime very quickly. What she did and what’s indicative of the film we tried to make is that she grounded that in reality. She found a way of playing this character in a very modern, realistic and gritty way. She’s not, “Off with her head!” She’s not the Alice in Wonderland kind of queen. It’s not that kind of film. She’s playing it pretty straight, as a very disturbed character who’s desperately got to find this heart because she needs to live forever. It’s as simple as that. She’s someone who’s dead on the inside, but she’s determined that she will avenge her family and the tribe that she was with, that was constantly brutalized by kings and by other kingdoms. She’s determined that the world will feel the suffering that she felt, and she will stop at nothing to do that. She’s totally dead. She doesn’t feel anything of life, but she has to get that heart and she has to live forever and she has to avenge her people. She’s very driven by some very dark machinations. She’s also incredibly wounded and incredibly fragile underneath. It’s an incredible performance.
Will there be backstories for all of the other characters?
SANDERS: Yeah, all of them have very rich backstories. They’ve all suffered a great deal of loss. This queen took over a kingdom. She’s someone who’s suffered a lot of loss. She lost her family, she lost a tribe, and she found her way into this kingdom. Like a Trojan horse, she moves from kingdom to kingdom, hollowing them out from the inside. She’s like a siren who attracts these people to her beauty. The dwarves lost everything. They were down in the mines. They’re noble goldminers who see light in the darkness. When they came up from the mines, the world was blackened and they lost all the other people in their race. The Huntsman lost a wife. Snow White lost a kingdom, both her parents, and the love of the people. Everyone’s dealing with loss, in very different ways.
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How appropriate is Snow White and The Huntsman for kids?
SANDERS: Well, it’s not for six year olds, but it’s for eight to 80. I think there’s a message in it for everyone. It’s certainly not for the kids who wear Snow White diapers.
What was your first exposure to the story of Snow White, and when did you learn about the darker elements of the Grimm fairy tales?
SANDERS: I read that before I saw the Disney one. The Disney one is still pretty dark, even for Disney. It’s got, “Bring me the heart, the lungs and the liver.” It’s a brutal story. In the original, she eats the heart, the lungs and the liver, and then finds out that it’s a deer. And then, at the end, to really rub in her jealousy, Snow White invites her to the wedding and makes her dance a death in molten steel shoes. It’s a dark story. I don’t think we’ve shied away from the darkness, and Disney actually didn’t either. They just took a very different approach than we did, but the heart of the story is the same.
There are iconic elements to the Snow White story, like the apple and the mirror. How do you incorporate those elements, while also keeping the film grounded in reality?
SANDERS: You take the root of that idea. What is the mirror doing to the character of the Queen? Why is she asking it these things? What is it telling her? What does the apple symbolize? Going back to the parable, there are so many Biblical images in the story. All of those things are so laden, if you read a lot of Jung or Freud. With the mirror, the apple, the snake in the tree and the dark forest, it’s a very rich world. We’re still scared of dark forests, for some bizarre reason. There’s nothing scary about trees or birds, but if you put someone in a dark forest, they get scared.
What does it add to the mythology to make this version of Snow White a warrior princess?
SANDERS: Warrior princess is something that’s external, rather than being internal to the character. She wears a suit of armor, but she’s not suddenly Bruce Lee’s adopted sister. She is wearing armor for protection, and she has to kill a queen. She’s not beheading people. She doesn’t suddenly acquire these skills. It’s very instinctual and defensive. She knows she has to kill someone, and that is abhorrent to her. That sword lies very uneasy in her hand.
How did Kristen Stewart take to the sword work?
SANDERS: I put that sword in her hand, as I would put it in any of your hands. If I told you someone was going to come through that door who had done something terrible to you and you had to kill them, I’m sure you’d fucking give them a good run for their money. That’s really how she fights. She’s no ninja or samurai. It’s purely reactive.
What was it about this story that resonated the most, for you?
SANDERS: For me, it was about loss, and being pulled away from somewhere you were safe and you were exposed to something terrifying. You have to find that within you, in order to tell a story properly. A lot of my process, going into it, was to find those things that really connected to me, and that was a recurring theme. You’ll see a lot of people being pulled away from each other. Those things really resonated with me, and that’s what I put into the story.
Why did you decide to have eight dwarves instead of seven?
SANDERS: I don’t know, really. It’s just weird, how those things happen. It wasn’t like, “We’ve gotta have eight dwarves!” It was like, “Fuck it, let’s have eight dwarves.” The Snow White story, or Snow Drop story, just had dwarves. We weren’t trying to beat Disney. We just wanted one more.
What role do they play in the film?
SANDERS: Mythologically, dwarves are latent sexuality. They are half-men, so they’re about sexual awakening. There are no dwarf gang-bangs. It’s really about another group of people who have lost everything, and they are touched by Snow White, and they decide that they will fight for their pride again, alongside her. They’re very instigative, in taking her kingdom back with her.
Are they still the comic relief, at all?
SANDERS: They are funny, but it’s not slapstick humor. They’re funny because they’re funny guys. Ray Winstone delivers this beautiful, allegoric speech about what’s happened to them, as a tribe of people, and it’s really heartfelt. And then, he goes off and is really funny. We just let them go. They’re a hysterical bunch.
How did you go about finding Kristen Stewart’s British accent for the role?
SANDERS: If you’re amongst the forest and there’s knights in armor, all looking chivalrous behind you, and then Snow White says, “Is that, like, my castle?” So, it was important that she wasn’t Californian. To fit into the world, all of the characters have accents from that part of the world. Chris Hemsworth’s accent is Scottish, and Kristen’s accent is very royal English. She was really great at it, and she did the work. It’s easy to do an accent for a few minutes, but to be able to do it without thinking about it, so you can concentrate on the performance, is very hard. She worked with one of the best British dialect coaches. It’s hours of work, and she did the work so that she was flawless. She didn’t need to worry about it, and could get on with the performance.
Full interview with Rupert at collider.com via KstewAngel
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