The Mia Wasikowska interview for the Alice Through the Looking Glass movie took place at the luxurious five-star Montage Beverly Hills. Located in the heart of Golden Triangle, its elegance and vintage Hollywood decor sets the mood for talent interviews.
And as far as moods go, it’s hard to not be excited when you’re among 24 of your blogging colleagues, but add that to the excitement of interviewing star talent for one of your favorite films on the premiere day and the feels are pretty epic.
We screened the Alice Through the Looking Glass movie the previous evening at Walt Disney Studios. You’ll have to wait for my review on that tomorrow, but I can tell you for sure it’s awesome, and it certainly left us all with great questions for Mia.
Alice Through the Looking Glass movie is out Friday May 27 watch the trailer here:
About Mia Wasikowska
Mia Wasikowska, who starred as Alice in Alice in Wonderland (2010), is as graceful as she is pretty. I love her hair growing in and where it comes to her chin, it totally frames her face perfectly. She lit up the room with her porcelain skin and big smile, and was very much a pleasure to interview.
My Mia Wasikowska Interview for the Alice Through the Looking Glass Movie
I think once you get to see the film, you’ll appreciate the details of this interview much more. So without further ado, our Mia Wasikowska interview for the Alice Through the Looking Glass movie.
Interpreting the Film
Mia on her favorite scene:
I really like when I see the Hatter in the marketplace, and I’m trying to explain to him that we’ve met, but when he’s older, and I’m younger. I think that’s so sweet. It has such an essence of the original book to it, that whole abstract, quite bizarre nature of it.
Mia on Alice’s new found independence:
I really love Alice and I like seeing her journey. I think in the first film, she was quite, kind of still a little uncomfortable and trying to bridge that gap between knowing who she is on the inside and then being able to be that on the outside. And I think that was sort of her journey in the first film. And then in this film, she’s just spent three years as the captain of her ship, and she has a really strong sense of who she is. She comes back into this story with a really strong sense of that despite the fact that expectations of her are low in her society. She manages to sort of hold on to that sense of being worth more than what people want of her, which I think is really great and important for young girls and boys everywhere.
Mia on meaningful quotes from the film:
There are so many, but I do like the message from Time, “You can’t change the past, but you can learn from it.” I think even though we kind of know that, I think to really deeply understanding that is really important. It’s the best way to kind of live your life and be in the moment, to accept what’s happened in the past and move on into the future openly and not be sort of fixated on trying to change something that’s already happened, which I feel like we can get a bit caught up in.
Mia on her relationships with characters:
I like a few of them. I do like the relationship with Alice and Time. I think Sasha plays a confident idiot very well. (Laughing) He’s this powerful old loser in a way, and Alice is the only one that kind of isn’t scared enough to pull him out on how he just doesn’t make any sense at all. I like that she sort of has no fear in approaching kind of anyone, but, especially him, because he’s gotten such a strong ego.
I also really like the scenes with the Hatter. When you’re filming a film like this, and it’s green screen for five months you spend a lot of time running around and jumping around. And so obviously the more enjoyable days was when it was those lovely scenes between the two of us, and that was really nice.
Mia on Alice as a role model:
I think just sort of what I said before of that, she seems to have this innate sense of who she is and even though she’s got all these challenges and people always kind of questioning her, she manages to hold on to that really strong sense of herself and you know, even when she goes to the ball with the oriental costume and, ah, she just doesn’t’ even seem to notice the judgment coming off of everybody else and that sort of just seems to roll off her back. So, I guess just that sense of not caring so much about what other people think is really important.
Mia on learning from her role as Alice:
I guess you learn a lot of stamina and I think the film world in general, sort of what I’ve learned about it is the perception is quite different to the reality of it. So I find that quite interesting. Filming a film like this is great, and really fun, but it is definitely a lot of hard work and a lot of very long days.
Production
Mia on challenges with working with CGI:
Yeah, I mean even just when you read the script and it takes an hour and a half to read, and you’re like okay, so I do a lot of running. That then translates to five months of running every day and jumping, and it feels quite physical. And so sustaining that level of energy and when you have quite little coming back at you, in terms of the set (or lack thereof). It’s just a big green blob of light quite like an abstract experience.
Mia on the costume design:
Colleen is really brilliant, and she did the first Alice. I knew her and we were able to have a good dialogue about it, but I feel like in this film, I had kind of more accessible, active kind of clothing. I mean, I had so many trousers even when they kind of look like skirts. They’ve got a leg bit, which was really good and even having her in a captain suit at the beginning and the end and just a sense that she’s more active and less restrained in her gaudy dresses. That was quite nice.
Mia on physical training for the film:
I had a two week period before we started filming with the stunt coordinators who are really great. They were really are a brilliant group of people. There were no illusions of the fact that I did quite a lot of the physical stuff, but I had a wonderful stunt double, who did a lot of that really difficult, painful stuff. So I would come in and do the fun, whimsy bits, and then she’d be thrown across the room.
Mia on working with Johnny Depp a second time:
I was great. I guess the main difference was just that I knew him before and with all the cast I had that level of familiarity with them and that was really nice. So we all sort of knew each other and that always helps stepping into a project like this, which is quite abstract. He’s such a wonderful person, such a lovely, sensitive person and I love that he’s so kind of creative. I mean, all his characters are very, very different, but they’re also distinctly his own characters. You always sort of know a Johnny Depp character and yeah, he’s great.
Mia on working with Sasha?
I think there’s a six-hour version of the film somewhere because he improvises a lot, so he’s quite ambitious about it. I’m not sure how he thought half of that was going to get in a Disney movie if you’re at all familiar with his previous work. (Laughing) So, you know, it was just very entertaining. Every day was something completely different. So I would say he’s very ambitious, very smart and really funny.
Mia on cut scenes:
Yeah, there was one scene that I really liked when she’s chasing the butterfly through the house, the butterfly goes over the long buffet table where they’re having the ball, and Alice kind of jumps on the table and she’s running towards the butterfly. And she ends up sort of jumping on Hamish and, and having a little scrap with him, but maybe it was like too, too, too much, so they obviously got rid of that, but that’s fine. I loved filming that scene.
Film
Mia on exploring other film genres:
I would love to do maybe some comedy. I think it’s really hard to find a good comedy. I think there are a million great dramas every year but comedies, maybe are a tiny bit harder to find that one that feels really great and funny. So yeah, I would like to explore that.
Mia on working in the fantasy medium:
I guess this is a bit more of a heightened experience for all sorts of reasons, and I feel like period pieces can kind of cross many genres in one way and many different tones. I’ve done some period films that have felt like quite naturalistic and then others that are quite exaggerated and fantastical. This was just sort of a different level of energy, I guess, and obviously there’s not much ambiguity in children’s films because I think that ambiguity is unsettling you know, so things are very light straight forward.
Just for Fun
Mia on time travel:
Well, I probably would go to the Victorian era, just because I’ve done so many films in that era, and I want to sort of see if we kind of got it accurate. And I want to know what we’ve missed, you know. I would never, ever want to live in that time even having spent just a few months in those costumes. (Laughing) Even after the first one, I said I’d never do another period film, and I obviously haven’t kept that up. But yeah, I would never really want to live in that time, but I would love to see it.
Mia on relaxing after long work periods:
Well, I still live in Sydney so I spend a lot of time in my home. I have a very small garden, but I love gardening, reading and being with friends. I live not too far from the ocean, so I go for walks a lot, yeah, but pretty boring, pretty simple existence.
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