Since wrapping The Twilight Saga in 2012, Kristen Stewart has taken
an extended sabbatical from studio blockbusters, instead becoming a
regular fixture in the independent and foreign film world with such
movies as Still Alice and The Clouds of Sils Maria. Now, the 26-year-old
actress is returning to Hollywood, after a fashion, in Woody Allen’s
latest feature, Café Society. In the film, which is set in Tinseltown
during the glitzy, glamorous 1930s, Stewart plays Vonnie, a secretary at
a talent agency run by bigwig Phil Stern (Steve Carell), who also
happens to be her lover.
When that tempestuous relationship crashes, Vonnie finds love again
in the form of Stern’s young, ambitious nephew Bobby (Jesse
Eisenberg)…at least until Phil decides he’s made a horrible mistake by
letting her go. With its pointed digs at the superficiality of
La-La-Land — not to mention its jaundiced view of love and the lingering
sting of roads not taken — Café Society is most definitely a typical
Woody Allen version of an atypical Hollywood love story. (It opens in
select theaters starting July 15.) Yahoo Movies spoke with Stewart about
her first experience working with the iconic New York director and if
she ever sees herself returning to present-day Hollywood.
Almost every actor who has worked with Woody Allen has a memorable story about their first day on set. What’s yours?
I honestly have the same story as pretty much everyone else. I thought,
“He hates me! He absolutely is regretting his decision.” [Laughs] But
then, I was like, “I’m going to prove to this little dude that I can
absolutely do this! Maybe I don’t have the demeanor that my character
does, but I’ll do it when you f—ing call ‘action.’” That first day, he
would come up to me and say things like, “You look terrible. You’re
supposed to be pretty.” But it’s not personal, and he’s not trying to
offend. If anything, he knows that it’s funny. He’s not the type of
person who likes actors who are totally up their own asses and have
massive egos. I feel like it was almost a tool for him to go, “If they
can take it, they’re cool. And if they can’t, then f— it.”
Did it help to have Jesse Eisenberg as your co-star? He’s worked
with Allen before, and you both have acted together in movies like
Adventureland and American Ultra.
Jesse’s a very calming presence for me, [because] I can get worked up
and overly analytical. And that first day, he definitely told me, “It’s
kind of normal. That’s [Allen’s] way.” I’m so lucky he was in this movie
with me, because I never feel embarrassed around him. And since I was
playing somebody who isn’t like how I am personally, I was allowed to
mess everything up [in front of him] and not feel embarrassed about it.
Vonnie has to choose between two very different men in the film,
both of whom are eager to marry her. Was it simply a reality of the era
she had to end up with one of them, as opposed to pursuing her own path?
I never thought that Vonnie felt she had to do something. The way I saw
it and felt it and played it — although I hate that word, because you
don’t “play” anything, you just do it — is that she genuinely fell in
love with two people. During that time period, if you weren’t married by
a certain age, you were not considered a success — you were a failure.
But I think Vonnie isn’t super-driven by those details. Maybe it’s hard
for you to see why she likes Bobby, but she does. And Phil brings out a
different side of her than Bobby. That’s life. It’s okay to have
different loves in your life. And that’s a modern notion; it’s a new
thing for women to be allowed to say.
The movie takes place when Hollywood was at its most glamorous,
but also tries to puncture that glamour a little bit. In fact, Vonnie
functions as the voice of the modern viewer at times, pointing out how
all the luxurious trappings are ephemeral.
I think there’s been a massive shift in how the public views famous
people. They used to [exist] in an untouchable, elevated fantasy. I
think people at the time were aware of that, but it was okay because it
was fun and felt good. But if that was the most coveted position to be
in, people will do anything to get there and that’s totally dark and the
opposite of what the [fantasy] is supposed to be. There’s some sordid
stuff that went on [back then]. Now, it’s different because there’s no
veneer. People are aware that human beings are human beings.
Both Café Society and Olivier Assayas’s thriller Personal Shopper,
which you also star in, premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival,
where the latter made headlines for being booed by the press audience.
Was that a strange experience?
Yeah, totally. We go [to Cannes] in a bubble of happiness knowing we
made the movie we wanted to make, and it’s definitely a more fun
experience when other people agree with you. [Laughs] But Personal
Shopper is a movie you can’t have an immediate reaction to. If we’ve
done our job right, it’s one of those movies where, after its over, you
sit in your car with your friend and don’t talk about it right away.
People always want to be the one who is allowed to express the first
opinion, and when everyone [booed], maybe they were [really saying], “I
don’t know how I feel about this!” Or, who knows, maybe they all
genuinely hated it. But over the course of that week, [the reaction]
changed. It was one of those movies people needed to think about a
little bit.
You’ve worked with three very different filmmakers recently: Woody
Allen, Olivier Assayas and Drake Doremus, who directed the sci-fi film,
Equals. Their films are nothing alike, but did you notice any
similarities in their directing styles?
One thing they all share is that if they see you walking towards
something, it doesn’t matter to them how you get there. They want to see
your process, and once you arrive, you kind of look over your shoulder
and go, “Oh my god —you’ve put me here!” And they’re like, “No, you’ve
walked there yourself.” And that’s a great feeling.
But style-wise, they’re very different. Woody doesn’t discuss a whole
lot; all of the work is in the script, then he gives it to you straight
up and wants you to own it. Drake is all about process and doesn’t care
about dialogue at all. He’s very meditative; with him, it’s not about
structuring scenes, it’s about falling into something, dusting it off
and realizing what it is. Olivier is able to do both at the the same
time. He’s a nutcase. When I read Personal Shopper, I was like, “You
wrote that?” It’s a crazy movie.
You’ve made a very conscious decision to pursue smaller movies
since the Twilight franchise wrapped up. Do you ever see yourself
returning to the big-budget realm again?
I would love to be inspired by a big budget movie enough to sign on to
it. I’m waiting! My approach is to invest time in things that are really
unrelated to the size of it. It’s what’s inside of it [that counts].
The Twilight thing started off small and then got bigger, but [what was
inside it] was always the same.
If they ever rebooted Twilight, would you consider coming back in some way?
To be honest, we kind of told that story. We made five of them, so maybe not! [Laughs]
