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c h i k k a
i n t e r v i e w
Oscar-nominated James Franco talks about the challenges
of playing Oz in Sam Raimi’s latest
Oz: The Great and
Powerful
,
and shares what makes a person great in his
book. By Celebritext
What does it feel like to be
surrounded by all these
women and power, and be
powerful on the set?
It’s fine. They (Mila Kunis, Michelle
Williams and Rachel Weisz) are some
of the best actresses working today and
Sam and I were happy to go through these
scenes with them. Not only are they very
different kinds of actresses, they play very
different parts. It was interesting.
Do you like being
surrounded by such
powerful women?
Sure I don’t mind it, yeah. They’re great.
Is it a nice change in an
often male-dominated
field?
I love working with women. A lot of my
closest collaborators are women. My DP
(
director of photography) is a woman,
Christina Voros. My producers are mostly
women. A lot of the writers I work with are
women. The record shows I have a great
time working with women.
What’s the most
challenging thing about
working on this film?
It was actually a pretty pleasant shoot. It
was a very long shoot though.
Was acting against
characters that weren’t
there challenging?
You’d think, yeah. I think I had the most
scenes with the two computer-generated
characters, the China Girl and Finley the
flying monkey. But Andy Serkis (
Planet
of the Apes
)
trained me well in that kind
of acting. Zach (Braff as Finley) and Joey
King (China Girl) were also very good about
giving me the off-screen performances
to act off of. A lot also depends on the
director; how much time he’s going to give
to what he needs to shoot to capture the
CG performances, but also how many
takes he’s going to give the live actors so
that they’re engaging with something real.
Sam really balanced the time spent on
both sides well.
How would you describe
the relationship between
the
Wizard of Oz
and this
film? Was there any kind
of trepidation about being
alongside a film that , s so
iconic?
Franco
speaking
