Co-star of The Uninvited
It’s easy to become a blathering mess around Arielle Kebbel. She’s gorgeous. I’ll just get that out of the way. But she’s not unapproachable. She’s the antithesis of that. Her smile sets you at ease, corrects the fuzziness growing in your head which allows you to speak understandable sentences. Luckily, coherent words give way to a pleasant fifteen minute interview when I meet Kebbel at a Westwood hotel. It’s December and she’s cramming in a bit of press for her supernatural thriller The Uninvited (review) before Hollywood breaks for the holidays.
The film marks her fourth genre outing after Reeker, The Grudge 2 and next month’s DVD release Freakdog. In The Uninvited, a remake of A Tale of Two Sisters, Kebbel is Alex, a young woman whose sibling, Anna (Emily Browning), has returned from a psychiatric facility following their mother’s death. Their bond becomes strong when their father (David Strathairn) shacks up with a new woman (Elizabeth Banks) who they suspect is up to no good.
During our candid chat, Kebbel is talkative and surprisingly open about her craft.
ShockTillYouDrop.com: Are you having a good time migrating from genre to genre in your career?
Arielle Kebbel: I love it all. With comedies, I love making people laugh and you have to find a rhythm, but once you find it it’s like magic because it just flows out of you. The more comfortable you are with the other person, with your timing and physical humor – that all plays a part. And it’s about knowing those beats and not second-guessing yourself to find those beats. That’s challenging but rewarding. The drama and the horror-thriller genre – I find it fun because it’s such an extreme place to live in that you’re forced to bring it down to the most, I guess you can say, common circumstance as possible. To whatever scene is over-dramatized or completely out there, you have to find what’s real in it for you and let that emotion carry you through. I remember there were days where I was on The Grudge 2 and there’s a scene where I got shoved in the closet that took over two weeks to film. You go to this place in your mind, so for the first three days of filming, you think you’re in a dark place. No – you haven’t discovered what dark is. Those things that affected you no long have their power, so it’s a challenge to constantly dig deeper in myself and face my true fears.
One of my biggest fears is fire which plays a huge part in this story. I actually had a very challenging day on set. We were filming a fire sequence and it’s just interesting to see doing something that I love, doing my work, actually caused me to face some of my fears. The days where we would spend the whole end sequence of the film, which is very dramatic, we shot that over a span of a week. And you go home, you’re eyes are puffy from crying for the past 8 hours, you’re exhausted…that, as weird as it sounds, is great because you’ve exhausted yourself in exactly the way you should have. To live up to that, I think that’s a challenge as well.
Shock: How did you overcome the fear of fire on set?
Kebbel: It was a huge process. It’s a sequence where the boat house explodes. What we were shooting on that day is they were building sections of the boathouse on a soundstage, we were supposed to stand behind the window, and they were filming from the front. It was all very safe – but they had these flames set in back of us. They call “action” and ignite the flames which slowly rise and shoot up 20 feet in the air. And we’re supposed to be acting. On camera, I think it was some trick, it looks like the flames are all around us, but we were totally safe. For me, emotionally, the way I had to work through it was they started the flames 50 feet away and then kept them low and slowly brought them closer and higher. What I realized was it was the sound, that whoosh and the crackling of the fire brought back so many memories for me because I was involved in a fire when I was younger. In an instant, my senses brought me back to something that was so powerful that I didn’t know what to do. I froze in terror. As an actor, you have to remember those are the things you can add.
[laughs] It was! On some days I’m not sure how many people liked that. When we first tested for the film, I thought Emily was very shy and reserved and I wasn’t sure how I would like working with her. In her words, she says I was scary and intimidating. We were both flying up to Vancouver wondering how we’re going to play the sisters. The first night we got there we went to dinner, just the two of us, and went to this great Japanese restaurant and immediately bonded over food. Of course. Because we love all the same Japanese stuff, so we’re sharing a massive plate of food and started talking about everything from our high school experiences to our ex-boyfriends to our boyfriends to our families and relationships with siblings. From there we were so comfortable we started talking about the script. What was important to keep and what was important to lose? What do we need to work on? We wanted to make sure any chance we had we added those sister moments, our special vocabulary or looks we exchange. Let’s make sure we don’t overdo it, but let’s make sure it’s in our mind. Two weeks later, we just became the sarcastic sisters who made fun of each other all of the time. By the end, we had lived our summer as sisters together.
Shock: Do you think if this story would work if it was a step dad you were up against instead of a step mom?
Kebbel: Yeah, I do. It’s completely different psychologically for the family and the audience. I think Elizabeth does an incredible job playing into that fear every child has, whether it’s the terrifying babysitter, evil nurse or evil step mom, that tale goes back to the 18th century. Everyone can relate to that, so digging into that evil, that deep-rooted evil. Elizabeth did a phenomenal job of that. Reversing it, to have an evil step dad, I think it would work but you have to play it from the obvious – like being emotionally violent or physically violent. So I think it would be a much darker film. I think what works here is that it’s more psychological. You want to believe the girls, that Elizabeth’s character is evil. Whereas if you had a step dad, it would almost be too aggressive and too hard to watch.
The Uninvited opens in theaters on January 30th. You can read a set visit here and see what Kebbel had to say about Freakdog right here.
Source: ShockTillYouDrop.com
