STACK NZ Magazine April 2015 Issue 61

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What was your reaction when
you first read the script?
MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY:
“Wow. This is enormous – wait,
how did that work again?” I really
like this guy Cooper, a pilot, a
father. I like how intimate this story
is in the midst of this massive, epic
scope and scale.
When you met with Christopher
Nolan, did he present anything to
you, in terms of the movie?
Well, I knew his previous work.
I could tell this was a very personal
story he was going to tell. In our
first meeting, we didn't talk about the film at
all. We just talked to each other. Talked about
being fathers. Talked about being the same
age. Talked about where we were from, how
we grew up, who we were as men. That's
really all our first meeting was about. And then
I read the script. And then the combination
and it was enough for me and it was enough
for him obviously. Yeah.
The story at the core is about family.What
is it about that that speaks to you? I mean,
you are a father, a husband. It's universal.
Yeah. This is a father/daughter relationship
that it's based on. And then that relationship
is the emotional hook of the film that makes
you care about the journey. Makes you care
about this expansive place that we're going
out and journeying into. This unknown. That
journey, that adventure doesn’t mean there's
much unless you're emotionally invested in
it on an intimate level. And I think [Nolan]
very successfully pulled that off. And he was
inherent to it. It was the most important thing
to him.
And in the movie the stakes are really high
for the journey.
As high as they can get. Yes.
In your travels through “space” you
traveled to Iceland to film some of those
scenes.What was it like to film on location
like that?
Yeah. Well as an actor you get to
st behave. You don't have to use your
magination to conjure up, "Well, this is what I
would be feeling." I just sit there, be present,
look around, and it is as dangerous as it felt.
The wind was blowing that hard.
The masks were fogging up. It was
wet. It was cold. It was unknown.
We felt like we were definitely
walking on pieces of the Earth that
I'm pretty sure nobody else has
ever walked on. So you can behave
and react to the elements naturally.
Less acting.
The other actors in this film
are stellar. Can you talk about
working with Michael Caine and
Anne Hathaway?
Well, what I've learned is that
the people that are the best at
what they do in our business, they don't really
have a magic trick. They just do the simple
things really, really well. Michael would just
hit it. And he had a great sense of humor. And
he would just hit the scene. Just do it, first
take. It's fine with you. He got it. Anne could
recalibrate. I was most impressed with her
sensing courage to give variations because
she could do the scene wonderfully, but never
go back and repeat that. And not everyone
does that, who will give you a variation.
Sometimes we go, "Oh, I got that right. I'm
going to try and do this one even more true, or
I'm going to try and do that again." She never
went back and tried to repeat anything.
The film involves some serious subject
matter; is the mood on set equally serious,
or is it more fun to liven up the downtime?
Nah. It matters what the scene is. And
most of the time it was serious. And that's the
fun of it. I don't really enjoy popping out and
trying to make it all light. If there's a lighter
scene, I'll be a lot more talkative off the set.
But I usually somewhat act like the tone of
where my character is on that day. I'm not
acting exactly like Cooper while I'm having
lunch, but tonally I'm near where I need to be
that day.
Matthew McConaughey's career renaissance
blasts off beyond the stratosphere in Christopher
Nolan's science fiction epic INTERSTELLAR.
MAPS
TO THE
STARS
Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and David Oyelowo
APRIL 2015 JB Hi-Fi
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