Getting Ready For The Role
It was fun! It was a lot of Epsom salt baths every night for six months. And even after that, for close to a year, but I loved it.
I knew, because this character freaked me out, the moment I read the script and as I was doing the readings with Jim and with Sam and I knew that this character was not going to be easy.
I knew the training I was going to have to do if I was going to do the part, so when Jim offered me the part, I said, "I want to start now. Today."
I was still living in New York at the time and he was, like, "woah… What do you mean?"
And I said, "I want to do everything. I want to train, because by the time we start shooting and you pick up that camera, I don't want to have to think about anything like that. I want it to all come very naturally, so I can focus on the characters and the story.
You and Sam and I working intensively as opposed to me going, 'Hold on guys, I gotta figure out how to move this tail again!'" I wanted to be ready.
As soon as I got here to LA I was working with the movement coach, because this is a foreign species that can't move like humans.
They don't nod or shake their heads, they don't move their hands like we do. I needed to dehumanize myself and that required a lot of time.
And I know the kind of process I need to work in and the amount of time that my brain needs to learn something and pick it up naturally.
I was riding horses and doing archery and martial arts and walking with a tail... Six days a week. I only gave myself one day off.
But I love that, I'm one of those people who, when I'm really excited I obsess about something. Just feed me through an IV - I don't need to pause for food!
I told this amazing martial arts master I worked with in New York that I wanted to get all my extensions back, because I was a dancer and I knew that she was going to be climbing trees and moving, squatting, using my legs and making sure those muscles were awake again.
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