Reed, Nikki (Twilight)
Steve Barton
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Being a metaphorical vamp was easier for Nikki Reed than being a real vampire. She survived her teenage seductress days, but playing Rosalie Cullen in the Twilight movie almost did her in. She explained how tough it was to be a blonde vampire in the new movie based on the teen lit phenomenon.
Dread Central: Did you have any mishaps doing any of the Twilight stunts?
Nikki Reed: I had to fly on cables as I was running and it wasn’t until I was up in the air that I realized that my arms and legs were not coordinated. Like you don’t know which arm goes with which leg when you’re in the air. It’s really painful. It was painful for me. Well, I mean, you’re like putting on like this suit of, you know, it’s like 15 pounds and then it’s like a girdle that you’re like being strapped into this thing and then you’re hooked onto like 40 cables and then they go, “Okay, ready? One, two, three.” And then they lift you in the air and then it’s like camera’s not ready so you’re just like chillin’ in the air, dangling all of your weight.
Dread Central: How long did it take to get the hang of it?
Nikki Reed: It took a few [days.] Andy Cheng was great. I just felt retarded. I felt like I had to have a conversation with each one of my limbs. Left, right, move. I have some behind the scenes footage that’s kind of funny. I feel a little silly. Rob and I had quite a few laughs at that.
Dread Central: So it was a tough shoot?
Nikki Reed: We had to prepare for like four days at once, like if we had weather cover. If it was raining, everyone was ready for this day and then sometimes, because it’s Portland, it would rain and then the sun would come out and then it would start haling and the whole crew was always like frantic, like, “Okay, should we move? Should we wait? Should we just hang out?” There was a lot of hanging out, of contacts being stuck in eyeballs and other people trying to pull contacts out of eyes. I was at the hair salon. I don’t know if any of you have seen a photo of me as Rosalie but yeah, it took 36 hours for me to become half blonde. That was just half of my head.
Dread Central: Did you dare look at the online fan base at any point after getting the part?
Nikki Reed: I can’t look. I know you hear a lot of people say that. I actually can’t look. In the beginning. Now I am Rosalie and so now there’s posters and now people who haven’t read the books can now read it and put my face to that character, but I think we all experience a little bit of this, when you have like 20 million people reading a book and each one of them has their own [idea]. It’s not like when you’re playing a real person, like you’re impersonating somebody and so they have characteristics and mannerisms that you can imitate. When you’re playing a character in a book, everybody has their own idea of that person and every single one is different so you just have to come to terms with you’re not going to be that for everybody but now we are that. I think I had the biggest transformation out of everybody. Also just looking in the mirror in the morning, I actually dyed my hair blonde and bleached my skin and did the whole scrubbing thing. Everything of mine that I associate with myself like my mole or whatever, that was all gone so I had to look in the mirror and see a different person every day. Your question was about blogs, right, not about you, Nikki.
Dread Central: What sort of cast bonding activities did you have?
Nikki Reed: We have poker night. We have poker night once a week. I think baseball, [Peter] taught me how to slide. That was our bonding moment. I had a really hard time learning how to slide and it was Peter, he acquired bruises all over his legs teaching me how to slide gracefully. Rob and Kristen are great. This is accelerated at a very rapid rate. I think we all have seen that from the start to now and they’re doing a really great job. Kristen’s my best friend so I don’t know what else to say about that. I spend virtually every day with her and we’re doing another film together in January. It’s called K11. Her mother’s directing it. It’s about a little known section of Men’s County Jail.
Dread Central: Have you had any weird fan encounters yet?
Nikki Reed: I had a woman ask me if I could hold her baby for a little while because she really wanted Rosalie to hold her baby. Not Nikki, Rosalie. I realized later, in the third book, I think it’s like chapter seven in the third book, Rosalie talks about how she really just wanted to be a mom and have a very simple life and so part of her feelings with Carlyle was just that she didn’t have the choice to become a vampire. And I don’t know if I’m reading into it too much but this woman just came up to me and was like, “You can hold my baby.” And I was like okay. And I’m carrying around the six-month-old child for like 30 minutes. I didn’t know where the mother went.
Dread Central: What do you think of this take on vampires? Were you bummed you didn’t get fangs?
Nikki Reed: There was a time when there was a discussion of teeth though. I mean, there was a time when it was just discussed. Just discussed and I thought we all kind of got excited about the idea of what does this mean? What is separating us from just the kids at school? It’s different. You read the book and there are certain descriptions that really bring you into these characters, like the dark purple under their eyes and their intimidating beauty and then you get there and you think, “All right, how are we actually going to do this? How can you actually put purple under their eyes and not have us look like a bunch of freaks in school? And how can we incorporate old clothing from the ’30s and ’40s. You and I dealt with this a lot, like going to school, we really wanted to bring that element to it but we just stood out too much. In the books, it works but when you actually put it together visually, we stood out too much with the pale skin. So it was like do we wipe out all of our features with white makeup and then go over the top and put makeup over it to make it look like we’re trying to or is that too much? Are we reading into that too much? Now I have to see True Blood. Has anyone seen that show?
Dread Central: Are you signed for all four movies?
Nikki Reed: Three. The fourth book wasn’t out so we just have our trilogy. I don’t know how they’re going to maybe combine or I don’t know.
Big thanks to Fred and Ahmad for making this happen. Twilight opens in theatres this Friday.
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Categorized:Interviews News
