Emma Thompson Stranger Than Fiction

When British actress Emma Thompson arrives for our interview she doesn’t look anything like her frumpy character in Stranger than Fiction. The bad hair is gone, as are the ill fitting clothes, and the neurotic, chain smoking author Kay Eiffel (who Emma Thompson plays) is no where to be seen. Instead, in her place is a very blond, very tanned and very fab looking 47-year-old. The two time Oscar winner might have complained about her body weight and her varicose veins (which she had removed) in the past, but she looked stunning at the Toronto International Film Festival in a sexy figure hugging leopard print cocktail dress and a pair of Jimmy Choo’s.

Gaynor Flynn sat down with the actress to discuss her latest film, in which she plays a cranky author with writer’s block who is trying to figure out how to kill off her latest protagonist, an IRS auditor called Harold Crick (Will Ferrell). The only problem is that Harold actually exists. When Harold begins to hear the author’s voice in his head narrating his thoughts he becomes worried. When she predicts his imminent death the mild mannered tax man desperately tries to do something about it.

Gaynor Flynn: What made you say yes to this role?

Emma Thompson: Oh so many things, but working with Dustin (Hoffman) was a huge plus. He’s so funny. He should have done stand up, and his character in this film has an incredible sweetness he’s a really incredible, marvellous man, we use to have these sort of six hour conversations when we were shooting, and we’d sit over an expensive bottle of Saki and get quietly pissed and just talk and talk and talk he can just do that. Its true what I said in the press conference, he really needs to disguise himself because people stop him in the street and they really kind of glom to him. It’s not just I really enjoy your work Mr Hoffman it’s like will you come and bear my children or be with my family on this very special day and you just want to go ‘leave him alone’ I get very irritable. I’d say ‘he’s working very hard you know at the moment’ he’s a mess, he needs something to eat’ and I said Dustin I can’t walk around with you anymore I’m turning into a child minder, which he does need because he can’t make his way back from anywhere to anywhere, he has no sense of direction at all. He got lost going around the corner to my hotel and then had to ring up someone and say ‘I don’t know where I am’ you know and he’s the only man I’ve ever known who likes shopping. It’s extraordinary.

Gaynor Flynn: So people don’t glom to you?

Emma Thompson: No, they’re very respectful. I think they’re frightened of me actually (laughs) you know what happened I went out the other day desperately trying to look like a film star I had an enormous pair of sunglasses on great big diamond necklace and then these reporters said, oh look I think its Emma Sands. Emma Sands, do you know who that is? Dynasty I thought ooh, it’s hysterical, they were talking about me.


Gaynor Flynn: You play the voice in Will Ferrell’s head, is getting the tone right on narration difficult?

Emma Thompson: We did work on it a lot and I did the narration over many, many times because the first time I did it we did it before we started shooting because of course we had no idea how the things were going to play so I think that first narration was a bit uppity and a bit la la so we changed it an awful lot when we began shooting and we had to discuss the complexity of what she knows while she’s narrating and whether she’s narrating during the film at all or whether its old narration and you can’t get into all that because its so complicated. So the work on tone occurred over a long period of time before we started shooting, during the shoot and then after the shoot, I did the whole narration at least 3 or 4 times and that was the only way we could get it to work and in the end the narration is so moving that I would cry every single time I did it and I had to do it not crying because its just beautiful, the way she says all these things we think accessorise our lives and they are there in fact to save us.


Gaynor Flynn: Your character only meets Will Ferrell towards the end of the film, was that the same for you in real life?

Emma Thompson: No, we’d been farting around like the old sort of whores of comedy that we are for hours before that but that scene is so powerfully written and so well written that we didn’t need to rehearse it. The idea of someone coming towards you who you have imagined in your head is so extraordinary that it acted itself. Her reaction, the fact that she just goes down onto her knees is not a normal reaction, it couldn’t be because to her he’s not real and yet suddenly he’s real so it’s the same sort of wonder and awe and of course she’s thrilled actually but also frightened and in awe. It’s an incredible moment I’ve never had to act anything like that before.


Gaynor Flynn: You’re a writer as well, do you like to see your characters come to life, unlike Kay?

Emma Thompson: I love it that’s why I write screenplays. I love the fact that I know one day I’ll meet the people [who will play them]. Now novelists live in a much more private world I think. It’s not something they would want I don’t think, the novelists I know anyway certainly wouldn’t. They’re not gregarious, they’re not outgoing so people write for different reasons and they work stuff through in their writing, I certainly do that


Gaynor Flynn: Do you suffer as a writer like your character does in the film?

Emma Thompson: Sometimes I do, and there have been really, horrible, horrible moments when you find yourself curled up in a foetus position weeping under the desk, you know thinking I can’t do this. You just think you’re not going to be able to get it out you know like child birth there comes a point in child birth when you say, okay jokes over, get it out, get whatever it is out I can’t do this. Its very bizarre. I remember that moment so clearly, just don’t be ridiculous I can’t do this, I can’t get a whole baby out of there and it’s the same thing with your mind, you just go its not there I can’t a do it and funnily enough I think that’s the moment when sometimes you have your big breakthroughs its very odd.


Gaynor Flynn: There’s a great scene where you’re in the rain, smoking, suffering, trying to work out what is going to happen next in your novel. Was that a difficult scene to do?

Emma Thompson: It was, but I trusted Marc Foster [the director] because I think he’s a good filmmaker. He’s a young filmmaker but he’s a filmmaker and there’s a big difference between a director and a filmmaker. There are thousands of directors and very few filmmakers. I’ve worked with Ang Lee luckily who was a filmmaker and I think Marc has that so you don’t question it, you really don’t unless you have a big problem with it. So I sat there, I was so cold, I can’t tell you how cold I was and I was so proud of keeping that cigarette going. She could smoke in a shower that woman and I loved that scene. [Marc’s] very subtle and he knows what’s what. He’s like one of those Chinese surgeons who just puts his hands straight into your body without cutting he can go in and just go, can you just move your kidneys slightly to the left and you do it.


Gaynor Flynn: I understand that Will Ferrell is very shy and introverted?

Emma Thompson: He is shy, but he’s also so good hearted and nice, and open hearted and we just did get on and we did have a lot to talk about because we’re both comedians so we’d just wiff on people we’d met or some ridiculous thing and I think he’s a very subtle man. I know the stuff he does is so broad sometimes but he’s a bit like Christopher Guest you know. Those people that he gets periodic version of human beings but so close, like Anchorman you know there were moments in that which were just oh, they were so terrible and yet so accurate so its not really surprising that he can pull it back and be real. I think he’s wonderful in this. I had no idea he was so good.


Gaynor Flynn: Did you jump at the opportunity to play this woman?

Emma Thompson: I did because she’s not intentionally funny but she’s funny and I love her and she’s so awful and she’s rude and suicidal and funny and I think that’s a very unusual combination especially for women. You know I was asked whether I get cross about America and there not being any roles for women my age and all of that and then something like this comes along but it’s very rare that you get something so original. Always now I get asked to play mothers which is fine if it is a very brilliantly written mother that’s no problem but that’s the point you know to get out of the formulaic stuff to be not virgin, angel, whore, mother, sister, wife you know suddenly to come along and be given a suicidal very rude writer is heavenly.


Gaynor Flynn: As a screenwriter, is it important to you to create interesting roles for women then?

Emma Thompson: Oh definitely and I try to write them with real depth but I’m writing about parents at the moment and there’s a mother but she’s a completely original person, a fully developed human being with strange habits and peculiarities as everybody has. I find mothers are so often portrayed as just sort of singular, like they’re only mothers. What mother is only a mother? Doesn’t exist. But we’ve made it like that in our stories.


Gaynor Flynn: Will you be acting in your story?

Emma Thompson: No because I’m committed to Nanny McPhee I can’t do both that would be bad.


Gaynor Flynn: Did you know this role was written for you when you were given it?

Emma Thompson: No I didn’t, Lindsay [Doran the producer] was really discreet she just sent me the script and said see what you think of it and I read the first two pages and said ‘I’ll do it’ because I just wanted to be in the service of that writing because that never happens. Because people will write things for you and you think ooh I’m so excited and you read it and think oh this is terrible and I’ve had that happen before well you either think that or its just very bad writing or boring writing and they just want you to act it but it was like it had been written for me because the way in which she speaks has my inflections and my strange sort of arcane ways of speaking that I sometimes have.


Gaynor Flynn: So whenever anybody says they wrote something for you, now you become incredibly wary?

Emma Thompson: Oh yeah you do, well you know what I have to be wary of? I have to not ever say to someone that I’m writing something for them because I’ve done that before and then the studio says no but we don’t want that person and I’ve had to ring up that person and say I’m so sorry and I feel like such a cow so that’s what you have to watch out for.


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