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Press Conference Interview With Mary-Louise Parker On RED 2

Continuing my coverage of the RED 2 press day I attended in New York City last weekend, here's the second star who graced us with her presence - Mary Louise Parker. You know her from such works as Weeds, Angels In America, a bevy of other films, and some theater work, but the next part you'll be seeing her play is Bruce Willis' love interest Sarah in the upcoming RED sequel. More guns, more explosions, more being protected, but most importantly for us, more Mary-Louise Parker.

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The next questioner then asked Mary-Louise what it’s like working with Bruce Willis: 

Mary-Louise Parker: Bruce and I just get along really well. He’s obviously a big action hero. Macho, masculine – but he’s so sweet. You can really see that when he talks about his daughters. He’s just such a good father. He cares about them so deeply. He’s just so good with children, and my children loved him. He talks to them. My son remembers him and he’ll see posters and go “Look mommy, it’s Bruce Wilson!” [Laughs] He’s just lovely and manly in the best way, and I can say I’m not too shy to admit I love that quality in him. He’s incredibly charming, and he’s the kind of guy that you feel like if someone came in the room, he could just take them out. I’m talking about Bruce as well as his character. It’s sort of a sexy quality, not that I advocate shooting people or anything.

In RED 2, there’s a scene where Mary-Louise has to repeatedly slap Bruce, so we wanted to know how hard she was actually hitting him:

Mary-Louise Parker: A couple were real. That day we had a location that we had to leave really quickly, so we had to do the last shot of it quickly to get it. I was shaking him, and it was really funning moving his head around, but it’s hard to fake a slap, so there were a couple of real ones in there. Sometimes I feel like if someone’s slapping me, it might be better to just go do it. It doesn’t always look real unless you’re really good at it.

Sneaking in a quick comment, someone asked if Mary-Louise had ever had her jaw dislocated while being slapped, to which she responded:

Mary-Louise Parker: I’ve had my ass dislocated a couple of times from being spanked 50,000 times on Weeds by Damián Bichir, but I enjoyed that, so… [Laughs]

Next we wanted to find out how much of the action Mary-Louise participated in herself, specifically if she was behind the wheel for the driving stunts:

Mary-Louise Parker: No, because I’m a famously bad driver, which everyone knew, so they created a car that had a pocket in the bottom of it so a person could sit there and drive it. The one scene I had where I was actually responsible for driving a car, all I had to do was drive straight for about 25 feet. I don’t know if you talked to Dean [Parisot] yet, but you should ask him about that. I drove straight into a wall. All I had to do was go straight. John was really funny, he was like “No dear, you need to, no, dear, dear, point your steering wheel,” and then I just crashed. The director put it on a loop and just sat there behind the video monitor watching it over and over, dying laughing. It was horrible. People used to come out and watch when I drove. I don’t drive in real life. It’s just a mistake, for everyone.

Getting my turn on the mic, I wanted to ask Mary-Louise the following question concerning casting in RED 3. “So RED already had an amazing cast, and RED 2 added so many big actors, making it even bigger, but considering RED 3, are there any actors you think would fit RED’s world perfectly? Is there anyone you’d love to work with, or maybe just make out with?”

Mary-Louise Parker: Like I said, I’ll make out with anyone. [Laughs] I think Jeff Bridges would actually be great in this world. He can play any kind of character. Maybe we should suggest that, he’d be wonderful – and I’d be happy to make out with him if it worked out.

Since Mary-Louise’s character does make a change from RED to RED 2, we asked if Mary-Louise herself had in input into Sarah, along with when she knew there’d be a RED 2.

Mary-Louise Parker: They started talking about it pretty soon after they had the first cut [of RED], they were really happy with it. It did pretty well in the box office, but it was rented a lot, and it became a really highly rated DVD rental. I didn’t have anything to say though, except when we got there. There were little things they let me bring in, but when they were making it, the whole thing was behind closed doors. I think they’re talking about a third, so who knows what will happen there.

I’d like to thank Mary-Louise Parker for taking the time to talk with us, be sure to catch RED 2 when it opens on July 19th!