The Other Boleyn Girl stars, Scarlett Johansson, Eric Bana and Natalie Portman talk women’s rights, the US election and the proper way to curtsey.
Q: Both are incredibly rich roles, but would you have liked to swap over the roles?
Johansson: No because when I had signed on to the project, Natalie was attached to play Anne and I’ve been such a huge fan of Natalie’s for a long time and I just saw the role of Anne as being hers, so I never even thought about it, but like you say, they are both very complex characters and it would have been a challenge to play either role.Portman: It’s so rare to find a script with even one role that is as complex as either one of these and to have two in the same film for women who are of the same age was completely unheard of and very exciting. I wanted to play Anne because it was so different from anything I had ever done before and it was just an amazing opportunity to get to work with Scarlet who I’ve admired since we were kids.
Q: Eric, you have done a lot on big and small screen, so how did you feel when you came to read the script.
Bana: Well when I originally read the script I wanted to play Anne, but Natalie was already attached. People kept telling me oh, Henry VIII, you’ve got to see this guy’s portrayal, and this guy’s portrayal and I tried to stay really clear of that. It’s restrictive enough trying to play a real person, but then to be constrained by other actor’s interpretation of it is kind of crippling, so I tried to steer clear of that.
Q: You had an etiquette advisor on the set, how did that help you, and through your own personal research about your character, how did that help you?
Johansson: It was helpful having the etiquette advisor on the set, just for little things like, ‘how shall I carry my hands, and how deeply shall we curtsy and would I nod towards this servant, so it was interesting to find out and added to the freshness and the authenticity of the period. As far as my research went, I tried to find out about, you know, land ownership and husbandry and things that were, you know factual information, it was impossible for me to find any information…. what’s so funny?Bana: Land ownership? I love that!! Land ownership is very relevant to my character!Johansson: Wow you actually wrote that down… but anyway. I only had the book to reference as I couldn’t really find anything other than the fact that Mary had one, maybe two children from Henry VIII and that was it.Portman: Especially in terms of bodily contact between your brother and your father and sister and the public, all of those kind of things were helpful to have from someone, when you can’t glean those from a book. There is so much information on Anne, and I think you are just continuously reminded of how biased history is and how it’s always someone’s version and it’s someone’s fiction. Most people had some kind of feminist agenda behind their depictions of Anne as this witch who put a curse on their beloved King, or a spell on him that helped them understand something in their own lives. I think it’s an attitude that we present in our film that it’s so clearly fiction and an imagination of the events even though the timeline is accurate.
Q: As two 21st Century women, how did you both get your heads around the fact that these two characters were effectively pimped off to the highest bidder?
Portman: Well it is interesting because although women have made a lot of headway since then, maybe women were made to have sex or marry for position and money, but today, a lot of women choose to have sex with someone for money or to marry someone for the position of wealth. We still see it today, the vestiges of societal limitations on women, and I think that has to do with opportunities that are available for women.Johansson: It would be silly to assume that that doesn’t still happen to women in other parts of the world. Even when we’re travelling and we see the limitations that are put on women in other countries and you really feel thankful to have grown up in a society where both my parents encouraged my sister and assured us that we were our own persons and could do whatever we wanted. We were never constrained by gender, but we have had a lot of questions asked about women moving on from that period, and the truth of the matter is that in many parts of the world, they haven’t.Portman: Even in certain parts of the US– in Saudi Arabia women aren’t allowed to drive cars and even in the United States if you look at the number of CEOs or the number of Congress … (pauses)… people they are still in the dark ages.
Q: So how important do you think it will be to see a woman in the top position of society in the Unites States then?
Portman: I am very pro-Hillary, and I hope that we have her as our leader.
Q: And Scarlett you’re in the other camp aren’t you?
Johansson: Yes, I am….. it would be great to see Michelle Obama be in the White House.
Q: So, can you tell us a little bit about working with Justin Chadwick as a director?
Portman: Justin shot most of it digitally which was pretty rare for a period film – I think it might even be one of the first. The shots were done so meticulously and I think they succeeded in making it look as beautiful as possible without being too sharp with digital. He brought a pace and real emotion to it without being too removed as period films can feel.Johansson: I was attracted by The Bleak House and he said, ‘I’ve been an actor before and despite the craziness of the costumes and the story and the sets, I want to find the human quality of the story and I really appreciated that he managed to maintain that integrity throughout the film, as opposed to focusing on melodrama and the rivalry – he wanted to find the human connection between the characters.
