Movie legend SIGOURNEY WEAVER and Saturday Night Live favourite KRISTEN WIIG chat about their roles in Simon Pegg and Nick Frost‘s alien road-trip movie PAUL.
**PAUL is in cinemas from 14 February.
Kristen Wiig
What’s your favourite movie alien?
Wiig: Is Chewbacca an alien? I’m going to pick him.
Weaver: I always liked the Pod people, you know, the version of yourself that’s completely humourless, that’s just sleeping under your bed and while you’re brushing your teeth, becomes you. Then suddenly you have an expression like that, and your spouse can’t tell. I just love that concept.
MMM: Kristen, your character Ruth swears a lot. Did you have a swearing coach, or was that all you?
Wiig: It was kind of Simon [Pegg] and Nick [Frost]. I mean, obviously what they wrote in the script, we did that. But there were a lot of serious talks about all that…
MMM: Sigourney, is it more fun to play a heroine or a really hard-ass bitch?
Weaver: I try to bring the two together. I loved to play a character who was the voice on the other end of the phone who does finally appear gloriously stepping out of a helicopter, and then after a brief scuffle, gets squashed. I just loved the movie. I loved the idea of being part of this ensemble. I’m a huge fan of Simon and Nick and of [director] Greg Mottola’s and everyone in the cast, so even if they hadn’t let me wear such a nice dress, I probably would have wanted to do the movie.
MMM: Do you think there are many strong comedic roles for women?
Weaver: I think a good comedy is very hard to find, and it has to come together in a kind of magical way. It’s true that there aren’t as many female-driven comedies that are just about being goofy and irreverent, but I think that will come. You know, now they have to be about shopping or getting married, which is too bad as we can be just as goofy as guys. But I think with the new emphasis on ‘geeks’ and ‘nerds’, women are not far behind. We will have our moment.
Wiig: Definitely, for this movie, it was something different than I’ve experienced before. A lot of times I think the female role in big comedies like that is kind of like the nagging wife, or the crazy neighbour. But one of the reasons I was so drawn to this was they actually really thought about the female character and gave me so much comedic play.
MMM: How many times have you resisted the offer to send yourself up with the Alien mythology, as you did in Galaxy Quest? And what was it about Paul, considering your part was originally meant for a man, that made you sign up?
Weaver: I like it when they just write the character, and they don’t really worry about whether it’s going to be a man or a woman.
I would actually be quite careful of that. I love the Alien franchise. Paul was done within a context that I found believable, somewhat. It was just a wink. There are winks throughout the movie, even though like all wonderful classic comedies, the characters, what they say, what they do is done fully, without any winks. But there are little homages to different sci-fi masterpieces, to the extent that I think you need an annotated DVD. I’m sure, having only seen it once, that I’ve missed some of these things.
So I think if it weren’t in the hands of Greg Mottola and Simon and Nick, I would have not wanted to do it. That was my one reservation was: will this just be very organic, and pop out as and when, as it happens, and I knew that they would do it in that kind of seamless way.
By Jan Gilbert
