BOP Interview: The Other Woman
Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Kate Upton and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
By Ryan Mazie
April 24, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
“I’ve never seen colors that beautiful on my ass before,” laughs Coster-Waldau, recounting a scene from the film that involved his bare butt and Upton with a whip. “But it didn’t hurt that much.”
Upton quickly quips back, “You’ve had your hand taken off in Game of Thrones. I hit your butt. What does that even mean?”
The ensemble’s onscreen chemistry in the upcoming comedy is apparent in real life, too, during a free-flowing interview with Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann, Kate Upton, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Taylor Kinney in Los Angeles. “We hit it off right away,” says Mann, “We had a couple dinners together. We just complimented each other in real life and onscreen. Cameron for me is like the teacher and Kate is like my daughter. She is only five years older than my daughter. I love these girls and these boys.”
The five stars open up about making-out, fighting the MPAA, physical comedy, and what it is truly like to shoot a bikini scene.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, you’re on Game of Thrones where you have to face some fierce women, but how do they compare to these ladies in this film?
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau: Yeah, they take their revenge in the end, when all that he wanted to do was give them all pleasure (laughs).
Cameron Diaz: Oh, this is how it’s going?
NCW: No, it doesn’t compare. He’s a real prick and gets what he deserves. Cameron and Leslie are pros and this is Kate’s first movie; she is amazing. It’s not easy playing the naïve, young character.
CD: You have to be very smart to play that dumb.
NCW: It was a thrill for me.
Leslie Mann: It was a thrill for me, too, to make-out with the hot guy from Game of Thrones, because I have been married to the same guy for 17 years and I thought, “yes!” And you know how actors go, “It’s just very technical and the sex scenes are so tough,” and I’m like, “That’s bullshit.” So anyway, I was very excited. And then we did the kissing scene and he’s got the scruff and I got red, but not just red, I broke out into full hives. They thought it was his aftershave, but it kept happening and I was so bummed.
NCW: But it didn’t happen with Cameron.
CD: I have a sturdy constitution.
LM: But I got the job done.
What did you think, Taylor, when you first read the script?
Taylor Kinney: That I hope I get this (laughs). I loved it. It evolved a lot. There was a template and it evolved to what it is.
LM: It seems like a lot of the other movies with the same kind of idea, written by men and directed by men, like to perpetuate this idea of women fighting over the man.
NCW: But what does it tell about these women that they all go for this man?
CD: That he’s really good at what he does (laughs).
Cameron, you successfully petitioned the MPAA to get the rating lowered from an R to a PG-13. How common is it for actors to get involved with that and what did you say to get it changed?
CD: I’m not certain how common it is, but I and the studio and producers all felt very strongly. I completely respect and admire that there are guidelines in which we have to be under to get a certain rating, and I appreciate the MPAA for what they do and how they structure that, but we felt that it wasn’t R, but PG-13. In the end, we were able to plead a case and get them to turn it around.
LM: We only had the one fk.
KU: It’s crazy that knowing how the shoot was that only one made it into the movie (laughs).
Leslie, there’s a great physical comedy scene in the film where you tackle Cameron. Can you talk about that?
CD: She’s strong.
LM: We discovered that we have a fun chemistry physically. Cameron has really long legs and a shorter torso and I have a really long torso and shorter legs.
CD: So her center of gravity is really low and I’m always kind of higher just teetering and tottering. And her torso is all torque like a combustion engine and it just explodes. But the script didn’t have any physical comedy written in it. We just began finding it in these little places. And Leslie would just hold on to me and I’d try in any way possible to get her off of me.
KU: And Cameron would always be wearing these huge stilettos or leather pencil skirt or tiny bikini (laughs).
CD: So I’d say to the crew guys, “Hey, my ass is going to pop out during this take so if you can stand over there…”
KU: Yeah, it’s weird how many men went over in that direction (laughs).
Kate, what was it like working with Cameron and Leslie?
KU: It was so amazing and I was so lucky. I didn’t know what to expect when I first came on set. They opened their arms to me and supported me every step of the way. When I was shooting my bikini scene, normally when you go on to a beach, everybody is wearing a bikini, but on a film, you are the only one wearing a bikini and there’s just 60 people staring at you. They’re doing their jobs, but they’re still staring at you. I was so uncomfortable, but they saw that I was uncomfortable and came out and ran off camera with me, not letting me alone and encouraging me.
NCW: I just remembered another girl in the movie who hadn’t done a movie before, Nicki Minaj, did an amazing job. Plus, Melissa [Stack] who wrote a beautiful script and Nick Cassavetes did a great job directing it. At least for me, it was good to have one guy on set, because these girls are a force to be reckoned with.
CD: Nikolaj plays an ugly villain. We had to create such a horrible guy, because he is the bad guy in the movie, so we took him as far and pathological as possible and I feel like Nikolaj did an amazing job with that. Making him so bad that we girls could have fun having the revenge and looked good (laughs). We appreciate that. And Taylor portrayed the essence of the man we all appreciate. He’s a brother, a best friend, and gives heart to the movie so revenge doesn’t overtake it all. So these guys showed up for us and were great partners to us women. While it’s about heartbreak, we also celebrate love in the movie.
The Other Woman is released on April 25th.