The Hollywood Reporter - 06.11.2019

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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 116 NOVEMBER 6, 2019

THERON: NOAM GALAI/GETTY IMAGES.

BOMBSHELL

: HILARY BRONWYN GAYLE SMPSP/LIONSGATE. ARON: ALVERTO E. RODRIGUEZ/GETTY IMAGES.

Awards

Preview

if we pushed just one week, the

whole movie would have fallen

apart because of scheduling.

What was the period of time

between when the backing fell

through and when you found the

solution to the problem?

Literally hours. I shared with Jay

that I had a really great work-

ing experience with Bron [Bron

Studios helped finance Tu l ly], that

they have great taste and I trust

them. And he said, “Stop talking.

Just send it to them.” And so I

called Aaron Gilbert up and I said,

“I’m sending you a script and I

need to know as soon ...” And he

came back to me six hours later

and he said, “We’re in.” So we just

started making a deal.

The Cinematheque honor will take

in the breadth of your career, a

broad mix of roles. What has moti-

vated your choices?

There’s something pure that

happens when you read mate-

rial that you know nothing about

and something just clicks for

you. It’s not necessarily a switch

that says, “Yes, I should do this.”

It’s usually a switch that says,

“What the fuck? This is scary. I

don’t know about this,” and you

can’t stop thinking about it. The

fear is really what drives it. I love

that feeling. Most of my jobs have

come to me that way. Now that

I have kids, that other element

of the logistics gets thrown in.

Where is it shooting? What does

that look like for my family?

Interview edited for length

and clarity.

Morphing Into Megyn

Charlize Theron on the

fight for financing and her

transformation for

Bombshell By Rebecca Keegan

F

rom a desperate serial

killer in Monster to a

vengeful desert warrior

in Mad Max: Fury Road to a dazed

and depressed mother in Tu l ly,

Charlize Theron has built a career

upon playing darkly fascinating

women. Her latest role, as broad-

caster Megyn Kelly in director Jay

Roach’s Bombshell, is yet another

portrait of female complexity.

Theron, who also produced the

Lionsgate film under her produc-

tion shingle, Denver and Delilah,

stars opposite Nicole Kidman,

Margot Robbie and John Lithgow

in the timely drama about the

2017 sexual harassment scandal at

Fox News. Ahead of receiving the

American Cinematheque Award

on Nov. 8, Oscar winner Theron,

44, discussed her uncanny

transformation into Kelly, her

last-minute scramble for financ-

ing and the debate over whether

#MeToo has gone too far.

Your physical transformation into

Megyn Kelly is quite striking. How

was that achieved?

We worked with the greatest [spe-

cial effects makeup artist], Kazu

Hiro. It’s really hard to get him to

do new stuff. But I did a lot of beg-

ging and he came on and designed

eight [prosthetic] pieces for me.

Two of them basically covered my

entire eyelids. It was very intri-

cate work. Intricate work where

you still need to be able to do what

you need to do, like blink.

What do you feel is the larger truth

of this story?

The story itself was very famil-

iar and one that in the recent

couple of years we’ve had so much

attention brought to by move-

ments like #MeToo and Time’s

Up. History has just repeated

itself when it comes to women

and their fight for equal rights,

whether it’s the pay gap, or not

wanting to be abused by power, or

being threatened that their ambi-

tion is going to be used against

them. And then ultimately they’ll

lose their jobs. Women

also don’t always do the

right thing. We tend to

throw women under this

general blanket when

we tell these stories. It’s

black and white — they

were victims and then they were

heroes and that’s the end of that

story. These things are very

complicated, and until we can

actually look at the complexities

of it, I don’t think we’ll ever really

solve it.

Shortly before you were to go into

production on Bombshell, your first

studio, Annapurna, backed out.

What did you do?

I panicked. That’s the first thing

I did. It was a very ambitious

movie for Denver and Delilah.

We only sent the script

out to our top choices,

and that was who ended

up making the movie

with us, which is such a

freaking luxury to have,

but what that does is

that when you get people with

the level of Nicole Kidman and

Margot Robbie, you’re tied to a lot

of people’s schedules. When our

financing fell through, our great-

est fear, it wasn’t that we wouldn’t

get financing again — it was that

AMC CHIEF EARNS AN ACCOLADE

He’s a marketer and strategist who has been a co-owner of the

Philadelphia 76ers, the CEO of a cruise line (Norwegian) and helped to

turn Colorado’s Vail Resorts into a luxury destination. Nearly four years

after being named CEO of AMC Entertainment — owned by China’s

Wanda and the largest cinema chain in North America — Adam Aron,

65, will be honored with the American Cinematheque’s Sid Grauman

Award in recognition of AMC’s “remarkable evolution of the theatergo-

ing experience,” says Cinematheque chairman Rick Nicita. Aron is only

the fifth recipient of the tribute, which was created to honor pioneers in

the exhibition and distribution business; previous awardees were Dolby

Laboratories (2018), Richard Gelfond and Greg Foster of Imax (2017),

Sue Kroll (2016) and Jeffrey Katzenberg (2015). — PAMELA MCCLINTOCK

American

Cinematheque

Awards

Nov. 8

Beverly Hilton

Charlize Theron

(left) with

Liv Hewson

in Bombshell.