In Whatever Works, the latest comedy from filmmaking legend Woody Allen, Curb Your Enthusiasm main man Larry David portrays self-professed genius Boris, an unhappy, suicidal and cantankerous former Columbia professor. Hollywood ingénue Evan Rachel Wood (The Wrestler, Across The Universe) and with stage and screen veteran Patricia Clarkson (The Green Mile, Far From Heaven) portray the women in Boris’ life.
In this fun, exclusive ménage-a-chat with the three leads of Whatever Works, the trio muse about Wood’s web-slinging Broadway adventure, contemplate the idea of vampires of Curb Your Enthusiam, and recall the excitement (and fear) of working with Woody Allen.
Can all of you talk about working with Woody Allen? He works in a very quiet way, where apparently he doesn’t interfere with what you’re doing. But as actors, do you want more from him or do you like the way he works?
EVAN: “I almost had a panic attack the first day, I was certain I was going to get fired because I just wasn’t used to it. You ask him, ‘Was that okay?’ and he says, ‘Yeah, that was fine.’ I don’t know what that means, but I guess it’s good. I ended up liking it, and I kind of get what he was going for after watching the movie, I don’t think he wants to distract you or make you think about it too much, he wants it to be as natural as possible. His favorite takes were when we messed up.”
PATRICIA: “I think his genius, his craft, he has such trust in you as an actor, it’s a beautiful thing, and you walk in and he says – he doesn’t feel the need to say much and I like that because he steps in at just the right moment…”
LARRY: “Yeah, you’re doing something wrong, he lets you know about it.”
PATRICIA: “He lets you know it, but he lets you go. And I think also indirectly you have to know your character so well with Woody, because you really have to – it’s like theatre, you have to be able to do very long takes, you have to be prepared, you cannot be lazy, you have to know how to improv, you have to know all of it – and so it really prepares you in this very deep, subtle way for the journey.”
What about you Larry? Do you feel the same way, because you said you were a little insecure when you started, did you want more input from him?
LARRY: “Well, I was waiting to get fired, I was expecting it for a couple of days, I would go to the set like, ‘I can’t believe I’m still here.’ No, I just felt like if I did something and he didn’t say anything to me that it was okay.”
EVAN: “You were much braver than I though, you would just walk right up to him and start talking, I couldn’t do that. I was too shy.”
PATRICIA: “But he’ll say, ‘That was good.’ And that’s huge praise. ‘Okay, that was good, that was good for me.’”
EVAN: “And every now and then, ‘That was really funny,’ and you’re like, ‘Ahhhh’”
Evan, how are things going in Spidey world, with the upcoming Broadway Spider-Man musical?
EVAN: “I love that question. They’re going great. I just spoke with (director) Julie (Taymor) today, actually, and we’re still looking for our Spider-Man. But it’s going to be incredible, it’s going to be a crazy, rock ‘n’ roll circus show. Julie is doing what she did with The Lion King to this, she’s just taking it to a whole ‘nother level.”
Have you been rehearsing a lot?
EVAN: “No, no, we actually haven’t started. I did the workshop, and then I worked with U2 [Bono and The Edge] and Julie and learned the songs and stuff. But we don’t start rehearsal until October. And just wait until you hear who’s playing the villain, I know and I wish I could tell everyone.”
PATRICIA: “You can tell me later.”
EVAN: “I will.”
Is it true you are also doing True Blood?
EVAN: “Yeah, I just got fitted for my fangs.” [Laughs]
PATRICIA: “How often do you hear that? ‘I’ve just had a fitting for my fangs.’”
LARRY: “What a statement.”
EVAN: “Yes, yes, I’m playing the Vampire Queen of Louisiana, 400-years-old, and gay, so it’s going to be a good one.”
And once you get those teeth on is that…
EVAN: “They just take over, you can’t help but just snarl and be evil, it’s great.”
LARRY: “Have we ever been through a period like this before where we’ve been fascinated by vampires? Is this new?”
EVAN: “No, it comes every now and then.”
LARRY: “Has this ever happened before, this vampire craze?”
EVAN: “I have always been into the vampire craze, okay? It’s all a Twilight thing, no, no.”
Larry, would you like to have vampires on Curb Your Enthusiasm?
LARRY: “Yikes!” [Laughs]
PATRICIA: “Larry! Come on, Larry, let me come be a vampire on Curb.”
EVAN: “Oh yeah, I’d watch that.”
PATRICIA: “I want to be fitted with fangs.”
LARRY: “That could be bloody mess.”
Okay, Evan, if there was a fight between your vampire on True Blood versus one of the Collins girls from Twilight – who’d win?
EVAN: “Considering I’m a real vampire, probably me.”
Did Woody Allen come up with all the great quotes in Whatever Works?
PATRICIA: “All the great lines, that’s all Woody. All the good ones. We would improv a ‘Hello,’ and I threw in some Southern stuff, but the rest was Woody.”
What are your favorite Woody Allen films?
PATRICIA: “Hannah and Her Sisters, all of them. It’s hard, it’s like picking your favorite flavor of ice-cream.”
EVAN: “They’re all so different.”
PATRICIA: “It’s impossible. There are way too many.”
Larry, now that you’ve been through the whole thing of playing a character and memorizing lines in Whatever Works, would you do another film?
LARRY: “Yeah, of course, yeah I would. You mean, would I do it with Woody Allen again or somebody else again?”
Maybe another director?
LARRY: “Well, I’d definitely do it with Woody Allen again, would I do it with somebody else again? Yeah, if I liked it.”
PATRICIA: “I’ve got a script for you.”
Larry, will this experience be incorporated into Curb Your Enthusiasm?
LARRY: “No, the film will not be incorporated in Curb, no. But there’s aspects of this that certainly will.”
Patricia, as an actress, is it liberating to play a woman like Marietta, who is experiencing a sexual awakening? Where can we see your thumb print on the character in Whatever Works?
LARRY: “That sounds like a hard one.”
PATRICIA: “Yes, characters who undergo transformations are always yummy, because you get to make a journey and get to have two different looks. I was born and bred in the South, and I think I infused my Southern manner, my demeanor, my tone into her, I think it is there. And Woody let me kind of put little things here and there in, and I know big hair, and I know tight clothes, and I know really bright colors.”
EVAN: “Pink.”
PATRICA: “And, although Woody is so specific about wardrobe, remember our
wardrobe fittings or the…?”
EVAN: “The camera testing?”
PATRICIA: “The camera test, which is again another way of preparing because as you’re doing all of these wardrobe fittings things start to happen to you. No, it was thrilling playing this character, I mean, come on, it was alive and sexy and fun, and sometimes very nerve-wracking.”
LARRY: “I have a question, are you critical of non-Southerners when they do Southern roles?”
PATRICIA: “Yes.”
LARRY: “Are you hyper-critical?”
PATRICIA: “Deeply.”
LARRY: “Because when I see Gentiles playing Jews, I don’t like it.”
PATRICIA: “And that’s the beauty of this part, Woody is a very Northern man, he’s a big old Yankee, but he got this character very right in so many ways, and yes, I’m very sensitive about Southern characters. But women like this do exist, and so you have to embrace it.”
Evan, I wondered about your real mom, some women seem to be all up in their daughter’s business about their romantic life…
EVAN: “She made every boyfriend in my life miserable. [Laughs] And absolutely she gets up in my business, and she’s a Jewish mother too, so she’s very like, it’s very, very…”
PATRICIA: “Jewish Southern mother. Oh my God.”
EVAN: “A Jewish Southern mother, yeah.”
What was your most challenging scene to do in Whatever Works?
EVAN: “Eating the sardines, over and over and over, I went home and threw up.”
LARRY: “I don’t know why you didn’t get a substitute for the sardines?”
EVAN: “I did, remember we had to reshoot it? I substituted it for tuna. I did get sick. I remember the first take, I looked down and I saw a spine in her eyeball and I went, ‘Oh.’”
PATRICIA: “They’re pure, they’re really good for you, there’s nothing better, they’re really great for you.”
LARRY: “What, sardines? You really threw up on them?”
EVAN: “I did, I went home after the scene, it was terrible.”
Which leads us to the mercury PSA, which we hear over and over again. I can’t help but think about Jeremy Piven. Have you ever talked with him about his mercury poisoning?
PATRICIA: “I don’t know Jeremy Piven.”
EVAN: “Did you have that mercury conversation?”
PATRICIA: “No, I’ve never had a conversation with him about his…”
LARRY: “What’s going on, I ordered sushi for lunch, you’re scaring the shit
out of me.”
Where does theatre stand in your life, at the moment, because you’ve been so busy with films?
PATRICIA: “I will do a play soon, I love the theatre as you know, and I haven’t done a play in a very long time, and I have very, very angry people at me in New York, pretty much every single friend of mine is angry at me that I haven’t done a play. But I’ve said, ‘Who cares? This is my life and I’ve got movie work. Na, na, na.’ But I’m hoping to be doing a play at some point, within a year I will absolutely be doing a play.”
Don’t you have the film Main Street coming out? Wasn’t it the late Horton Foote’s last…
PATRICIA: “Yes, it is the last film that he wrote before he died, and we were very fortunate that he almost finished all the rewrites before he passed away. But it was a beautiful film experience, especially with Ellen Burstyn.”
EVAN: [Laughs]
LARRY: “What are you laughing at?”
EVAN: “It was just a funny thing, ‘We’re very fortunate that we got the rewrites before he died.’”
PATRICIA: “Well, yeah, I didn’t mean it that way, my goodness. But I’m honoured to be a part of it. Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Horton Foote, come on, life is good.”
LARRY: “Well, he did die, and it is fortunate that he completed the rewrites. Let’s face it. It was fortuitous.”
When you get back to Curb Your Enthusiasm, how’s his marriage going to be?
LARRY: “What marriage? Which one?”
EVAN: “Not ours.”
Your fictional Larry David’s.
LARRY: “My marriage to Cheryl on the show? Well, we split up last season, remember? I’m with Vivica Fox.”
EVAN: “I love her.”
Is Cheryl still on the show?
LARRY: “Yes, she’s still on the show.”
Is there any chance…
LARRY: “Well, I suppose you’ll have to watch the series.”
