Exclusive: Examiner.com
Hawaii to Twicon Destination, Dallas
After an exhaustingly long flight from Hawaii, and a long day signing autographs, taking pictures, and speaking at the question and answer panel at TwiCon 2009, The Twilight Saga: New Moon and Nurse Jackie star Peter Facinelli was so kind as to speak about The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, whose rehearsals begin tomorrow, he says.
AB: Rehearsals start in about a week, is that right?
PF: Tuesday.
AB: And are you looking forward to it?
PF: Oh yeah, I re-read Eclipse on my Hawaiian vacation, and then I read the script right after.
AB: How is it?
PF: It's great. You know, it's hard to cram a whole book into a movie and some of the details get lost in areas and in some areas they get heightened. The story's the same, and I'm happy with it.
AB: What was your favorite part of Eclipse?
PF: I actually like that, in the book, a lot of the family members are talked about, and in the movie they're in it a lot more. The books are all told from Bella's perspective, so a lot of times, when she's not in the scene and things are happening, you don't actually get to see them, like the battle scene, for instance. In Eclipse when the whole family and the werewolves are fighting the newborn vampires, it's talked about and through Edward you kind of get something, but in the movie you actually get to see it, you know, so I like that in the interpretations of the movies, it's not always about Bella's perspective. She isn't always in the scene, and so that opens up the story a little bit. The Cullens are in it a lot more throughout.
AB: So, in that case are you doing stunt work?
PF: Yeah, we're going up there and we're going to have fight training. I'm excited about that. I mean, I'm a guy, so I like the action stuff, and I'm excited because it's fun for me to have Carlisle be part of the action stuff, get in there and roll up his sleeves. For an actor, it's fun, but for playing the character too there's a whole other side.
AB: It'd be interesting to see have they told you at all how they're going to fight because in the mythological world, it's kind of an attack and bite system between vampires and werewolves is that what they're going for?
PF: I have no idea. I'll know more when I get up there, and I'm sure David [Slade] has a better idea of how we're going to play all that. You know, Catherine [Hardwicke] had certain ideas of how we were going to play it. Chris had his ideas how we move. I know that when we did Twilight, you know Catherine actually had us do cat classes because she wanted us to be more cat-like and like the whole world of vampires more like a feline family, and werewolves more like the canine family, and so the way we moved was more cat-like. And then Chris [Weitz] came and he was like, you know what, I kind of want it to be not so feline/canine and their movements be a little more stealthy, so the way he showed vampires was a little bit different in New Moon. Like if I had to get from here to across the room, you know, he'll have a camera on me and then whip-pan than then I'll be over there. So, it's not like all of a sudden, I'm doing some kind of weird Fab Four run to the other side of the room which is interesting. There's a lot of in-camera to express the vampire movement, and I don't know what David has in store for that. So, that's the interesting thing about having different directors. They have different interpretations for the same story.
AB: A bit of news happened yesterday, and I'm interested to hear your take on it. The website has now Breaking Dawn as "coming soon?"
PF: You know, I haven't heard anything about Breaking Dawn. Summit hasn't discussed that at all. I think it's all a matter of when we shot Twilight, no one knew if it was going to be a success or not, and we didn't know if we were going to shoot a second movie or not. It was all based on how Twilight performed, and the fans came out and by coming to the box office, they said they want more. I think the same thing with Breaking Dawn. If New Moon performs in the box office, and the fans come out, and Eclipse, then that's their way of saying we want more. If they don't, then.
AB: They probably won't wait until after Eclipse to make that announcement?
PF: Probably not, I mean I'm hoping that as everyone's schedules get so busy, you know, actors become unavailable. So, I'm hoping that once New Moon comes out, if it performs well, if the fans come out for the movie and if they say they want more, then they'll push the green button on the fourth book and lock down a date so that we all come together. It's a big cast. It's very difficult when you have a big cast to get everybody back in the same place. You know, to make sure everybody's available.
AB: Speaking of availability, you said you start back Nurse Jackie in October right?
PF: I start back in October. Actually, I think that there were a couple of days that overlapped, but the schedules worked out, and I went to them very early on, like two months ago, before. You know, as soon as I knew Nurse Jackie was picked up for a second season, I went to Summit and I said listen this is probably going to conflict a little bit, so before they even had the boards, I reassured that it all worked out, so the producers of Nurse Jackie and the producers of Eclipse got on the phone and worked out the dates.
AB: So is there anything that we can expect from you besides Nurse Jackie? Did you ever get into that project you were hoping to work on this summer?
PF: Yeah, I was trying to do a movie that I wrote. I had such a small window, and I ran out of pre-production time. We were trying to find the girl to make the movie, and by the time we did find the girl, it was going to be too tight.
AB: This was going to be the girl that gets pregnant?
PF: Yeah.
AB: And the guy is going to be?
PF: [Points to self]
AB: So, it's going to be you? So you're not just going to be in the project as the writer, but also the actor?
PF: Right. Yeah.
AB: And it's still gonna happen?
PF: Yeah, I had to push it to next year because it was one of those things that we could have tried to squeeze in and it would've been rushed, and I thought, you know what, rather than try and squeeze it in, let me do it next year when I have more time, and it's a passion project of mine because I wrote it, but it worked out well because I was able to spend the summer with my family and I know that when I get back, it's gonna get really busy and I'm gonna have to film Nurse Jackie and Eclipse back to back.
AB: And there was another project you were thinking about doing this fall also?
PF: The Absinthe Drinkers, but I think that got pushed back to next year. I'm not quite sure what's going on with that movie. It's a project that I'm interested in doing if and when it comes together. I just like the whole world of it. It's a period piece, 18th Century, about a female artist in that time, in Rome, it was a man-driven occupation, and female artists weren't really taken seriously, so this female artist is way ahead of her time, and people don't want to take her seriously, and there's a man that comes on-board as well, who says let me take credit for your work, and then we'll reveal that it's you then what happens is the guy never reveals that it's hers, so he takes credit for her work. But, I got offered the lead role in that, but there was a role in it that I was more interested in playing.
AB: Lucciola?
PF: Yeah, he's kind of like a street urchin kind of artist and kind of given up on his art, and he spends his days at the bar drinking absinthe, he's kind of a showman, so he still wants that attention, so he's kind of loud and he's a loud drunkard. I'm kind of interested in playing something like that that I've never played.
