What lengths would you go to in order to have the perfect wedding? Bride Wars, starring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway, examines this bridal Darwinism.
Liv (Hudson) and Emma (Hathaway), are childhood buddies who have fantasized about their respective weddings. The one similarity between their dream weddings is to have the ceremony at New York's the Plaza Hotel, the utmost wedding destination. However, when a conflict arises and their ceremonies are scheduled for the same day, the manicured claws come out.
During a recent conference call, Hathaway and Hudson discuss channeling their inner Bridezilla for their roles and their own fantasy weddings among other touching topics.
Q: You are a producer for this film. Do you have a particular method for choosing which movies you're interested in producing?
A: Hudson: No. In terms of movies that I have in development now, they run the gamut of all different types of genres. I felt that this one was, because of the nature of people and how people like to make comedies, and this being such a really nice concept, high-concept comedy, this one was sort of really a nice one out the bat for me to be able to get going. But it was really a long process. It was a five-year development process, and now I think we're about six and a half years of this movie being in process.
Q: Of all the underhanded tricks Liv and Emma pull on one another as the wedding date approaches, which one was your favorite?
A: Hathaway: I think my favorite one she pulled, because it was the meanest, was the weight gain. That's low. That's something that girls don't do to each other. I know how hard I have to work to lose that last five pounds, so to kind of mess with that I think is wrong. But it's kind of fun to think that Emma was driven to such a point of desperation that she could justify it to herself.
Hudson: For me, I have to say the tanning salon was fun. And part of it was on that day, I wore what Liv's version of a disguise is, and I walked in, and what we would do is every time we did a take, I'd do a different character. As a kid, and growing up, sketch comedy and improv was really what I like to do, and where I really love to get down and dirty in that kind of stuff. And so for this movie, that one particular scene, I literally was a Russian girl, I came down with some weird like version of an Eastern European girl. I did a Southern belle. I did all sorts of different characters, which hopefully will be on the DVD, because we had a good time doing that. It was really fun.
Q: Most little girls fantasize and plan exactly how they want their wedding day to be. What was your fantasy as a little girl?
A: Hudson: My fantasy when I was growing up was always more, my parents weren't married, and we were always like why aren't you married? And we had it so ingrained in us that you didn't need to sign a piece of paper to say that you're a family or that you love each other. So that was how we were programmed. Then, of course, I meet Chris, and I'm like, "I'm getting married!" And then all of a sudden I got really excited about it. So for me it was really more about who was going to be the guy that I would spend the rest of my life with, who would be my partner. And then when I met that partner, I was very excited about possibly calling up Vera Wang and seeing what she could do for me.
A: Hathaway: I think that I, in my fantasy, was like, well, Leonardo DiCaprio and I will meet him at some point, and he'll just see me walking down the street and fall in love with me, and that'll be that.
A: Hudson: Careful what you wish for!
A: Hathaway: It was kind of a vague notion, and I just assumed that Leo and I would find some kind of happy medium between our two aesthetics, and have a glorious wedding. It doesn't look like that's going to happen, however. So my fantasies have taken a left turn. I actually have never really planned my wedding, but like Kate, I was kind of more thinking about the guys.
Q: This is for both of you. What is one thing you have both learned about each other, or from each other, while making the movie?
A: Hudson: That's a good question. We haven't been asked that yet. OK, I'm going to answer both. One thing I learned about Annie is that she is absolutely fearless. One thing I learned from Annie is... and we're kind of similar in that way, which is that we're very open and honest about the things that are going on in our lives. Annie is a tough cookie, and I think I learned that professionalism that goes with living your life and going through things, and showing up. And Annie really shows up. That was a nice thing to watch.
A: Hathaway: Thank you! Thank you. I think that applies to you. I don't think that's something you have to learn. One of the things that I learned from Kate was Kate does something which is so incredibly rare in an actress, which is they are able to find the balance between being professional and having fun. And sometimes I can get lost and mired down in kind of the professional side things and Kate just -- without sacrificing any of the work, without taking it any less seriously than anyone else -- manages to just bring a sense of fun to absolutely everything. I think I kind of assumed that I needed to torture myself in order to produce good work, and I just learned from Kate that you can produce spectacular work, as she does in this film, without going through that process. So that was a really key thing for me to learn. I've been trying to have more fun. I'm getting a hug from her right now! And one of the things I learned about Kate, and I kind of had a sense of this, because -- I hope I'm not embarrassing you, because I'm a Kate Hudson fan, like Kate Hudson the actress and celebrity before I worked with her -- and I just always knew that Kate would be like a great mom and everything, but I had no idea what a spectacular mom she is. And Kate is exemplary in just about everything she does, but I think the thing you're best at is being a mother. That's rare, and that's something that is really spectacular.
A: Hudson: Oh, my goodness. I'm going to start crying!
Q: Well, both of you in interviews I've seen on TV seem like really likable, laid-back, women, but you have to tap into your inner Bridezilla for the film, and how did you do that?
A: Hathaway: Imagination. We're human beings so I think we understand what it's like to be jealous. What it's like to be competitive or catty. Maybe we don't indulge those feelings. Maybe we try not to live in that world, but I think those urges are understandable. So I think having experience with that kind of helps. But also, the script was so great in providing a logical emotional back story for the characters to explain why they go off the deep end the way that they do, why this war was in some ways a long time coming, and so there was a certain freedom that the script gave us because it was grounded in truth.
A: Hudson: I tapped into my inner Bridezilla by, I think, acknowledging and watching some of my friends go through some stuff, and understanding the stress of it myself when I got married, and I think the other thing is just as females, we all know. We get really worked up. We're very emotional creatures. And sometimes you can get a little carried away. So for me, with this movie, it was so fun to be able to make fun of ourselves. I think girls get crazy, but we can also laugh at ourselves really well. We don't get the opportunity to do that very often in movies, so it was really fun to be able to do it with something as important as your wedding day to a lot of women, as it should be. It is the day that you're going to spend the rest of your life with, hopefully, the man that you're marrying. So for me, it just felt sort of like you can tap into all of those things from all of the things you've learned as a girl throughout the years. For me, it wasn't friends though -- there is that girl who would probably go to those lengths, and I just run as far away as I can from girls like that. It's like uh-oh! I really think you can smell it like a mile away. You can smell that girl who would probably do things to start sabotaging your life.
