Los Angeles Times - 26.11.2019

S22

THE ENVELOPE LOS ANGELES TIMES TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2019

Jennifer, your pole-danc-

ing in “Hustlers” is aston-

ishing. Was it just diffi-

cult athletically?

Lopez: I mean, it was a

lot of things. It was very

challenging; physically it

was very acrobatic. And that

was new for me. And I think

people think, “Oh, she’s a

dancer, so that’ll be an easy

thing to do.” It wasn’t; it was

really difficult. And defi-

nitely what I love about

doing movies is that you get

to do these things that you

would not normally do, you

learn all these different

skills. In the beginning, I

was, like, “Oh, yeah, I’m

going to learn how to pole

dance and it’s going to be so

sexy and it’s going to be

amazing.” And then I was,

like, “This [stuff ] is hard,

and I’m in pain. It’s not fun.”

Renée, you studied Judy

Garland intensely in

preparing for “Judy.” Was

some of that just learning

how she looked, how she

moved, or what did you

hope to get from that?

Zellweger: Well, a better

understanding about the

circumstances of her life

that she was grappling with

and her final chapter. It

didn’t make sense to me. I

didn’t know a lot about what

she was experiencing at that

time in her life. And I felt

like a lot that was written

about her sort of blanketed

that final chapter in tragedy

in some way. And I just

wanted to understand it

better and more deeply. We

dug in. I say “we” because it

was this shared collabora-

tion with everybody for like

a year before we started to

conjure her essence.

And to advocate for her

in some way, because when

you come to understand

how she ends up, having

financial hardships and

some of the health issues

that she was struggling with,

you empathize with her, but

it also shifts the perspective.

I don’t think that she was

tragic or a victim, but she

was really heroic that she

could carry on and continue

to perform at this high level

for as long as she did. She’s

for the ages.

Nora, in “The Farewell”

your character Billi is

derived from director

Lulu Wang’s real-life

story. So having her right

there as you’re sort of

channeling her, what was

that like?

Lum: I knew that the

character was based on

Lulu, but the cool thing is

she wasn’t very stuck on

“This is me.” She wanted to

share the character. When

you have that level of trust,

it’s good, because we built it

together. And at the end of

the day, Billi really symbol-

izes the specific experience

rather than [being] based on

one specific person.

Charlize, you’ve said that

this transformation of

playing Megyn Kelly was

more difficult than be-

coming Aileen Wuornos

for “Monster.” Can you

talk more about that?

Theron: God, context,

I’ve got to watch myself. I

said that in jest because

there was a funny moment

where somebody had

brought that up at a Q&A

and I was trying to be funny,

and now I’ve got to fix this

story.

Listen, you can’t say

something like that because

every experience, and every

person or character that you

play is just so different, and

to even say that one’s harder

than the other is just com-

pletely stupid. And I’m

gonna start censoring my-

self. But I will say this. It

was harder in the sense that

Megyn is incredibly well

known and Aileen really

wasn’t. And I feel like

Aileen was a discovery for

people, like they would see

that movie and thenthey

would Google search her,

see the Nick Broomfield

documentaries. And so it

was like a later discovery,

which allows you a little bit

of breathing room as an

actor because your audience

is gonna go in not necessari-

ly knowing so much.

With Megyn, I knew I

had none of that, because

she’s just so known and her

voice is so specific. And we

all know that persona, how

she carries herself. That was

harder in the sense that I felt

that pressure of, like, “Oh, I

don’t feel like there’s any

wiggle room here.”

Cynthia, in many schools

here in America, we only

learn the bare essence of

Harriet Tubman’s life, if

even that much. As a

British person, what did

you know of her before

ERIVO

OMETIMES even celebrities need advice.

Even on how to be a celebrity.¶So it was re-

cently that Charlize Theron, Renée Zellweger,

Cynthia Erivo and Nora Lum — perhaps better

known as Awkwafina — recently came to hang

on every word as Jennifer Lopez talked about her attitude toward her own fame

and celebrity.¶“I just try to stay super conscious of the fact that I have a re-

sponsibility,” Lopez said. “And it’s not that I don’t have bad days. I’m a human

being.ӦZellweger in particular was equally candid about grappling with the

demands of being a public person. ¶“I find that when I focus most of my ener-

gy on the people who are closest to me and I spend time nurturing my internal

self, my curiosity, learning, growing, becoming a better person, that I do a bet-

ter job of it when I keep it small,” Zellweger said. “I’m a better daughter. I’m a

better friend. I’m a better actress. I think I’m a better human being.¶“Because

I’ve gotten caught up trying to run a race that doesn’t belong to me,” Zellweger

added. “I’ve seen what that looks like, and it doesn’t suit me.”¶There was an air

of genuine curiosity and exchange as the five women gathered together for a

roundtable conversation. The celebrated roles that brought them together —

Lopez as a stripper-turned-criminal in “Hustlers,” Theron as newscaster Megyn

Kelly in “Bombshell,” Zellweger as entertainer Judy Garland in “Judy,” Erivo as

slave-turned-abolitionist Harriet Tubman in “Harriet” and Lum as a young

woman grappling with family and cross-cultural identity in “The Farewell” —

were just conversation starters as the talk veered toward telling stories without

judgment, overcoming great odds and the rigors of pole-dancing.

‘IT’S ONE

OF THOSE

AMAZING

THINGS ... TO

SEE YOURSELF

ON THE OTHER

SIDE OF

THE CAMERA

AS WELL.’

S

ON TV

Look for this

roundtable to air on

Spectrum News 1

regularly through

January.