North Toronto’s own Malin Akerman, whose memorable appearance in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle was a key moviegoing moment for many a teenage boy, has her showiest and most demanding role yet in Watchmen playing Laurie Jupiter (a.k.a the Silk Spectre), the conflicted lover of Dr. Manhattan. In an interview, she revealed to The Varsity the triumphs and tribulations of acting in a much-awaited adaptation.
The Varsity: What kind of a director is Zack Snyder?
Malin Akerman: If you meet Zack Snyder, within three minutes you’re sold on whatever he’s selling you, because he’s so passionate, and he’s so smart, and he has such a vision for things. You automatically become enthralled and you know you’ve got a real reader at the helm, which is what you need, especially for something like this.
TV: There is a lot of green-screen work in this film. Did you do a lot of your own stunts?
MA: We did 95 per cent of the stunts. All the fight sequences that you saw, they would film us doing it and film our stunt doubles doing it. So basically, two months before shooting I started a boot-camp with an ex-Navy SEAL to try to gain some muscle mass and try to feel more like a strong fighter, and then a month before shooting we shipped off to Vancouver and started all the fight training. The fight training continued throughout the whole six months of the shoot, which was pretty gruesome and also pretty awesome.
TV: Did you ever feel constricted by playing a well-known character with an already well-established history?
MA: One of the challenges was, because there is this source material, you not only have the history of your character but you also have the visuals, so even seeing the body language of her and the other characters was a challenge and helpful all at once.
Often when you go into a role you have to go into all the back-stories yourself, and here it was all written for you. There wasn’t any improv involved whatsoever, and I am used to doing a lot of improv with all the other characters and roles just to make it your own, but here there has to be allegiance to the novel. So you have to figure out why exactly that person is saying a line in such a way.
TV: Because it’s a comic book movie, did you ever feel tempted to play the role campy or over-the-top?
MA: These characters are so real, so it’s much easier to play them real than it is to play up the [potentially campy] genre of the film. But for sure there are certain moments where [you think], “Alright, we’ve gotta be sure not to make this silly because we’re standing here in our costumes.” So those were the moments where I was like, “Alright Zack, you’ve gotta gauge this scene and make sure that it doesn’t go onto the campy side of things.”
