Chris Evans & Dakota Fanning

“Human Torch” Chris Evans (Fantastic Four) and child mega-star Dakota Fanning talk about their new film, Push, a sci-fi thriller about a group of young American ex-pats with telekinetic and clairvoyant abilities.  Buzzine gets the inside, behind-the-scenes story.

By: Izumi Hasegawa

Izumi Hasegawa: How does playing an action hero in Push compare to shooting the bigger budgeted Fantastic Four?

Chris Evans: There’s a lot less time waiting around, that’s for sure — those giant budgets. You have the luxury of time, you have the luxury of money, so as a result, you spend a lot of time waiting around. But on this, if anything, we were under-the-gun, and we did not have the luxury of time or money, so you’re working a lot more.

IH: Was there less performing to pieces of a gunman on a screen? A lot more of it was real?

CE: Absolutely. That was the main difference. With Fantastic Four, you’re surrounded by green screen, you’re hanging on a wire, and you’re talking to a tennis ball. In this, if there’s a stunt, they’re going to do a stunt and it’s going to happen right in front of you, and you’re going to be a part of it. It’s a tangible world to play off.

IH: How did you like doing the sliding across the floor with guns?

CE: Man, that was the greatest shot I’ve ever been able to be a part of in a movie, literally. Sliding across the floor while firing a gun was so satisfying, and I can’t even explain it. I would have done it all day if I could have.

IH: Is there some psychological reason for that?

CE: I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what movie did it to me — maybe it’s the Die Hard movies. I don’t know what it is, but running and sliding while firing a gun, that is an action movie. That, to me, just epitomized it. It was just great. I felt like I was on a playground.

IH: After making this movie, do you believe in any psychic powers?

CE: I’ll tell you what. We’re not going to deny it. Preparing for the movie, you go online and you try to do as much research as you can, just to make the world real. You’ve got to believe it to some degree if you’re going to try to portray it. I think if you go online and if you spend enough time doing research, you find that a lot of people dedicate their whole world to this type of research, and the fact is it’s out there. It’s undeniable.

IH: Have you had any personal experience any deja vu feelings?

Dakota Fanning: I’ve definitely had that before. I think we all do. You always have those moments where you’re thinking about someone, and then you see them on the street. You have that sometimes, but this movie definitely takes it to the next level with those powers.

IH: What power do you want to have if you could?

CE: Being a pusher would be great. You can manipulate people’s thoughts and take over the world, but then, we realized, it eventually fades. If you manipulate someone’s mind…

DF: It wears off and they come back.

CE: You realize you messed with my head. I think I’d go with mover. Telekinetic.

DF: I’m not sure. I’m kind of on the fence between mover, shifter…something like that, but shifter wears off as well. I don’t think I’d want the power I have in the movie because I know how stressful it was for my character to see the future and want to change it and to try to figure out how to change it. It would bother me. [Laughs]

IH: How much fun was this filming so far away from home, in such an exciting location [China]?

DF: I was excited. I loved it. I had such a good time, and it was fun being somewhere so far away from home where it’s just so different, and I really liked that it was kind of like a culture shock, but in a good way.

IH: Did you eat anything really strange?

CE: Yeah, the food… [Laughs] It’s different. I got a little homesick. I tend to get that way.

DF: We stuck to Nobu with the food. [Laughs]

CE: Yeah, Nobu is a safe bet. There was a Nobu in our hotel, so I ate dinner there every night. Sushi — it’s delicious.

IH: Did you guys meet any challenges shooting in Hong Kong?

DF: Do you know that no one really recognized me there at all?

IH: Kind of refreshing, isn’t it?

DF: Yeah, I mean, I got recognized a few times, but I get recognized more here than I did when I was there. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know if it would be a lot or not at all. It was kind of in the middle.

IH: Did you interact a lot with the locals while you were filming? I heard you didn’t shut down the streets so much.

CE: We didn’t. They didn’t really choose to be interacted with. I mean, it’s very chaotic. It’s very busy — a lot of hustle and bustle, so a lot of those streets you can’t get lock-ups on, so you just kind of hide the camera behind a bus, and Dakota and I are just walking through the streets and they couldn’t care less. They’re bumping into you, they’re bumping into the camera, and just get out of their way.

IH: I didn’t hear that was the case with The Dark Knight. They were in town for a while, right?

CE: Well, that’s just a gigantic production and it’s Christian Bale, and I’m sure that was a different experience.

IH: Dakota, as your first sort of action hero type of role, did you have to get the hang of that style of dialogue — speaking in short, quick lines?

DF: I don’t know if I had to get used to the style of it. I just thought the character always has a comment for everything and a comeback for everything. I thought that would be really fun to play and really different from what I’d done. And then I went from this movie to The Secret Life of Bees, which was totally different, so it’s just an example of how much fun I get to do and how I get to be all kinds of different people.

IH: Well, you get to be tough, you get to be drunk… [Laughs]

CE: Which she did really well. [Laughs] She was really good at it.

IH: Is there a drunk trainer or something…?

DF: No there wasn’t. I… [Laughs]

IH: Did you drink on set?

DF: I didn’t, no. I didn’t even know what I was going to do until the minute I did it.

IH: Dakota, now that you’re 14, are you more interested in fashion, makeup, and all of those things now?

DF: I’ve always loved fashion. I’ve always been so interested in fashion, yeah.

IH: What’s one of your favorite designers?

DF: Well, I did the Marc Jacobs campaign a few years ago, so that was really cool. He makes really fun things — they’re very young and fresh.

IH: How about the fashion of your character in this film — was that your decision? I would also like to ask about the drawing — was that your drawing?

DF: Well the costume — yeah, I was really involved in that. That was my idea. That was actually my T-shirt that I wear in the film. It says “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” and I got the costume at the end of the movie, so I still have it. And then the drawings, no — I didn’t do them, the art designer, Francois [Séguin], did all of those ’cause they have to — they’re so important to the story ’cause they kind of chronicle the story of what’s going to happen next and where we’re going to go, so they had to be really specific and good, so [laughs] I didn’t do them.

IH: What are your plans for the future? Are you going to home-school, go to college…?

DF: I’m in school. I’m a sophomore in high school right now.

IH: So you don’t ever have to do home-school?

DF: I did. From second to eighth grade, I was home-schooled, and then ninth and tenth this year I’ve been in school.

IH: When you leave home, are you going to go to college?

DF: Oh yeah, I definitely want to go to college. I’ve always wanted to do that, so yeah.

IH: What is high school like for you?

DF: It’s great. It’s been really, really nice.

IH: Is it a school with other actor kids or…?

DF: No, it’s just normal. My sister goes there too, my cousins… It’s a K-12, so my cousin is going to go there. We’re all going to be at my school.

IH: Can you just talk about Hong Kong?  Give your first impression or most memorable moment…for both of you.

DF: The most memorable? I think it probably would have to be when you are driving into the city from the airport and you see the apartment buildings that are just like one on top of another on top of another, and they’re like little boxes. And when we actually went up in one of those into a real apartment, it’s amazing to see. They’re really small, and families of like four and five live in these places, and it’s just crazy to see that. You really understand how many people live in the city, ’cause I can’t imagine how many people would live in just one apartment building, and there’s like hundreds of those apartment buildings. It’s amazing to think about.

CE: I would say the fish market. We shot one day at a real fish market, and we were there at 5:00 in the morning, and the activity that’s going on… I didn’t even know that there were this many types of fish in the sea. And the smell was [laughs]…it was just a different world. Again, all those scenes in the fish market — that’s not extras. Those are real people earning a living and we’re just walking through.

IH: Well you’ve been earning a living for a while on a lot of different locations. Is this the wildest you’ve been in?

CE: No question.

IH: Usually it’s like LA or…

CE: Well, LA, Toronto, Vancouver, maybe London…this was on the other side of the world — a completely opposite culture, and it absolutely was the most exotic location I’ve ever shot.

IH: Is this movie out on video yet over there? [Laughs] Chris, what is it about you that makes film directors think “super powers”?

CE: I don’t know. [Laughs] That’s a good question. That wasn’t by design. I read the script and, at first, I got a pitch from my agent. I was like, all right, another super power thing. I don’t know if that’s what I really want to do, but I read the script and it was just a great story, and I met with Paul [McGuigan, director], and he had a great take on it — his vision for the movie, how he wanted to shoot it, the camera work, the lighting, and the color pallate — it just sounded like a version of this genre that I hadn’t seen before. I thought, even though it is super powers, it’s a very different character, it’s a very different story, and I’m liking the names that are floating around it. It’s when Paul was floating around it, and her [Dakota's] name was getting thrown into the mix, you say, “This makes sense.”

IH: It’s like you creating your own instead of doing what’s been around for 50 years in the comic book.

CE: Sure, absolutely.

IH: Have you had other offers in the genre?

CE: No, not really. I don’t think so.

IH: IMDB says you’re a former vegetarian.

CE: Yeah, you know that IMDB man. [Laughs] I was a vegetarian for awhile.

IH: What brought you back to the meat?

CE: I was just getting even thinner than I am now. I just had a really hard time putting on weight, and some of my friends said I was getting kind of green. [Laughs] Literally! I mean, I’m incredibly pale. I have like a pound of makeup on right now, but I’m incredibly pale, and I think I must have been — I don’t know what was missing, but they said I had a greenish hue. [Laughs]

IH: There’s also another curious fact — a quote from you that says “I’d love to be Tom Cruise.”

CE: Another doozy! [Laughs]

IH: Did you ever say that?

CE: I did, but it’s taken out of context. At another film, the director, trying to sell his product, said, “He’s a young Tom Cruise.” And someone said to me, “So he said you’re a young Tom Cruise. How do you feel about that?” And I said, “Well, that’s very flattering. I’d love to be Tom Cruise. He’s got a great career…” and boom, they take that one [laughs] sentence. So spread the word, guys.

IH: So you don’t want to be Tom Cruise?

CE: I wouldn’t not want to be Tom Cruise, but it’s not like I wake up and I say, “Tom…someday…” [Laughs]

IH: Did you speak Cantonese?

CE: If we want to call it a Cantonese. It was Mandarin. Was it Cantonese or Mandarin?

IH: Did you learn it in Hong Kong?

CE: I just learned it phonetically. That was brutal. That’s a tricky language.

DF: That’s the first foreign country that I’ve been in that I’ve never learned any of the language — something. I went to Mexico, I learned Spanish, and now I speak Spanish…not all the way, but you go somewhere and you pick up things…

CE: I could live there five years and never know what was going on. [Laughs] I don’t know if I’d get “hello.”

IH: Other than the language and being far away, what was the hardest part about filming in a country that you have no connection with?

DF: At least we had Nobu. Pizza Express. Nobu. [Laughs]

CE: Honest to god, for me, it was the food. It really was, especially when you’re working as hard as we were working — working long days, and the work ethic over there is through the roof, and so a lot of the luxuries you get used to being pampered on sets are not there. You’re not allowed to have trailers on the set. If you’ve got to go to the bathroom, it’s three blocks down, two blocks over, there’s a McDonalds. So you’re working hard. When you get a break for lunch, you want to eat, and sometimes the catering was…

DF: The thing was, ’cause we had a lot of Cantonese crew, the catering was geared towards them, cause it made up most of our crew, which is great. They’re the hardest working people on the set, which was fine. But that was just the only difficult part, I guess.

IH: So you don’t like Chinese food? [Laughs]

CE: Oh I don’t mind Chinese food. Everyday for three months? It’s a little much.

IH: Were you worried about getting Jeremy Piven disease or…? [Laughs]

CE: Oh yeah, what’s going on? I heard about that!

IH: He can’t leave the country for a while. Dakota, I’m sure this is the kind of movie you’d like to be doing more of. It’s got a little edge to it and you’re growing up. Are there roles that you’re getting or roles you’re rejecting that reflect what you want to be now, maybe who you are or how you’d like to project yourself, or things you’d like to try?

DF: Yeah, there are so many wonderful stories. I think it just depends on what’s right for the time and what I’ve done before. I always want to do something different and continue to grow as an actor. As you get older, there are so many more roles that you can do, and that’s exciting, so I look forward to that.

IH: What is your next project? What are you going to try?

DF: I don’t have anything right now. I have Push and Coraline which are coming out in February.

IH: Are there things you can only play while you’re still a kid that you want to cram in there before it’s too late?

DF: I don’t know. The roles I’ve played when I was nine and ten, I can no longer play. I’ll be fifteen in three weeks, so…

IH: That’s exciting. What will you do on your birthday?

DF: I don’t know yet. [Laughs]

IH: You’ll start driving in a year. Are you excited about that?

DF: In six months, I can get my permit, yeah.

IH: Your family has obviously done a great job keeping your feet on the ground. Who would you thank most for that?

DF: My family and my friends…

CE: Her parents are unbelievable. They’re great people.

DF: Yeah.

IH: Do they get to come with you? Obviously, you have siblings, so…

DF: Yeah, my mom was with me the whole time, and my dad came to visit and when I was filming this movie. My sister was in Budapest with my grandmother filming The Nutcracker, so my dad was home alone for a few months. [Laughs]

IH: Chris, what about “Fantastic Four 3″? Is there going to be talk?

CE: I haven’t heard anything. I think, when you do the sequels, they usually come on the heels of the previous film, and it’s been a long time now. I think they’re going to put them to bed. I don’t know for a fact, but I haven’t heard anything, so I’m assuming they’re done.

IH: Dakota, we’ve just been hearing somethings about you possibly joining Twilight?

DF: Possibly, yeah. I hope it works out. It would be really, really cool to be a part of that.

IH: Are you looking to play any specific role with that?

DF: I think it would be Jane.

IH: Who’s the Jane character?

DF: She’s a vampire in the film. It would be really cool to be a part of that. I’m a big fan.

IH: Can you guys talk about the action sequences? You guys did your stunts by yourself? You smashed on the roof…

CE: Sure, that was one of the appeals. Paul really wanted to get us whenever we could, whenever it was safe enough to get the actors in there and actually do the stunt work. Dakota and I got to run through a fish market with these tanks exploding all around us. [Laughs] You really only get one take at that. It takes 24 hours to re-rig, so you really have to not screw it up.

IH: Did either of you get injured?

CE: Yes, Dakota sustained some pretty heavy shrapnel. During that scene, where we’re running through the fish tanks, one of these tanks exploded and there was a little hanging piece of plastic on the tank. We finished the take, and Dakota is as white as this table cloth, just frozen, and she takes her jacket off really quickly, and all down her arms she had these pieces of plastic. It ripped right through her jacket, but she finished the take; she finished the day…

IH: Were you in the hospital?

DF: No, they were just little, whatever.

CE: She was gushing blood — nine stitches! [Laughs]

DF: No, in the fish market scene, when we run upon the pop boy, you see me grab my arm…

CE: You see it in the movie…

DF: [Laughs] Yeah.

IH: Chris, what’s your next film?

CE: I’m going to do Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Edgar Wright is going to direct it, and it’s with Michael Cera. It shoots in Toronto.

IH: When is that?

CE: April.

IH: Quickly, tell me something about it.

CE: I’ll give you the broad strokes. Michael Cera is the lead and, in order to date the girl he’s in love with, he has to fight her ex-boyfriends.

IH: And you’re one of them?

CE: Yeah, he’s a nice guy.