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Exclusive Interview With Jenée LaMarque And Zoe Kazan On The Pretty One

In The Pretty One, Zoe Kazan stars as identical twins Audrey and Laurel. Audrey is the more glamorous of the two while Laurel’s outward appearance speaks to her discomfort with her own identity. Regardless of their difference, Audrey and Laurel care for each other very much, to the point where Audrey is even willing to take Laurel away from her home and give her a complete makeover. But while traveling back to Audrey’s house, the twins end up getting in a serious car accident which injures Laurel and kills Audrey. The problem is, however, that everybody thinks that Laurel was the one that died, so despite some hesitation, Laurel decides to take on her twin sister’s persona to see what life is like in her shoes, and in the process she comes to understand herself better as an individual.

The Pretty One Zoe Kazan side by side

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It’s amazing what you are able to do with film these days.

Jenée LaMarque: Yeah, it’s really incredible.

Zoe Kazan: But we were using some really old techniques still.

What were the challenges of balancing out the comedic and dramatic aspects of the story for you two?

Jenée LaMarque: Well I think there’s a challenge in writing to nail down the tone, but I think in terms of the comedy in the drama, for me the comedy that I really like is the comedy that comes from a real human place where you’re a flawed person and you’re in these situations and things happen that are ridiculous, but it comes out of a real human place.

I feel like most comedy comes from a place of pain, so they kind of go together really well. I was talking earlier about the idea of a tantrum, like someone’s really upset about something and they just freak out and how hilarious it is. They are really upset and in pain, but to the outside world you’re looking at it you’re like, “Oh my God you’re having this hilarious tantrum!” So that’s sort of, for me, how I experience the world. I think they are really in some ways tied together.

There have been a lot of mistaken identity movies made over the years like The Talented Mr. Ripley and While You Were Sleeping. Were there any kind of clichés you were looking to avoid, or was there something that you wanted to add to this genre that hadn’t been done previously?

Zoe Kazan: She wanted me to have Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows, but we just felt like it was done (laughs).

Jenée LaMarque: Yeah, that was the one thing I had to compromise on. In terms of the genre… For me, I feel like it’s a vehicle to explore the different aspects of being a woman and the sort of different ways that women represent themselves, and I feel like the twin aspect sort of helps to exemplify that to a greater degree. Audrey chooses to present herself in a certain way that is more conventionally beautiful, and Laurel presents herself in a way that reflects how she feels about herself and her inner state. I was interested in those things and how they feel about themselves inside, which reflects on how they appear to other people on the outside. I was interested in that subject matter, and so I think that is not something necessarily that those films are concerned with.

Zoe, was there anything you were able to add to your roles that was in the script?

Zoe Kazan: Well that’s a funny question. I appreciate the question, but I also think that’s kind of the job of the actor. The role in the movie ends up being what’s on the page plus you. That somehow the person ends up being between those two things, and one of those two things press up against each other. So by necessity you are changing it because, unless it’s not written at all and it’s improvised, it’s purely you.

There’s always going to be sort of a push and pull between the page and you and what you’re bringing and your thoughts about the role. I feel like we connected very quickly and I hope that it is very close to what Jenée wanted. Sometimes you feel like, “How am I going to sell this line? How am I going to be funny on it?” But there wasn’t a lot of that. It was much more about trying to bring about what her vision was and also to make it truthful for me. That’s really a boring answer, but I just don’t know how to answer it otherwise.

It’s your job to bring stuff to the script, but I’m always interested to see what people have to say to that because there’s the script and then the movie builds from there more or less.

Zoe Kazan: Well I really believe that you can’t make a good film without a good script. I just don’t believe that that’s possible. And even if it’s a script that’s just an outline, that outline has to be good. I just don’t think you can build a house without a foundation, so I think that’s a testament to the script that Jenée could say to us, “Okay, have more fun on this one,” like you can improvise a little bit, but I felt like we always did that in order to come back to the script with new energy. There’s not a lot onscreen, if anything, that’s improvised.

Jenée LaMarque: There was some stuff like the pool scene.

Zoe Kazan: Oh yeah but that was because you were like, “Here’s the framework within which you can do this.”

Jenée LaMarque: There was improvisation within a strict framework for sure.

Jake Johnson is in the movie and he was recently in another movie, Drinking Buddies, where he did a lot of improvisation. Did he do a lot of improvisation on this film?

Jenée LaMarque: There are scenes where you loosen it up. I feel like for the most part it is the script, but then there’s like little moments that are reactions and lines here and there that are thrown in that really, I think, give that sort of texture of life. He’s really great at that, and together I feel like their improvisations were really important to the pool scene where they are sort of like coming together. They are playing with one another and I was like, “You have to improvise here, otherwise it’s not going to have the right feel. So here’s the general idea of what you should say and you make it your own.”

That concludes our interview but we’d like to thank both Jenée and Zoe very much for their time. Be sure to check out The Pretty One as it’s now in theatres everywhere.