STACK Magazine April 2015 Issue 126

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034 APRIL 2015 JB Hi-Fi
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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 just behave.
You don't have to use your imagination 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