Wednesday, December 2, 2020
Kristen talks 'Happiest Season' and 'Spencer' with Femina (France)
Google translated
In Happiest Season , you play the role of a young woman ready to declare her love for another woman during the Christmas holidays. Why did you want to participate in this project?
Kristen Stewart: The story obviously touched me a lot. I am not sure that such a film could have seen the light of day a few years ago. I am not naïve, however. If Hollywood studios are starting to produce and distribute this kind of feature film, it is because today there is finally an increasingly growing market for this kind of theme.
You have a core of important fans who don't hesitate to thank you for revealing your bisexuality. How do you live it?
Kristen Stewart: To be honest with you, I have the impression that it was the generation after me that was much more courageous than mine. Today, those who manage to break taboos and fight against all kinds of discrimination are people who are younger than me. This new generation has given me the opportunity to go beyond the images that the studios wanted to stick on my back.
Are you happy today?
Kristen Stewart: I feel like I've finally found some balance in my life. I feel as good about myself on a private level as on a professional level. Things seem to me much more consistent today than in the past. This is the reason why I feel so happy in these two areas of my life.
You are about to play Princess Diana in the cinema. Do you feel any pressure?
Kristen Stewart: I admit that it was not easy to accept such a role which really requires a big responsibility. Diana is a true icon and she will remain so forever. I can tell you that I have done a lot of research. Above all, I didn't want to listen to the testimonies of those close to her, but to get to know her better by analyzing her actions and her speeches. I still fall asleep today listening to his voice!
Kristen interviews Mackenzie Davis for Hunger magazine
Kristen Stewart: Dude, didn’t we have the greatest time ever on Happiest Season?
Mackenzie Davis: I’ve never had more fun working with someone in my career. Being friends with someone and loving them and not having them think that you’re too much. It’s so nice to be at home somewhere.
K: I always justify bad experiences because I got through it and I think I was better because of it but really what I love is feeling visible and understood and loved and supported. It’s so nice to do work that feels natural, I felt so at ease with you and that comfort wasn’t boring.
M: I so relate to what you just said. Having hardship doesn’t really promote the best version of myself.
K: Imagine two guys having this conversation, it wouldn’t even cross their mind. It’s such a female reaction to strife to think, ‘I can make something out of this actually, I actually do some of my best work out of adversity.’ But actually, fuck that, that is not true. So, [the director of Happiest Season] Clea [Duvall] is great, don’t you think?
M: Clea is one of the greatest people I’ve met in my life, I think she is so talented. She kept us on course this whole movie when you and I wanted to turn it into an absolute drama-tragedy.
K: In interviews, you often end up talking about the result of the work you’ve put in but not the work that you did. It’s weird because you have to step completely outside of yourself to relate to other people and their perception but what about the experience that you’re having? Even when you get up in the morning for your work, how do you prepare for a big scene? Or are you better in the morning or at night?
M: Talking about [process] stresses me out because I have such anxiety about being a bad student and not doing the right stuff or not knowing the right way of doing things. With everything [I work on] I read a bit, procrastinate a lot, think a bit, write something and then where that goes, I have no idea…this garbage bag of dead-ends. When I talk about my [process] I think, ‘oh no, that’s such a mess and you don’t want to look at it and you’ll be so disappointed to learn what actually goes on.’
K: I don’t think that’s a wrong way of doing anything though. I’ve noticed that whenever anyone that I work with has hard and fast rules, even when they’re really talented and those rules prove to be productive and fruitful for them, I so can’t relate. But then I also feel like I’m a bad actor or that I’m not as diligent because I haven’t defined my process to a T.
M: I guess this is the weird psychosis of this job, that there is always the chance to start over and do the next one better but also the fear that you’ll never get another chance.
K: Also the desire to please never do it again but also the feeling that I want to do it for the rest of my life.
M: Yeah, I want to do it for the rest of my life but also could I please have a farm and I would actually love to be a housewife and chill.
K: You do make really good delicata squash, you’d be a great housewife.
M: I think in terms of process I learn so much of what and what not to do from people I work with. With you, I saw that you’re so good at advocating for yourself and defending your choices. I mean that in the most flattering way because I have this kind of Canadian thing mixed with just my natural personality of saying, ‘I wouldn’t do it that way’ and then ‘oh, you don’t like that? Let me shut up and I will not bother you anymore with my opinion because I’d rather we just moved on and had a nice day.’ I’m not saying you do the opposite of that and create a problem, but I really learned from watching you and will take it in the future.
K: So, do you have any other projects coming up?
M: Yes, Station Eleven. It’s set twenty years in the future after an apocalyptic pandemic wiped out 99.9 per cent of the population. It’s the pandemic show that got pushed by a pandemic. I’ve had ten months to workshop a jokier way of saying that but that’s what I settled on.
K: You’re going to really hone in on that one, you’ll have time.
M: It’s so weird not working for so long [due to Covid-19 halting production on Station Eleven] because you really feel like you lose the knack between each job and I just always feel as if it’s the first day of school and I didn’t learn anything last year.
K: What’s the tone of the series?
M: It’s a lot about the trauma that shapes artists and also the pursuit to create art even in a state of chaos and devastation. That after everything is gone and there’s nothing left, there’s still going to be people who tell stories and create art as a means of surviving. It follows a Shakespearian troupe that brings Shakespeare to all these settlement towns after this end of the world event.
K: I don’t believe in a world where we are not inclined to really imagine and create. All these hypotheticals are what we meditate on and really what drives us. I’m really excited about Station Eleven – if I was going to make a topical movie that’s where my head is at.
M: The fact that they’re performing Shakespeare is so interesting. I’ve read some historical fiction about the writing of Hamlet and [I was struck by] the omnipresence of plague and disaster in that era [the 1500s]. I sometimes feel really hard on the human race because its adaptability is through ignorance, ignoring the reality in order to forge ahead and create a simulacrum of a normal life. You do it with climate change, you do it with the pandemic.
K: We’re just monsters, really.
M: Reading [this historical fiction] has made me feel a bit better. Realising that [reluctance to change for the greater good] is not a twentieth-century problem, it’s not from the industrial revolution. We’re just garbage, it’s kind of the human condition.
Video: Kristen and Mackenzie Davis talk 'Happiest Season' with Glamour (UK)
The Happiest Season would have helped me so much growing up and regardless of your sexuality, it’s a story of self-acceptance and gaining respect from others. How would this have helped younger you?
Kristen: I would have loved to have seen this movie when I was younger. I wasn't as a teenager or as a younger person in my early twenties having to contend with judgmental energy in terms of being around a family who didn't necessarily accept you, or just being an out gay person. At the same time, I was fully like reacting to the ‘strangeness.’ I would have loved to have seen this movie, but I only know that in retrospect, and sometimes you need to be shown things before you know you need them.
I always wanted to work with Clea [DuVall]. I know for a fact that when I was watching But I'm a Cheerleader that I was like, ‘I love this movie for probably pretty solid gay reasons.’ I didn't know that until I was an adult. So, if this helps anyone who's unaware or aware of the fact that sometimes it's hard to say who you are around every group of people, then that makes me tres happy!
Mackenzie: Most importantly, this is why representation matters! I know that phrase has sort of lost a bit of meaning but it really does because it doesn't only help the people who are being represented in the thing, it also normalises a thing that up until that point maybe hasn't been normalised in mainstream entertainment. I went to a pretty progressive high school and grew up in a very liberal environment that was very accepting. But I look back at things that happened in high school and the way -more with boys and the way that gay boys were treated or whispers about gayness - and it wasn't normalised. It wasn't something that was like treated with open arms acceptance. I think if there were movies like this and if that's what we went to see on the weekends, it would not be cool. I'm not including myself in this to be clear, but there just was a culture of homophobia, even in the most liberal communities. I think not having representative stories that normalise it is the culprit for that homophobia.
Someone said to me recently that we won’t have equality until people don’t have to come out. But coming out stories are still so important and it’s imperative to have these ‘coming of age’ and ‘realisation’ stories. What do you think it’s still important to tell coming out stories in 2020?
Kristen: It's a really fringy perspective to think the fear has been sucked out of the idea of, of telling everyone, you know? It would be a really, really naively optimistic or just an ignorant dumb way to approach it. Look at where we're at just in the States. I'm so happy to be in a movie that is inviting and a part of a conversation that can be argumentative and divisive. The movie has open arms and it is not even judgmental of the people that are judgmental in the movie. To think that we're not as divided as we are is actually just not very helpful because it's not real. I'm the most optimistic, glass half-full person, but at the same time, I think this movie could be good for people that don't necessarily always lack judgement. We could be loud and aggressive with a more in-your-face indie movie and I want to make a bunch of those with other perspectives embedded in things that are sort of harder to digest, but I think it's really important to be like. ‘we're really nice too. We're just like you and like come laugh with us!’
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